Assistive Technology (AT) is a generic term that includes assistive, adaptive, and rehabilitative devices and the process used in selecting, locating, and using them. AT promotes greater independence for people with disabilities by enabling them to perform tasks that they were formerly unable to accomplish, or had great difficulty accomplishing, by providing enhancements to or changed methods of interacting with the technology needed to accomplish such tasks. According to disability advocates, technology, all too often, is created without regard to people with disabilities, and unnecessary barriers make new technology inaccessible to hundreds of millions.

Universal (or broadened) accessibility, or universal design means excellent usability, particularly for people with disabilities. But, argue advocates of assistive technology, universally accessible technology yields great rewards to the typical user; good accessible design is universal design, they say. The classic example of an assistive technology that has improved everyone's life is the "curb cuts" in the sidewalk at street crossings. While these curb cuts surely enable pedestrians with mobility impairments to cross the street, they have also aided parents with carriages and strollers, shoppers with carts, and travellers and workers with pull-type bags, not to mention skateboarders and inline skaters.

Consider an example of an assistive technology. The modern telephone is not accessible to people who are deaf or hard of hearing. Combined with a text telephone (also known as a TDD Device for the Deaf and in the USA generally called a TTY^*), which converts typed characters into tones that may be sent over the telephone line, the deaf person is able to communicate immediately at a distance. Together with "relay" services (where an operator reads what the deaf person types and types what a hearing person says) the deaf person is then given access to everyone's telephone, not just those of people who possess text telephones. Many telephones now have volume controls, which are primarily intended for the benefit of people who are hard of hearing, but can be useful for all users at times and places where there is significant background noise.

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BBC News | UK | World Edition

Two bodies found at arson house
Sat, 30 Aug 2008 13:39:48 -0000
Two bodies are recovered from the burnt-out home of a millionaire and his family in Shropshire.
Darling defends economy warning
Sat, 30 Aug 2008 12:50:15 -0000
Chancellor Alistair Darling says he stands by his comments warning that the UK is facing the worst economic crisis in 60 years.
Ex-mayor rejects Met race claim
Sat, 30 Aug 2008 10:17:48 -0000
The former mayor of London Ken Livingstone rejects claims that Sir Ian Blair is guilty of racial discrimination.
Three held over double stabbing
Sat, 30 Aug 2008 12:40:44 -0000
Police arrest three men as one man dies and another is seriously injured after they were stabbed in West Yorkshire.
Calais rapist 'may be trafficker'
Sat, 30 Aug 2008 10:26:36 -0000
A man who raped a Canadian student at an illegal migrants' camp near Calais, could be a people smuggler, investigators say.
'Boil water' warning to thousands
Sat, 30 Aug 2008 11:01:43 -0000
Tens of thousands of people are told to boil their drinking water after increased levels of bacteria are found in supplies.

