Tag Archives: accessibility

Of Technology and Women

Samsung Blaze 4G beside Women's Purse

During this past holiday, I got a chance to reconnect with a friend of mine who is a heavy user of assistive technologies. One of the wonders that I had for her was in her new mobile device (obviously). She had moved to an iPhone 4S after many years with a few Android devices and I was was very interested in hearing about how she got along with it. What surprised me was what didn’t work as well, which came across as issues that many guys just flat out fail to notice in non-techie situations as well.

Later on, I was with another friend, and while we had a moment of quiet, I noticed that for the first time in that time period that she had finally put down her mobile device. Granted, I had two of mine at hand (finishing up Alone Together ironically), but it was interesting to note how she goes about augmenting life with computing, but it fits into a totally different sphere than what I do. Again, something that would be so obvious if I were of the other sex (or married).

With both women, the issues and opportunities of mobile don’t come in features – but don’t get me wrong, these features are important. The value in the device comes in communication, security, and opportunity (we talked about this previously). Anything that props up those three items – and does so well, not only gets attention, but becomes a matter of social cohesion outside of the spheres of the tech.

Going back to the second woman described above; she and a friend of her’s have developed their own texting language. The language came first out of the relationship they already had, and then the understanding that no one who picked up either of their devices would have any clue as to what was being said between them. Weird, but stepping back I totally get it.

Swinging this around some…

A lot of the technologies, applications, and services that I see pitched towards women do very little to pay attention to these details. Sure they might get some colors, fonts, and general direction right, but they totally miss out on what women want. Here’s a hint, they don’t (always) want a new feature, they want the connection that the feature provides. There is that Samsung commercial that aired recently called Work Trip which details the ability to share files from one Galaxy SIII to another Galaxy SIII. First the kids share a video with dad, who’s about to go on a trip; then mom shares her video with the instructions to not look at it on the plane. The commercial closes with the dad looking a bit flustered/blushing, and with a sense of wonderment about what his wife could have possibly shared with him that was so private. Many guys will pay attention to the fact that you could share something between mobiles; the ladies pay attention to the fact that they could have another means to intimately connect with their husbands.

I don’t mean to paint men and women with a broad brush, but I do mean to pull out a detail about connecting across faith and tech that is often missed in the thrust of these discussions about what is new and needed, is that even across genders (economies, etc.) that connecting with one another happens on a level that is well beyond the tech. Well, it should be. As both of those women would tell me in various conversations later – you have to pay attention to what isn’t said just as much as you are paying attention to what you are listening to.

Mobile Ministry Discussion Question

As you might have seen via Twitter and a few former postings, Cybermissions has begun the next Mobile Minsitry Training Course, and for the first week, I’m the guest presenter/faciltator. One of the questions that started off the discussion I thought was quite appropriate and so I’m posting both the question and my answer here to continue the discussion in a wider frame:

What really zings you about Mobile Ministry – the numbers, the opportunity, the ideas, the technology?

And here’s the answer as posted to the thread (w/addition of links or emphasis here)

I find that numbers are one of the more interesting parts of the discussion. Mainly because while we are very often in the mindset that the entire world (all 7 billion or so of us) is a candidate for evangelism, that we don’t usually pay as much attention to the numbers of people who are already hearing the message, who heard and rejected the message, or who are out of range of any [computer-aided] technological opportunity for the message of the Gospel. And if that sounds like I’m saying that not everyone can be reached with the Gospel via mobile, that’s pretty much it. The numbers don’t line up with the zealousness of the activity.

The numbers (for mobile ministry) do line up with the ability to fix some broken walls between classes/cultures as it relates to the Faith. The numbers do line up with the economic opportunity to improve situations for those using the devices (and by counterpoint, undermine the economic opportunity for those on the side of making the devices and pulling the materials needed for those devices). As it stands with current activity, mobile ministry is only addressing the side of people exposed to a literal message of the Gospel, its not addressing the lifestyle of those folks who should be influenced by a Holy Sprit-infused perspective.

If we look at it by the numbers, then the direct opportunity for mobile ministry gets clouded:
- global population of 7 billion
- global population of ~4 billion with exposure to some cellular mobile device/service
- global population of ~2.5 billion whom are some iteration of a professed Christian

If we take the first two (global population and all those w/some mobile exposure) as a proportion (2/3 of the world connected mobile) and do so in isolation (that is, we aren’t counting the other media channels like radio, TV, Internet; nor are we accounting for a global illiteracy rate of 60%), the we can take that 2.5 billion and ask a simple question:

Are 800 million people enough to spread the Gospel via mobile technology? Or, are 800 million people preaching a Gospel to themselves, missing the ears other 6.2 billion?

