Indirect Manipulation

In his fine book The Tipping Point (which everyone either has read, or should), Malcolm Gladwell tells us the story of 1960’s television producer Joan Ganz Cooney. Her self-imposed mission was to start an “epidemic of literacy” through the medium of television. Her concept was a show that would spread the value of reading and education to both children and their parents, particularly those who live in less affluent neighborhoods. She came up with the name Sesame Street and began the long, difficult task of achieving corporate adoption:

By any measure, this was an audacious idea. Television is a great way to reach lots of people, very easily and cheaply. It entertains and dazzles. But it isn’t a particularly educational medium. … Good teaching is interactive. It engages the child individually. It uses all the senses. It responds to the child. But a television is just a talking box. … Educational experts describe television as “low involvement.” Television is like a strain of the common cold that can spread like lightning through a population, but only causes a few sniffles and is gone in a day.

As we all know, Sesame Street is not only one of the longest running television shows in history, but a pioneering example of educational media. It passed excruciating rounds of scrutiny comprising every measurable benchmark in education - from reading and math skills to social behavior - and came out on top every time.

Now, I’d like you to try something. Take the quoted paragraph above and replace the word “television” with “virtual worlds.” How does that resonate? You may be thinking that the adjusted statement doesn’t directly apply to virtual world technology. You may be thinking that the two paradigms are far from analogous. One might argue that the advanced interactivity of virtual worlds provides a rich, immersive context absolutely ideal for learning. Agreed, no argument there from me.

Keeping with the virtual world theme, however, what I’d like you to do now is substitute the word “child” for “consumer” and the word “marketing” for “education.” When you swap everything over the present tense and read everything back, it appears as if we have two competing viewpoints in the same paragraph. Here’s one statement:

By any measure, this is an audacious idea. Virtual worlds entertain and dazzle. But they aren’t a particularly marketable medium. Virtual worlds are like a strain of the common cold that can spread like lightning through a population, but only causes a few sniffles and is gone in a day.

And here is the contradictory rebuttal:

Good marketing is interactive. It engages the consumer individually. It uses all the senses. It responds to the consumer.

Okay, here’s my point (and I do have one). Having heard a form of both these arguments within the past week, I’m convinced that the tipping point of integration is about to arrive. The time will come where marketing agencies must take into account the power of such emerging technologies as Web 2.0 and virtual worlds, not only for themselves, but also on behalf of their clients. This should not be viewed not as a threat, but rather an opportunity to deploy brands to an increasingly younger demographic of digital natives.

While I don’t necessarily lump virtual worlds into such forms of Web 2.0 as blogs, wikis and the like, I do believe there are similarities in execution. Both operate in terms of building community and establishing context within a focused, organically changing environment. They are also strongly aligned to the idea of the user as a highly identifiable self, which provides opportunities for more impactful messaging.

For a possible example, take a look at what Slim Jim has done. All the elements of good user experience apply: easy to access, a personalized approach, interesting things to do and reasons to return. Businesses seeking to leverage their online conversations with greater insight should think of Web 2.0 beyond the constraints of mere content syndication. They should recognize that true engagement includes elements of surprise, juxtaposition and excitement.

In the coming months, we’ll have more data than ever about what social media vehicles drive consumers’ spending habits. I suspect that these trends will provide a deeper, more cognitive understanding of our audience, and that increasingly innovative forms of marketing strategy will yet emerge.

One of the many benefits of being married to a librarian is that I can say “Hey Kitten, do you think you could scare up some data on the use of technology in learning environments?” and wah lah. There it is, so much information that I feel intimidated and end up watching Young Ones episodes on YouTube. Eventually, though, I cease procrastinating and begin my research.

Two recent items in particular have interested me, one being the adoption of virtual worlds in the public sector. According to the Special Libraries Association (SLA), an increasing number of libraries and library schools are exploring the potential of enacting such initiatives as experimenting with Second Life to provide additional services to members.

