The importance of Open Accessibility Data by Dennie Declercq

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

2. Who am I
Dennie Declercq.
Founder of DDSoft vzw.
Volunteer developer at vzw Ithaka.
Contact me: dennie@ddsoft.be
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!

3. 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

4. Some Facts:

5. There are about 5% people with a
disability in Belgium
Which means about 560.000 people are more dependent than
others.

6. 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!

7. Two kinds of disabilities
Physical
•Can’t move the ‘normal way’
Mental / Cognitive
•Can’t think / speak / read / behave the
‘normal way’

8. The little that exists
There are (very few) tech organisations that focus on people with a
physical disability
And 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!

9. 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 organisations
create their own open data platform

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

11. How can you use open data for people
with a mental / cognitive disability?

12. 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!

13. Example: Pictures or Pictograms
What 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.

14. 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.

15. And of course...
If you use Text To Speech, you can let the device of people with a disability read the
information right into their ears. In simple words, in their own language.
It’s like their mom, or their coach is speaking to them!

16. What’s this?
An eating
schedule

17. But….
What if you can’t read this paper?
What if the paper is on a location you visit only twice a day?

18. What if you can make it more accessible?

19. With apps
Using open data
On their own phones.

20. What’s our goal?
To create a famous open data portal in Belgium where developers can get their data, to
make apps for people with a mental / cognitive disability.
I want to make a general portal for Flanders.

21. 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.

22. What are the possibilities of data?
Event data.
Day-life data.

23. The platform has just been released
I 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.

24. Can you realise
That 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!

25. Making your own open data
I 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 an
open 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 work
around for data in mobile applications is open data!

26. Q & A

27. Thank You!
And start to produce data!
Contact me: dennie@ddsoft.be