That’s where my answer to the question ends. What’s your input on this (I’ll point the class here to also view perspectives as well).

And just think, this is the first week of the Mobile Minsitry Training Course. There are three weeks left, and the conversations get a lot more intense than this. You should consider signing up the next time this class comes around.

Copyright, Licesning, and Faith-Based Resources

screenshot of the World English Bible copyright and liscense agreement
The publicaion, use, and sharing of religious resources has been a rights issue for as far back as there has been a faith practice to transfer. One can make the call that God even enforced the first rights-management system when he declared that “I am ther Lord your God and you shall have no other gods before me. (Exodus 20:2)” Weighty in the respect of reverence, but also in the respect of exclusivity – if there is to be a faith towards a deity, then let your faith towards this one be exculsive and binding.

To that end, the faith world has seen all kinds of challenges to doctrine, dogma, and behavior. Going digital has rekindled some old arguments and founded some new ones. In 2009, we tried to add some sense to the challenge and change that digital contexts makes in regards to copyright/licesning biblical resources. It was one part of an on-going discussion, and one where there just isn’t a clear answer. Its been an intention to add to that article some items of relevance – with a ground literally shifting often. But thankfully, others are picking up the discussion, and the mounting challenges not so much for just having access, but having access that fits the context of digital use and ownership paradigms.

The licenses that govern the use of modern versions of the Bible in English grant very limited, arbitrary permissions for the use of the content. For instance, a person may be permitted to use 250 verses of the Bible (or 500 or 1,000, depending on the publisher) but only if they do not include a complete book of the Bible in their content. The amount of Biblical text they use is usually not allowed to exceed a certain percentage (often 25%, sometimes 50%) of the complete work. The table below lists current (at the time of writing) license restrictions on some common versions of the Bible in modern English. Note that “Max. Verses” refers to the maximum number of verses that may be used, “% of Total” refers to the maximum percentage of the text in the resource that may be Biblical text, and “Complete Book?” refers to whether or not a complete book of the Bible may be used in the resource.2

Version Max. Verses % of Total Complete Book?
CEB3 500 <25% No
ESV4 1,000 <50% No
HCSB5 250 <25% No
NASB6 500 <25% No
NET7 not specified <50% No
NIV8 500 <25% No
NKJV9 1,000 <50% No

Most licenses (though I am not aware of any exceptions) do not explicitly allow freedom beyond these specific permissions, meaning the restriction preventing the translation of the Biblical text has not been lifted. For use of the text that requires more than this—like including the complete text of a book of the Bible—the user must enter into a specific licensing agreement with the copyright holder of the Bible translation. These licensing agreements typically include the negotiations of royalties from the sale of the content back to the owner of the Bible translation.

Read the rest of The Urgent Need for An Open Liscensed Bible in English at Distant Shores Media

Besides being an updated guide, towards the current challenges publishers, participants, and readers have towards digital faith-based resources, it also speaks to the problem of why there is even a greater challenge to create non-English faith resources. Simply put, law and process hasn’t kept pace with technology and behavior.

…Imagine a Christian pastor in Tehran who uses his mobile phone Bible application to search for what the Bible says about “suffering for Christ.” The pastor does not know that the free Bible he is reading on his app is only free in exchange for data about how he uses it. In fact, he cannot even do a search for “suffering” on his phone without a network connection, because his free app with the “free of charge” Bible he is reading phones home to the web service with every search he makes. And when his app phones home to an American website (a Bible website, no less), it may well trip a filter in the Great Iranian Firewall. And maybe around 2am, the pastor gets to find out firsthand what it means to suffer for Christ. Because his app phoned home. Because “free of charge” comes with a tradeoff, when it is not also accompanied by “legal freedom” at the level of content…

While I do think that in some revolutionary ways this will be addressed in my lifetime, I am also very aware that the nature of faith, data, and information lends itself to be something held close and valued towards exclusion rather than shared towards posterity. Hopefully, there can not only be a change that works for all here, but one that compensates rightly all the levels of engagement that it takes to make these resources possible to the global faith community.

Then again, is not part of the definition of religion that of a system that’s exclusive not just in application, but in information shared?