While no library organization has made a long-term marketing commitment, the fact that this discussion is taking place at all speaks to a potentially emerging trend. There is already an SLA Second Life users group on Google, as well as a Second Life library blog. I get the sense that members are still coming to grips with this developing technology and how it impacts the delivery of information.

The other area of intrigue is how Second Life can provide the basis of a workable economy. Many business publications consider virtual worlds a form of Web 2.0, and as such are paying closer attention to their introduction and utilization. For example, IBM is piloting an internal solution that allows employees to explore a controlled Second Life environment behind its corporate firewall. That being said, there is some deserved trepidation on the part of stakeholders to fully adopt this new paradigm:

David Lavenda, vice president of marketing for Web 2.0 security specialist WorkLight, said most enterprises are likely to remain wary of virtual worlds for some time to come.

“I think companies have a problem about adopting things that they don’t necessarily buy or deploy or fully control. It’s a cultural change, and it’s been brought on by things like Google Apps, Salesforce.com and SaaS products,” Lavenda said.

However, Web 2.0 advances have a habit of riding roughshod over such pragmatic concerns about issues such as control. To illustrate this point, Lavenda recalled a recent security forum his firm held in London, where a chief finance officer from a large bank commented, “We don’t allow employees to use Facebook at work, but I don’t want to be the guy holding his finger in the dam, because at some point this is going to overtake us. We have to find a way to allow people to use these tools, because they are going to find a way to use it whether we block it or not.”

One final item of note is the American Library Association’s decision to ensure that all Web and software purchases are accessible to those with disabilities. The Association of Specialized and Cooperative Library Agencies released a campaign called “Think Accessible Before You Buy,” which provides guidance for the greater good of all users:

“As information providers, we know that information is only useful if someone can find it and is able read it,” stated Barbara Mates, ASCLA president. “With innovations in the area of electronic information and search tools, we’re able to find it but we are not there yet on the ‘reading’ part. We must all commit to assuring that information can be read by all patrons, including those using adaptive technologies.”

“The biggest challenge for Web accessibility is raising awareness that guidelines do exist that offer electronic information providers the methods and opportunity to create universally accessible information,” said William Reed, chair of the committee that developed the toolkit and assistant head of the Cleveland Public Library’s Library for the Blind & Physically Handicapped.

Two weeks ago this Sunday, I left for Penn State to speak at their Web 2008 conference. I arrived back in town late last night from the UPA Conference in Baltimore. In between I gave a handful of presentations (such as this one), served as a session chair, met a lot of really interesting people, hooked up with some dear friends, revisited my art school days, went to an Orioles game, replaced the windshield on my car, strolled around my old neighborhood, drank too much beer and ate some strange cheese.

The best part was finding myself squarely in the belly of the beast that is web accessibility. I now have more intimate knowledge of current developments regarding Section 508, Section 255, TEITAC, the EU Mandate 376 and the continuing evolution of the WCAG 2.0 draft. Since that fateful day in 2003 when I was literally laughed out of a meeting (I had suggested to my company that the web software we created should accommodate users with disabilities), the topic of accessibility has certainly gained positive traction.

Still, I’m a little worried. Not about the user base, not about adoption among practitioners, not about proving a business case, and certainly not about the standards themselves. WCAG 2.0 is written to be comprehensive, persuasive, testable and harmonized. Here, read for yourself.

No, what I’m concerned about is the Internet itself. Can we really predict what digital communication and community will look like five years from now? Who’s to say that the primary stream of delivery will remain websites developed in HTML/CSS/XML and presented within a W3C-approved construct? One could argue that the Web will become more immersive, more visual, more haptic, more identity-driven through avatar technology. Is it likely? I don’t know. Is it possible? You bet.

Consider the role of the avatar. Much study is being done on the trust users place in their virtual proxies. Will businesses in the private sector seek to capitalize on these new forms of identifying customers? If so, how does that impact our users who have impairments of vision, motor skills, hearing and cognitive abilities?