The Economist: Britain

Buying airports:
Thu, 28 Aug 2008 11:35:36 -0000
Britain’s privatised airports may slip back into public handsALONG with cricket and the industrial revolution, privatisation must rank high on any list of Britain’s intangible exports that have helped shape the world. Margaret Thatcher’s wholesale auctioning of huge parts of the state, from telephones to water utilities, has been widely trumpeted (if less widely emulated) as the cure for all economic ills. So one of the ironies to emerge from plans by the competition regulator to break up BAA, the privatised company which owns Britain’s biggest airports, is that the leading bidder for some of its airstrips is itself in public ownership.Two decades after they were privatised, Britain’s main airports are a shambles. Terminals and runways are so overcrowded that flights depart late and bags are lost. Their perennially faulty plumbing has become a point of pride for many visitors from Africa; the lavatories at the airports back home work better. ...
Sex education:
Thu, 28 Aug 2008 11:35:36 -0000
A debate over introducing the birds and the bees in primary schoolsA COMMON complaint about education in Britain is that everything begins too early: four-year-olds start school shortly after abandoning afternoon naps; toddlers barely able to hold a pen are supposed to form letters. Yet one subject, some say, is left too late. Sex education first appears on the compulsory curriculum when pupils between 11 and 14 years old learn the basics in science class; relationships, sexually transmitted diseases and the inadvisability of conceiving in one’s teens are relegated to the optional “personal, social and health education”. Primary schools need only have a policy on sex education—and for some that policy is “we don’t teach it”. Backed by sexual-health and children’s charities, a cross-party group of MPs is trying to change all that. In an open letter to the government, published in the Daily Telegraph on August 26th, they call for all sex education, not just the mechanics, to be made compulsory, and to start much earlier. That, they say, could help to cut the number of British teenagers who become pregnant: at 40 per thousand girls under 18 each year, Britain’s rate is outstripped in the developed world only by America’s. ...
Bagehot:
Thu, 28 Aug 2008 11:35:36 -0000
The economic downturn has brought taxation back to the centre of political debate—but inside parties rather than between themONE of the oddities of the New Labour era has been the disappearance of tax (politically, not financially). The public has seemed blithely confident that the share of the nation’s wealth taken by government has been more or less correct—even as that proportion has risen by a couple of percentage points. After his three predecessors failed in their bids to beat Labour by challenging that consensus, David Cameron, the Conservative leader, decided to join his opponents instead, abandoning tax levels as an electoral issue. Now, suddenly, tax may be making a comeback.Gordon Brown will soon embark on his latest relaunch. At its centre will be what some describe as an “economic plan” (though others, wary of inflating expectations, prefer less grandiose labels). The plan (or whatever) seems set to have two main components: assistance for the grim housing market and help with fuel costs for low-income families. Mr Brown is being urged by some in his party to make tax part of the plan too, by, for example, raising rates on very high-earners to fund a cut for the rest. But the idea that has caused most excitement is that of imposing a windfall tax on energy firms—whose tariffs have been rising along with their profits—to pay for a fuel subsidy. ...
Population changes:
Thu, 28 Aug 2008 11:35:36 -0000
Immigrants and babies could make Britain the EU’s biggest countryIF DEMOGRAPHY is destiny, then the British are roaring forward. On August 27th Eurostat, the European Union’s statistical service, predicted that by 2060 Britain would be the EU’s largest country, with a population of 77m (compared with around 61m today). Germany, the current top dog, will see its 82m citizens dwindle to 71m over the same period. Britain’s boom will be fuelled by a mix of immigration and a comparatively high birth rate (partly a consequence of the higher fecundity of its immigrants).Besides getting bigger, Britain will also remain youthful, at least by EU standards. Although the share of people over 65 will rise from 16% to 25% by 2060, that will still mean fewer greybeards than anywhere else in Europe except Luxembourg. Eurostatisticians prophesy that Britain will suffer less stress on its pensions and social-security systems than faster-ageing countries. Yet not all Britons revel in the idea of millions of new citizens. ...
Immigration trends:
Thu, 28 Aug 2008 11:35:36 -0000
The largest wave of immigration in British history is petering out, and may soon reverse. But east European migrants have left a lasting markSUPERMARKET aisles offer amateur ethnographers rich opportunities for fieldwork. American pockets in London can be identified by the Thanksgiving displays in November; sour cherry juice suggests that Turks are close at hand. Now great rows of tinned borscht announce a newer arrival. Recent immigration from eastern Europe has been on a truly grand scale: Tesco, Britain’s biggest retailer, now runs a groceries website in Polish.Just over a million people have so far come to Britain from the eight central and east European countries that joined the European Union in 2004. John Salt, a geographer at University College London, reckons it is the biggest influx in British history, at least in gross terms (immigration by French Huguenots in the 17th century may have been bigger relative to the population at the time). Poles, who have made up about two-thirds of the newcomers, are now the largest group of foreign nationals in Britain, up from 13th place five years ago. ...
Minority politics:
Thu, 28 Aug 2008 11:35:36 -0000
Why a top non-white political leader is some way off in Britain“WE’RE looking at the politics of hope, as opposed to the politics of fear.” That sentiment has spurred millions of Americans to support Barack Obama this year in his bid to become president. The words on this occasion, though, were spoken by a Briton. Simon Woolley, head of Operation Black Vote, a campaign group, wants to use Mr Obama’s popularity to get Britain’s racial minorities more engaged in the political process.The prospect of a British Obama—a politician of colour who could become a national leader—seems plausible given the racial mix in London alone. But differences between Britain and America explain why it may take a while. Only 8% of Britons are non-white, whereas blacks on their own account for 12% of the American population: the pool from which potential leaders may emerge is smaller. Britain’s more fragmented minorities also have less shared political consciousness than African-Americans, whose experience of slavery and segregation produced the zeal behind the civil-rights movement and campaigns for affirmative action. ...

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