The importance of Open Accessibility Data - Dennie Declercq

The importance of Open accessibility DataHOW OPEN DATA CAN BE USED TO MAKE THE LIFE OF PEOPLE WITH A MENTAL / COGNITIVE DISABILITY BETTER

Who am IDennie Declercq.Founder of DDSoft vzw.Volunteer developer at vzw Ithaka.

Contact me: [email protected]

Obsessed about using technologies to make the life of people with a disability better.Maybe because I have my own disability (Autism).

Honored to speak here!

Can you realize ?

That the things that we all do….. Are not common “life” for many people?

Reading a paper Watching a subtitled movie Ordering a pizza

Some Facts:

There are about 5% people with a disability in Belgium

Which means about 560.000 people are more dependent than

others.

Not much?Maybe some people think 5% is not huge.

But with technology these days, it seems like everything already exists.

But for this 5% there’s a big gap to discover! And make things better!

Two kinds of disabilities

Physical

•Can’t move the ‘normal way’

Mental / Cognitive

•Can’t think / speak / read / behave the‘normal way’

The little that existsThere are (very few) tech organisations that focus on people with a physical disabilityAnd that’s good!

But there are even less tech organistions that focus on people with mental / cognitive disabilities.That’s our (DDSoft vzw) goal.

But I hope…

To inspire many more!

There’s such a nice thing as open data

The technical opportunity of how open data can be used or made is quite big

The most common provider are goverment organisations

But why don’t let many organisationscreate their own open data platform

So I started to use it for people with a (mental / cognitive) disability

How can you use open data for peoplewith a mental / cognitive disability?

By making data accessible: If you pair the following functions to your data:

-Text To Speech

-Pictures or pictograms

-A simplified lay-out

You can make it clear for everyone!

Example: Pictures or PictogramsWhat does the following mean?

酢飯 For some people with a disability, who cannot read,

Letters and words mean nothing.Just like Chinese or Japanese

tokens to us.Everybody (except blind people)

can see a picture.

The answer is

For some people with a disability, who cannot read,

Letters and words mean nothing.Just like Chinese or Japanese

tokens to us.Everybody (except blind people)

can see a picture.

And of course...If you use Text To Speech, you can let the device of people with a disability read theinformation right into their ears. In simple words, in their own language.

It’s like their mom, or their coach is speaking to them!

What’s this?

An eatingschedule

But….What if you can’t read this paper?

What if the paper is on a location you visit only twice a day?

What if you can make it more accessible?

With appsUsing open data

On their own phones.

What’s our goal?To create a famous open data portal in Belgium where developers can get their data, tomake apps for people with a mental / cognitive disability.

I want to make a general portal for Flanders.

Where do we get our data?It’s the purpose that organisations who work with p. w. a. disability share their data via us.

We manage their data, and make it open.

What are the possibilities of data?Event data.

Day-life data.

The platform has just been releasedI started to test the pairing of data with pictograms and TTS with clients in Ithaka

http://socialedata.ddsoft.be

I hope that soon, I will get data from more organisations.

Can you realiseThat everyone can open things on a site, in a open data format?

I constantly ask myself the question if it’s only a goverment thing to do!

If I can open the social sector to share their data,

I’m sure that I can reach many people in Belgium.

And I’m sure, I am making lives better

Therefore I do!

Making your own open dataI showed an example of the group of people I made an open data platform for.

But technically, quite a lot of organisations, hobby clubs, firms, shops … can create anopen data platform.

And do a hackathon to introduce the data to developers.

I believe, every sector has advantage to have mobile applications. And the nicest workaround for data in mobile applications is open data!

Q & A

Thank You!And start to produce data!

Contact me: [email protected]