How do you collaborate?

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Digital Culture (Brazil)

a place for NGOs to share their cultures through audio, video etc.
sharing local culture
all free open source

Digital Infrastructure (Brazil)

open source system called GUIGO
java open source platform for social networks
produce knowledge collectively
document editing
upload files
communication - audio, text
share ideas - discussion lists, instant messaging

ScotiaBank

development groups are distributed
collaboration is very immature - using Jive
currently using telephone networking
using SharePoint
social networking is not well adopted and they aren't using open source
nothing is accessible in the frameworks currently
they have the accessibility knowledge but the platform is not accessible
video, chat, telecom solution doesn't exist in an enterprise solution

IBM

internally they use Lotus Notes and collaboration tools
distributed team around the world so collaboration is essential
challenge: awareness about accessibility
people build team rooms etc and don't take accessibility into account even though it is possible to do so
raising awareness and ensuring people follow accessibility rules

Peer to peer University

enabling learning outside institutions
thinking about how people communicate
wiki, blogs, voice, groups
how does communicating effect how learning happens
how to build communities quickly
building on Open Source solutions

Cross disability tele collaboration tools (Greg)

Fluid

mailing lists
open philosophy - people are communicative
use and IRC channel that is logged
daily stand up meetings using Connect - web conferencing tool
every day there is a dance of 'can you hear us'?
screen sharing
Open source has an established way of working - email list, bug tracker, source code repository.
designers use skype, mailing list, irc also. One difference with design is that with development you can copy and paste code to talk about but with design there is equivalent.
communicating visual ideas is very difficult
skype screen sharing, ichat screen sharing including controlling the other computer but only works with apple machines
pair programming with different tools - iChat, Skype, instant messaging

Gaps

reliability
sharing more then text
openness - lack of open source solutions
integration - all in one tools
tele-collaboration - video, audio, screen sharing
issues: captioning a presenter - difficult to caption visuals and interactions such as pointing at a particular part of a board
techniques for handling multiple streams - audio, video, captions, chat
collaboration tools need to identify people needs
captioning while operating a collaboration tool
presentation formats are inaccessible and need to be converted
tools are needed for language translation
mobile devices have power issues - how do you do text conversion etc on them?
rich media and bandwidth issues
how do we have QOS without discrimination
need to make use of user preferences, mobile devices
ability to turn down or turn up audio streams

Solutions

looking at caption correcting by people that are present
'revoicing'
timewarp - freezes a live recording and moves back in time. You can then catch up later
live remote assistant - a single assistant could help many people instead of going to a lecture for a single question
these could be plug in services
could outsource to other countries
ARIA live regions in collaboration tools
Canvas and SVG
shadow document - ARIA support
longer term - exposing the accessibility APIs through javascript
Google has a tool to take an SVG document and convert it to Flash
touch and read & touch and explain
caption synced speaker identification
cross platform standard for accessibility
the browser can map to the accessibility APIs

Priorities

a common open source, accessible base - includes security
build out modules from there
leverage the open web - HTML 5 for consumptions and production

Exercise: Roadmap a project that we could build to solve our biggest issues

Problem Statement

Build accessible open collaboration tools that are interoperable, modular and adaptable and support multiple streams of media.

interoperable
modular
adaptable
secure & private
"always on"
degrades gracefully
scales

The Vision

all the tools we need and use but accessible - e.g., Breeze is a rich channel for communication, but has poor accessibility.
simple to use
annotations (including rich annotations & text alternatives)
pacing and control of time
captioning
support for diversity - language, literacy, device and bandwidth
user testing remotely
simultaneous streams
built in support for real people
content - more then just text/audio/video
space (tools) - open, web, desktop
infrastructure - stable, secure, robust
standards and governance

Features

text chat including real time
audio with enough resolution to be accessible
video with enough resolution to be accessible
text/ASL alternatives for audio, video and images
modular architecture and interoperable
secure and private
degrades gracefully
scales
archive with error correction

Text

chat
real time chat
annotations
captioning
language (density/complexity, internationalization)
equivalents to audio/video
multiple editors

Audio

Quality
signal to noise
eliminate background noise
frequency range
frequency shifting
QOS
lag
multi-stream
spatial distributions of person speaking
audio descriptions and support for multiple streams

Video

resolution and frame-rate for signing, lip-reading, finger spelling
bi-directional resolution and frame rate
manage multi-streams

Cross cutting

language
ASL
internationalization
simplification
equivalents to audio/video/text

Logistics

turn-taking/hand-raising/cueing
user identification (e.g. who is the ID of the person speaking)
lag between modes
focus & zooming modes
common areas that support drifting in & hanging out
voting
private communication
idea catcher
multi-modal presentation
pacing and control of time - e.g. being able to jump back in time, or to slow the progression of time
notifications and errors
setup assistance
auto configuration & personal preferences

Accessible collaboration tools