Having said that, let’s be clear about one thing: the most direct path to creating accessible web content today remains the writing of well-formed, standards-compliant HTML. The entire edifice of HTML is the crafting of content marked up within the context it was intended. Screen readers understand headers, links, lists, bullet points, etc, because good HTML offers an easy handshake with assistive devices. It’s automatic. The challenge of creating accessible non-HTML content using Flash, for example, is that it requires conscious effort to do so. You can make a Flash piece accessible, but the authoring software doesn’t provide this feature by default.

Here’s the thing, though. I’ve written before about the forms in which the Internet may splinter in the future, and one of those is the paradigm of the virtual world. I’m drawing a slight distinction between compliance and conformance. In the private sector the marketplace drives conformance; the threat of a lawsuit drives compliance. I know, from speaking to several folks closely involved with the process, that Second Life was a consideration throughout the discussion. What I’m afraid of is the possibility that businesses will begin to infiltrate SL, offering in-world services similar to the Web and leaving users with disabilities out of the equation.

Here’s a starting point: the term public accommodation is used to define the reasonable extent a business must provide accessible, equivalent services. Consider what will happen if virtual worlds become increasingly transactional. If a business wants to do business in-world, it may be time to investigate what public accommodation means within that specific context. Such a discussion may very well expand beyond the guidelines proposed by the W3C. Perhaps such an event is further in the distance than I suggest, but shouldn’t we at least begin to explore new forms of digital experience with accessibility in mind?

I’ve been thinking, which (if you were to ask my wife) never results in anything resembling productivity or value. It’s my blog, however, so you must indulge my risible mental excursions. Even if it means I’m going to become one of those people that Nassim Nicholas Taleb would mock for “taking the quality of their knowledge too seriously.”

A fellow thinker of big ideas wrote something on her blog about the future of the Internet, which is pretty ambitious stuff indeed. She was commenting specifically on ExitReality, a client-side software that transforms any web page into a 3D virtual reality environment. She and I are both participants in Second Life, and we’ve spent a bit of time discussing the virtual world paradigm as it applies to the Web experience.

There are folks who believe that the future of the Internet will expand upon this model, becoming increasingly game-based and driven by interoperability of self-made avatars. Do I think the Web will be primarily a three-dimensional environment conducted through first-person points of view? I’m not sure. It’s certainly the case that Web 2.0 social networks (such as LinkedIn and Twitter) are becoming more identifiable to the “self,” and avatar creation/interchange will certainly drive that model.

On the other hand, it will be interesting to examine how transactional web experiences will evolve with immersive technologies. Even in such a rich environment as Second Life, much of the communication is conducted through messaging windows. Picture a virtual bank, for example. Will a user have the capability to interact with a 3D model of a bank employee, and is that really so different from using any currently available online chat feature? I don’t know.

Also, the importance of microformats cannot be understated. This is on my mind because I’ve been doing a lot of public speaking lately on web accessibility, describing use cases where the translation of multimedia into textual equivalents is considered good and necessary. Consider the W3C’s current development of RDFa. Tagged information sources are increasingly semantic, accessible from any device, and often the presentation layer is secondary to how nimbly the data is received. One could argue that the Web isn’t becoming more visual, but less.

I’ll say this for sure: we are likely witnessing the end of the browser-based website paradigm. Take the time to Google a search term and see how many results come not from the originating site, but from blogs, Digg, Twitter, etc. During a recent interview with Bill Cullifer for the WOW Technology Minute, Google Research Scientist and accessibility advocate T.V. Raman discussed how users will no longer use the “front door lobby” to access a website. According to Raman, people are more likely to arrive at your content by “jump(ing) in through the 15th floor window … or parachut(ing) through the ceiling.” In terms of users acquiring content, our reliance on the home page (and thus the model of website-as-destination) appears to be waning.

Now here’s the thing, and this is what I’ve been thinking about. I’m seeing the Internet as we now know it being split into multiple streams. One will be increasingly text-based, one will be highly immersive, one will be transactional, etc. If these delivery mechanisms can be accessed haptically and driven by the avatar’s point-of-view, then we just might have something there …

As mentioned before, through the power of stealth treachery I have managed to trick a number of organizations into letting me speak about web accessibility.

