Accessible Synchronous Communication: Reloaded
One of the more interesting occurrences at SxSW04 was the use of RendezVous enabled iChatting during panel discussions. For those of you poor souls on PCs, RendezVous iChat (~AIM) lets you open up your app and see all the other people on your network (wireless or otherwise) that are using RendezVous. So when I fired up iChat while sitting in the crowd, I could see about 25 or so people in the room with me, or in nearby rooms, and chat with them. It got really interesting when Jeff Veen, a panelist, opened up his iChat, which was displayed on the big screen. What happened is the people, rather than standing up and asking their questions, sent them over iChat. Good questions were read aloud by Jeff.
Now this seemed to be a double edged sword. It got discussion going faster, and people who may have been too timid to stand up and ask questions, were able to ask questions. But it also was slightly distracting to other presenters to have iChat window flying open on the screen when they were trying to address questions. A bigger concern for the accessibility community was that one of the panelist, Dr. John Slatin, was unable to fully participate in all aspects of the discussion because they were happening silently behind him.
There is a small debate about this on Veen’s personal site, but I would love to get one going here. Keep it polite, but lets debate for a while on this.
Logically chat should be a very accessible technology, no? Deaf people use it to replace quick conversations with people who don’t use ASL. A screenreader can read the exchanges (I assume). Looks like the problem comes when you want to move a chat from two people’s individual computers to a full-room display.
Interesting conversation- the iChat conversation was n’t available to Dr. Slatin, but neither was it available to any PC users in the audience. I think that at the very least, other panel members should be consulted- as long as good questions are read aloud before being answered, it still might work- especially if a transcript of the chat session was made available.
However, I love the idea of being able to chat during a session. While it can occassionaly distract participants from teh presenter, it gives participants something to do when the presentation is boring and can facilitate more knowledge being shared among the audience than the presenter has time to give (and knowledge that he may not know).
It seems like it would be cool if everyone was using a rendezvous enabled computer. Until then it seems like the best solution might be to use an IRC channel. I’m sure only a few flame wars would break out:)
The projection was for the convenience of the panel host, who could see. He selected questions to answer. The other text on the screen, while of interest, was not necessary to further the panel discussion.
Also, no, chat mode is not easy to make accessible to screen-reader users.