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It's day two of Techshare. Quite nice weather outside and the hideously long ride on the DLR to get here has had the edge nicely smoothed down with a surprisingly OK cup of coffee.

So what's on the agenda. I'm planning on getting to four sessions this morning before I hop back on the tube to my office in West London - where the rail stations have less exotic names. East India? Canada Water? No, Shepherd's Bush.

First sesh of the day is with Ugo Vallauri from - an organisation that refurbishes old 'puters and passes them on to partners in the developing world. They've refurbed and delivered over 150,000 PCs now. Gosh. His subject was about using free and open source software to make computers more accessible.

Basically, he was saying that assistive technology like the screenreaders for blind people used in the developed world are just too expensive. Too true, best part of a grand if I recall. Visually impaired people in Sub-Saharan Africa - where the level of blindness is very high - can't afford it, purchasing the operating system is an issue too.

So he uses free screenreader software such as made by a couple of Australian blind fellas. He thinks libraries in the UK, or other places with budget constraints, could install this free software on their machines to good effect - that was a bit of an aside but interesting.

The thing I took away was that there are no flexible free screen magnifying applications that could, say, work well with free screenreaders such as NVDA to bring greater access for people with low vision. Money is needed and Ugo seemed to prefer the 'open source' approach to developing software as it breaks out of product development groups with limited resources, and allows coders all over the world to enhance products and add features or plug-ins that will work better for more people.

Don't ask me to explain 'open source' to you. It's almost like a religion!

Computer Aid also works on other projects such as telemedicine and learning for remote regions in Africa, Kenya, Latin America etc.

So send your broken down PC to somewhere useful. It's the green thing to do.

Next up, it's 10:30 and we're into a dose of social networking the screenreading way. Brian Hartgen from a blindie consultancy firm demonstrates with his talking computer on stage. Say 'talking computer' to a blind person if you fancy annoying them, incidentally. Screenreaders popular in the UK are HAL Supernova, WindowEyes and the genre-busting JAWS which has the lion share of the market right now.

A very practical session where he demos Twitter and Facebook - the two giants of social networking in the world - and proves, live in front of everyone, that screenreader users can indeed use them and be part of the Twitterverse and whatever we're calling the Facebook world these days.

"They break down social barriers and isolation" says Hartgen. And talks about how it's all about keeping in touch with friends, family and colleagues. He omits to mention that Twitter is equally about finding like-minded people by subject and you can see 'top trending topics' on its front page and can tell what the world's collective conscious is thinking, right now, in realtime, instantly.

He mentions that there are some blind specific communities that might be even better as you can talk just like as if you were on the phone with lots of other people at once. He mentions Accessible World and the UK based Accessible Friends Network.

He thinks that Twitter is more blind friendly as it's all about the text whereas Facebook preoccupies itself with photos and video ... which is basically just 'eyes stuff'.

They're both accessible but Hartgen prefers to use Facebook's mobile site on his PC as it's a more cut down version and easier to navigate. And for those who'd rather not have to bother with Twitter on the web, you could download Twinbox - a free application from techkit.com which lets you use Outlook email to engage with other twitterers or tweeters. McTwit is an accessible Twitter application developed by an American blind fella called Jamal. So there are some alternative options to an already accessible site.

at 11:40 Michel Pepin from Humanware demoed the as yet unreleased but much anticipated Orator software. It's a screenreader for the Blakberry smart phone. Developed with Code Factory (who make the Mobile Speak screenreader software for phones) it's taking a long time because it's being developed on the JAVA ME platform that Text To Speech has never been added to before. Symbian and Windows Mobile are the phone operating systems that currently give the kind of access that blind people require.

RIM, who make the Blackberry, have had an Accessibility program for 8 years now. They already have access solutions for people with hearing, low vision and motor function issues apparently. The screenreader is the last outpost of inaccess for this much used business product that boasts high security.

To make it accessible they've created a core accessibility application which will only be available in two of their phones initially: the Curve 8520 and Tour 9630. The Storm and other phones in the range should have accessibility added within 8 months in new model releases.

They launch in the autumn with US English speech. December to January for UK English speech. And "further into 2010" for other languages like French and Spanish.

Pricing: a single licence will be 450 US dollars or 300 UK pounds. he has spoken to some phone carriers who if they take up the option of supplying Orator, may give a better price.

When it came to questions, there seemed to be a bit of unease in the audience. One person voiced disappointment that the product was so expensive, "Double the price of similar products" and that the iPhone now gives speech access completely free of charge. Michel briefly acknowledged the questioner with a noise I couldn't quite hear.

At 12:40 there was a lunchtime session with a blind software developer from MicroSoft-Saqib Sheikh. He talked up the accessibility features in the new operating system Windows 7 which goes on sale on October 22 and is the successor to Vista.Saqib works on the search engine Bing ... accessibility is his hobby not his job.

He said he felt there was a real desire to make all parts of Windows accessible right now. "A billion people use windows: it's not a case of making it accessible, it's about there being so many different people from all walks of life using it. Certain products you can narrowly focus but not Windows."