Tomorrow I’m scheduled to speak at the Penn State Web 2008 Conference on June 9. It looks to be quite exciting. Steve Krug, author of the book Don’t Make Me Think, will be giving the keynote. My presentation is called Applying Universal Design Principles to the Web: Understanding Web Accessibility. Hopefully I can justify my inclusion on the program with someone of Mr. Krug’s stature.

On Thursday, I’ll be back in Philly at UArts giving nearly the identical presentation on behalf of PhillyCHI. It’s being sponsored by the wonderful people at Avenue A | Razorfish and is open to the public. A number of people I know will be in attendance to hear me speak, which results in my feeling a strange combination of warmth and terror. RSVP the PhillyCHI group directly if you plan to attend.

The following week, I’ll be splitting time between Washington DC and Baltimore for various e-government sessions and the 2008 UPA Conference. If you’re planning to attend, by all means seek me out. I’ll be the guy in the corner, drinking green tea and looking borderline coherent.

After that … it’s reasonably likely that I’ll be shifting gears on a number of public fronts. I’ll be seeking to better understand the impact of virtual worlds in various business and educational contexts. I have two projects ongoing that are going to require some significant attention, and I want to explore the use of Second Life by people with disabilities. It’s a great time to be doing interesting things.

Due to the unpredictability of life (plus some really good luck), I’m finding myself squarely placed in the cross-section of virtual worlds and educational media. This is a wholly new endeavor for me, in terms of both theory and execution, and the people I’m working with are absolutely top-rate. I’m naturally pretty excited to see where this takes me.

If you have no idea what a virtual world is, think of it as a graphical replication of real-life experience, only with additional capabilities and tasks. The most commonly-known example of a virtual world is Second Life, a sort of alternative reality where you create a character (called an avatar) to represent your persona. Your avatar can then work, play, shop, flirt, gamble, fight, drive cars, meet other avatars … pretty much everything you do in real life, only in a virtual reality space that constantly and organically evolves.

In the interest of more fully understanding this newly-discovered (for me, anyway) territory, I’ve been doing some reading about the way users respond to their avatars, how simulations impact the user experience, and what connection may exist to accessibility. Interestingly, there is much to be gleaned about the issues of identity and expression among users who have disabilities.

For example, last October there was an article about patients who have successfully used virtual worlds as part of their rehabilitation. Case studies include a wheelchair-bound woman who credits Second Life with helping her “reclaim her life,” as well as an autistic patient who learned how to read social clues through avatar interactions. Apparently, this is only the beginning:

(These) are a few examples of an increasing number of sick, disabled and troubled people who say virtual worlds are helping them live with their disabilities and sometimes begin to recover. Researchers say they are only starting to appreciate the impact of the phenomenon.

“We’re at a major technical and social transition with this technology. It has very recently started to become a very big deal, and we haven’t by any means digested what the implications are,” said William Sims Bainbridge, a social scientist at the National Science Foundation.

Virtual worlds also are used for other health-related purposes. Medical schools use them to train doctors. Health departments use them to test first responders. Researchers use them to track how epidemics spread. These increasingly sophisticated online worlds enable people to create rich virtual lives through “avatars,” identities they can tailor to their desires: Old people become young. Infirm people become vibrant. Paralyzed people become agile.

Related to this are conscious investigations of sound-driven game experiences, as well as Second Life islands specifically dedicated to the distribution of consumer health information.

When I launched Anikto earlier this year, the main objective was to provide a vehicle to help me promote the importance of web accessibility. Common use cases centered around people who experience visual handicaps or motor skills difficulties. I’m finding, however, that my idea of “technology for the greater good” can certainly encompass more innovative forms of diagnosis, treatment and recovery. It will be fascinating to witness the integration of simulated virtual worlds into emerging business and medical contexts.

I’m honored to be a part of the WOW Technology Minute, a series of podcasts exploring current issues in Web design and development.