Have Tablets and Mobiles Changed How You View/Use the Bible

Bible apps on Palm Treo and HP iPaq 1940A few days ago, a post went up over at the BigBible Project talking about six ways a phone can change your view of the Bible. An insightful and reflective post, the six points were:

  1. Instant access to a library of commentaries and translations
  2. Make the text your own (w/highlights, notes and bookmarks)
  3. Bible reading becomes public and social
  4. Bible reading can be monitored and held accountable
  5. Bible reading becomes private and invisible
  6. Software is interpretation

Those reasons caused me to reflect a good bit towards how I’ve changed and evolved because of Bibles on my tablets and mobile devices. Some of the points from BigBible Project’s article fit – but then I realized how I’ve gone in a bit more on aa few of them.

For example, the idea of instant access to commentaries and translations is less important than what it used to be. I’m more interested in the sociological, geological, and other historical documents that affirm or challenge the text. Instead of highlights and bookmaks, I draw. I don’t care to be so public with me reading; but I do like the ease some services offer in sharing the text (such as Bib.ly and Ref.ly). Software is definitely interpretation – and that’s where I feel that biblical literacy shouldn’t just be reading the text, but building it as well. Its interesting, and through that list I can see how far I’ve come since getting that digital Bible on a PDA more than a decade ago.

So what about you? How has tablets and mobiles, or just the access to various Biblical services or classes, changed how you use or view the Bible? Do you see anything to be alarmed about it what has changed for you? Or, do you like the way in which you are evolving?

Always On

A few days ago my friend Elmo (no, not the one one From Sesame Street) posted this article on Facebook about the power of Introversion. It’s a thought-provoking piece and, coming from the Philippines, one which spoke to my friend about the nature of Western Civilization (particularly the USA). The scales in this culture are set up for Extroverts to thrive, and Introverts to adapt. It’s an astute point. In fact the article actually quotes a pastor who believes that God isn’t pleased with him because he “likes spending time alone.” That’s just twisted.

Read of the rest of Always On at Painfully Hopeful

Format

A few days ago my friend Elmo (no, not the one one From Sesame Street) posted this article on Facebook about the power of Introversion. It’s a thought-provoking piece and, coming from the Philippines, one which spoke to my friend about the nature of Western Civilization (particularly the USA). The scales in this culture are set up for Extroverts to thrive, and Introverts to adapt. It’s an astute point. In fact the article actually quotes a pastor who believes that God isn’t pleased with him because he “likes spending time alone.” That’s just twisted.
Read of the rest of Always On at Painfully Hopeful
Path:

Splashtop Remote, Bible Library Servers, and Mobile Accessibility


Last month, we had a post from LaRosa Johnson talking about his new Asus Transformer Android tablet computer and how he planned to use it work and Biblical studies. Of the latter, he was doing something pretty neat in that he would use the tablet to remotely log into his laptop to be able to use the desktop Bible software packages that he has there. We’ve found another example of this over at Biblical Studies and Technological Tools where instead of a tablet, we’ve got an Android smartphone, and the software being used is SplashTop Remote Desktop. Here’s a snippet of that experience:

In the past I have used Logmein for remote access to the various family computers I maintain. Even the basic free account lets me take over a computer and run programs on it. It works great and is secure. I will continue to use it for such maintenance tasks. Note that this can work the other way around, and what a program like this allows me to do is run programs that are on my home system from any other computer. As long as I have my home system on and Logmein enabled, I can remotely connect to my home system and use my installed programs like BibleWorks or Logos. I’ve also used it to grab files I’ve forgotten on my home computer when I’m at school. (I now use SugarSync to keep my systems all in sync via the cloud. It’s a wonderful thing.) It’s a little slow to use Logmein this way, but it works. What this also means is that I can use the web browser on my smartphone and see BibleWorks on my phone. I say “see,” because without the use of a mouse on my phone, I really can’t do too much. Logmein does have an Android app ($29), but I just don’t use it that much, especially on my phone, to buy it.

Read the rest of BibleWorks and Logos on Android (sort of…) at Biblical Studies and Technological Tools.

Now, this sounds like something that would be only useful in areas where wireless bandwidth is accessible and there’s some technological savy on the part of the person putting this together. But, I can’t help thinking that at some level, it would make a lot of sense to see something like Bibleworks, Logos, etc. offered in a “server package” where you purchase “seats” and those authenticate mobile devices are able to use it. This would be no different than what we see with CRM, task management, Intranet, and office productivity suites (Salesforce, Basecamp, SharePoint, and Google Apps to name a few).