The two stand out accessibility features for me in Windows 7 were the enhancement of their built-in screen magnifier which now enlarges video and all parts of the screen. And Chess is now accessible to screenreader users - I gather it must be a built in game that you get when you buy it. That's quite cool.

He went on to talking about how Silverlight is now accessible in versions 2 and 3 if you use NVDA or JAWS 11 screenreaders. Silverlight is a tool which is kind of like Flash but different, according to Saqib.

OK that was me. I couldn't stay for the rest of the conference. I hope We've helped give you an overview of some of the things going on at this year's Techshare. Next week AbilityNet is doing another Accessibility 2.0 conference as mentioned in our newsletter a couple of weeks ago. It seems I'm on a panel talking about the net beyond the computer: phones and that.

I've just come back from the Techshare conference and must say that it has been a busy 24 hours.

Yesterday afternoon, I attended a session by on accessible set-top boxes. Basically, they have two products in development, software which can go on many of the mainstream boxes, and a specialised box, which they hope to bring to the market in early 2010. They say it shouldn't cost any more than the price of a good quality mainstream version. All the menus talk on this baby, as does the electronic programme guide and it also has the ability to record TV. The voice is a bit of a nightmare to listen to though, so I hope they change that before it arrives in shops.

Next, I headed to a session about mobile web. Henny Swan from Opera spoke eloquently about whether this is enabled or disabled by design and when it isn't, what can be done. To be honest, it was a fairly technical presentation and mostly about making text bigger and the page as a whole easier to see, so a lot of it went over my head. I'm fairly sure though that the main thrust was that, contrary to some theories, a website should avoid making a mobile version of it's sight where possible. This is all well and good, but I use Facebook mobile and the Guardian's mobile sight on my PC because the main websites are more difficult to use. I'm hoping they both improve the accessibility of their main sites before getting rid of the mobile version.

Later on in the evening we had the conference dinner. Talking GPS pioneer and blind man turned VI Mike May was the main speaker. He told us about how he wangled his way on to mainstream football teams as a kid, how he was the first blind person to ski at the Olympics and about what it was like to gain some sight having been blind from the age of 3. I reckoned he deserved a shot at 13 Questions for his trouble, the interview will follow soon, including news of a bit of rivalry between him and Myles Hilton-Barber.

Today, I interviewed accessibility champion, Cynthia Waddell. As Damon mentioned, she spoke at the opening of the event yesterday. Cynthia is hearing impaired and her life's work is to ensure that disability rights laws are kept and changed where necessary, and in her words, "to improve the lives of disabled people by fighting for systemic change". She's a fascinating woman. Her 13 Questions will also follow shortly.

One more thing before I sign off. Have you heard of the Kapsys Kapten? It's a talking GPS system which was developed for joggers and cyclists and is controlled through voice activation. I Didn't get to feel or test the product, because someone had run off with it to try it out, but I want it. The Captain only costs around £150, so I really, really hope that it does the job well. We won't know until it goes on the market properly in a couple of weeks time.

Right I'm off. Have a lovely weekend.

It is mid afternoon here at Techshare 2009and the conference is just getting into its stride. The main focus is on the relationship between mainstream kit and assistive technologies, encouraging the relevant people to work together from the outset to make everything as useable as possible for disabled people. Happily, this means that there is very little talk about specialised hardware, and a lot more about the stuff you can pick up from your local tech seller or mobile phone shop. On another positive note, with the increased scope for large amounts of memory, quicker broadband and the use of the internet for more and more activities including watching TV and using the phone, things appear to be on the up in terms of accessibility and usability.

I went to a session this morning where a lovely, passionate phone user with dyslexia, showed us how to get the most out of our handsets and how they can be really useful if you have a disability. He personally uses the calendar constantly to remind him of everything, he says that he wouldn't get from A to B at all if he didn't have GPS on his phone, and he uses a piece of software that he created, called Captura Talk, to take a picture of a page and get it read back to him. He spoke about the ups and downs of voice recognition and how unfortunately, it still only works for carrying out basic functions.

Something I absolutely did not know is that on-phone projectors are on the way. This means that you can project material from your phone on to any surface, creating as big a screen as you like. We will all have these apparently.

After lunch I caught the second half of a session regarding the popular virtual world, Second Life. I thought this would be mostly about its accessibility and while it was, a little bit, mostly the presenter pointed out that it isn't just used by a large number of disabled people, but that there are areas specifically developed by and for. These include Virtual Ability Island where the built environment is actually accessible, including wide doorways, ramps etc, and a rehab centre, set up to help patients explore areas which they might find difficult to deal with in real life. Kell Smith, the presenter, talked about avatars. You can create a wheelchair using avatar if you so wish, but also, as we have discussed on the talk show in the past, Second Life affords disabled people the opportunity to do things we would never be able to in real life. Your avatar could be able to fly if you wanted it to.

Finally, Kell spoke about how some people on the autistic spectrum use Second Life to take first steps into social interaction, which they wouldn't necessarily feel they could do in the real world.