Bill Cullifer, Executive Director of the World Organization of Webmasters, and I shared a conversation about the integration of Universal Design into the digital space. Due to my screwy Bluetooth headset and general paucity of diction skills, I sound like I’m speaking through a couch cushion. Still, Bill was a most gracious host, and it’s very much a privilege to be able to engage this important dialog on this scope.

Many thanks to Bill, who’s put a lot of effort and love into this endeavor. (You can browse the WOW archives by month/subject to peruse a wide range of interesting and relevant topics).

It’s May 1, smack in the heart of spring, which is a time of fresh beginnings and new developments. I reckoned I already had two blogs I was sorely neglecting, why not add one more? With that in mind … I’m announcing the launch of AniktoBlog, dedicated to user-centered web accessibility and Section 508 topics. This coincides with a public marketing push for my company Anikto LLC, which I formed this year to help folks with such matters.

What, I didn’t mention that I own a company? Sorry.

Last year I wrote something about how an art form’s method of delivery can influence the creative process. Today’s NY Times Magazine includes an article by Virginia Hefferman on the Flickr aesthetic of photography. This is more than technology providing an outlet for users to post contributions; it’s a new approach to image-making that embraces digital manipulation and distribution as its core elements. One example cited is an Icelandic artist named Rebekka Guoleifsdottir:

Tellingly, (Guoleifsdottir) learned to work Flickr before she became proficient with a camera. She discovered how to create the minicollections called “photostreams”; how to create images that would look good shrunk, in “thumbnail” form; and how to flirt with the site’s visitors in the comments area to keep them coming back. As perhaps is always the case with artists, Guoleifsdottir’s evolution as a photographer was bound up in the evolution of her modus operandi, a way of navigating the institutions and social systems that might gain her a following and a living.

When I was studying photography in art school, I remember much discussion about what exactly constituted the “post-modern” aesthetic. Back then, it had a lot to do with recognizing and commenting on imagery’s importance in defining culture. The arena was dominated by the likes of Barbara Kruger, Cindy Sherman, Nan Goldin and Joel-Peter Witkin … a nonstop bludgeon of polemical refutations and exhaustively intimate viewpoints. I thought it was all a load of rubbish, quite honestly.

Now, however, I think it’s safe to declare that we have entered a truly post-modern era – one where objects of beauty transcend both process and product. When Hefferman describes a Flickr artist who endorses “digital processing as the antidote to film’s inhumanity,” I realize that we have at once cultivated a reliance and a distrust of technology. This method of publication has influenced artists’ creativity to the point where one can describe “the quintessential Flickr image” and everyone knows exactly what that person’s talking about.

There was an intriguing debate on Slashdot this week regarding the efforts designers make to accommodate users with disabilities. The discussion appeared in response to a ComputerWorld article from Wednesday explaining how many blind users still have difficulty navigating overly-designed websites:

“It can take a while to wade through a strange site — it can be maddening,” complained Jay Leventhal, who is blind and serves as editor of AccessWorld Magazine, produced by the American Foundation for the Blind in New York. “Sometimes you find what you want to buy, but then you can’t find the submit button. It seems to literally not be there. A skilled [blind] user can navigate a majority of the sites on the Web these days, but you have to master certain tricks, like jumping from header to header in order to skip over a lot of junk, and use the search function to get the information you want. An average user can struggle for a long time looking for something and will even struggle on a familiar site.”

The article resulted in many positive comments; however, one reader indicated that users with disabilities should “get a grip” and that they “have no more right to demand that others provide for their needs than I, as a diabetic, have a right to demand that sugar no longer be used.” The idea behind this thought is that current economic conditions will determine the extent and feasibility of providing accessible content suitable for all abilities.

I would suggest that anyone who feels this way about web accessibility should acquaint themselves with the concept of Universal Design. UD is a broad-spectrum approach intended to benefit everyone, including and not limited to people with disabilities. Examples abound in such areas as architecture, travel and technology. The economic benefits are palpably clear; you might be surprised to know that people with disabilities spend four times the figure spent by tweens (demographic aged 8-14).

On a related matter, IBM has a tool called aDesigner which examines applications for accessibility and includes support for OpenDocument Format (ODF) and Flash content.