Obviously there are worries and issues around anonymity, and over-use of the virtual world, with possible negative impact on real socialisation, but all in all, something to think about. Should Ouch! Have a presence on Second Life?

The conference continues, so I'll write more tomorrow. Catch you then!

... so we all had coffee, the guide dogs had a fight in the corridors, and we were back in session. I went to two talks late morning: one on access to mobile services and another on the web and older people.

Interesting findings from Abilitynet's Veronika Jermolina on mobile phones - from a field study she did in 2008.

She didn't concentrate on deep internet codey techie talk like the earlier presentation
- some of which was a bit fast movingly dry and pitched very high. No, Veronika took a holistic view of the whole mobile phone experience from purchase to use. First you choose a handset, a network, then you may need assistive technology and after that it's all about the accessibility of the various services. If all these don't gel or work well, disabled people, especially the visually impaired subset, can fare really rather badly.

She noted visually impaired people had a good community setup and were far more likely to buy a phone based on recommendations of others in their situation rather than from a salesperson in a shop. Absolutely! What self respecting blindie isn't on the Access-UK mailing list? I'd far rather someone else went on the learning curve rather than me.

One big thing was that Veronika was very keen to have mobile phone shops displaying real phones rather than dummy phones in their stores. Nice to see the size and shape, yes, but disabled people will want to test out the text size, handlability, etc. Too true V'ronika, I hate that in moby shops ... it's like you're talking my language.

Crucially, she went on, mobile sites didn't have very usable or accessible pages detailing their pay structures ... which she figured was a big reason why people aren't using mobile internet. It can be very expensive you know, like 4 quid a day before you even realise you're spending money!!! Only 42% of her sample user set used the mobile net as opposed to 97% who used the phone to make calls and 91% for SMS text messaging we all know and love.

This study was done in 2008. However, it's my personal perception that my blind brethren, at least, have really picked up and run with mobile internet the last year since we all sussed Facebook was too damn hard to use on our computers.

Even later in the morning was a session from Andrew Arch about how older people use the internet.

It's perhaps unsurprising to find that his studies revealed that older people and disabled people share a lot of the same difficulties when it comes to using the web. But one interesting thing he mentioned was that older people didn't grow up with computers, didn't use them for leisure nor in the office, so it's hard to quantify where inaccessibility starts and a lifetime of no computer experience kicks in and just muddies the waters. And is that actually relevant anyway? Interesting but ... relevant? Older people are using the web in the same ways as us all for many things: social reasons, ecommerce (especially when leaving the house becomes an issue), local services, banking and all that.
Emma Tracey went to other sessions and will be with you in a while ... more from me at Techshare tomorrow. Ciao.

Was at the big accessibility conference Techshare run by RNIB and partners at London Excel in Docklands today. It continues tomorrow too and we hope to give you a flavour of the action down there. Both Emma Tracey and myself will be blogging it back to you.

So here goes. Lets start with session number 1 which started at 10am today.

When you ask disabled people about computer access, you tend to get a series of small problems hurled in your direction. Makes you think that it's a mess, heavily fragmented with lots of individual projects needed to fix lots of software.

But Richard Schwerdtfeger (accessibility strategist at IBM) and Cynthia Waddell (International Centre for Disability Resources) helped give the audience a glimpse at the bigger picture.

As well as lots of technical speak about how we got to where we are today, we all got a sense of the local and global work going on to fix standards and laws to make ICT accessible to as many people as possible. It's an incredible enabler and has real negative impact if not implemented, or implemented incorrectly.

When the web first started, thank you Sir Tim Berner's Lee, it was just a clever way of linking bog standard documents together. Pages of written text with pictures. It wasn't too difficult giving access to basic documents but now websites are becoming richer, more dynamic with active pages that move and change on the fly.

Richard talked about - Accessible Rich Internet Applications. He thinks this is the biggest advancement in web access in the last 10 years. It helps address access to pages that aren't just static text like the internet of old.

Cynthia, a legal expert, concentrated on the laws and standards which will underpin future accessibility. "Technology changes but civil rights do not" was her favourite phrase.

International Standards Organisation (ISO), Web Access Initiative (WAI), , various local laws and interestingly this much talked about UN convention on disability - ratified by the UK and president Obama this year. Really interesting to hear that, on tech access, the convention goes further than even the ADA (American's with Disabilities Act, similar to our DDA in the UK) so once ratified by senate the world should have a better focus on technology rights for disabled people.

'Interoperrability' was a word they both liked, by the way. I hope I've given an accessible overview of the first hour.

Robin Spinks, Techshare organiser talked about the upcoming Techshare India and Techshare Africa conferences. All good stuff.

Robin then played a video from Microsoft's Norm Hodne, Windows 7 accessibility manager (Windows 7 is the new Vista in case you don't know). He talked a good talk about collaboration with 200 assistive technology vendors and the development of UIA - a new accessibility framework in the forthcoming operating system. He said it was more stable.

The other big thing I drew from this video was that the new magnifier in Windows 7 will work with video, not just text.

More later ...