A difference in the application here though would need to be that Bible software suites doing this would want to explore being usable in different streams. For example, something like having the BibleWorks install and UI sitting on a Seagate GoFlex Satellite, with anyone accessing that hard drive/access point being able to “see/read” BibleWorks on their device, but it is being served from that single point. There’d also be something like Logos’ Biblia that could be explored where a license for an organization could make available to authenticated seats some measure of the Logos library. Or, finally we could see the BibleWorks/Olive Tree/Logos/etc. move to a model of use where instead of purchasing and downloading a product, that people and organizations purchase access to a virtual desktop of sorts which would allow them (a) access to the library and (b) multiple devices which can access it per use account. Now that I’m thinking about it, it would be really neat if I could recreate the mobile web server and then host the bible project I’m working on from it… uhmmm

In whatever case, its pretty neat to see these kinds of access choices taken when it comes to Bible software. We shouldn’t limit mobile just to “what’s designed for the small screen” when its clearly possible for that small screen to access a bit more. What is worth being explored though is how we can better enable mobile to be a key to a content library, whether or not those with the devices have the financial means to access the content or not.

Mobile Ministry Should Not Neglect Accessabiliy Practices

It isn’t often that we can cite the many miracles Jesus and the Apostles did in respect to their efforts to those whom their communities considered disabled or access-restricted. We find it as some of the more sincere and humbling acts of Scrpture when those persons are met and not simply healed, but addressed and considered as part of the greater community, not a layer to be ignored until public relations or peer pressure dictates they need attention (Matthew 5:1-15).

So, how do your mobile ministry practices address those who might be disabled or have restricted access due to physical, psychological, or political disabilities? For example, you built that mobile app for your church’s content, but are you relying on Apple/Google/RIM/Nokia/MS to have accessibility controls so they can navigate to your content, or have you designed high contrast, voice-powered interfaces that are independent of whatever the platform may or may not do?

Regard these words from technokitten in a recent post:

It’s not that big a deal, right? I can still do everything I used to be able to do. I only need glasses for a smidgeon of my time. And it can’t be that big a deal when we’re talking technology? Or so you’d think. My experience with mobile devices and my not-quite-as-good-as-it-used-to-be eyesight is pretty appalling:

  • Going to a website on my phone and being forced to view the mobile version where the font is fixed and is too small (only by 1 or 2pts) to read without my glasses. Why can’t I zoom in or increase the font size?
  • Going to a mobile site where having squinted at the article I’m reading, only to find that I can adjust the font size right at the bottom. That should be at the top, no? There’s little point in struggling to read the page only to find at the bottom, I could have made it a whole lot easier for myself.
  • But neither of those are as bad as the app situation. Oh my word. That is simply horrid and a frustration. And I’m speaking having used apps regularly on Android, Windows Phone 7, Nokia N95 and N8, Android and Palm Pre II. Why can’t I increase a font size in an app? Why does the font have to be so small in the first place?

And this is from a person who is simply speaking of her accessibility needs which tend to happen to us all as we simply age. I know from close relationships just how much even mild disabilities are ignored in computing – and more so when it comes to religious applications and connected services.

Now, you can take the approach that this isn’t your fight. But, you’d have a hard time finding your efforts ministering to much of anyone if you do. Sure, you meet the goals of building something via mobile, but you miss the point of “a love that serves” over simply having a talent (1 Corinithians 12-14).

Or, you can take the approach of getting up to speed on what you can do, even going as far as entering contests such as the Vodafone Foundation Smart Accessabiliy Awards. Its really up to you. The testimony of what you address though will be clear in time (Matthew 25:31-45).

Are You Where They Are?

In a few recent conversations, it was talked about how there was a need to get up new websites, create billboards, and fill other media channels with content so that people can find avenues to Christ. Unfortunately, these were conversations within the Christian household. So when I asked these people tasked with filling these channels if they were addressing mobile, they not only didn’t have an answer, but pointed it to being a technical issue above all else.

Caarlo Longorio (@caaarlo)from the Wireless Industry Partnership (WIP) made an interesting and important observation via Twitter during this year’s SXSW Interactive gathering:

…the walls btw internet/web/mobile/video/whatever are imagined. the tech doesn’t matter, the users do…

You see all of these channels, all of these moments and opportunities, but are you where people are? To a few generations and economic classes, there’s a definite difference towards addressing TV/radio/web/mobile, and in others, that line doesn’t exist at all – its all content. Yes, the method, channels, devices, and everything else except the effect of the communication are seen as the same thing – the end result defines whether the method was successful, not whether the channel was populated with something.

So what happens when a report like the State of the Media 2011 from Pew Internet (@pew_internet) comes forward showing that more people are getting their news from online pipes (“sources”) than newspapers? And if that’s not all, of those using the Internet as their pipe most of them are doing news consumption via mobile devices. If you are in/near some conversations that I’ve been around, you hear things like, “how can we get there,” “what’s are social media strategy,” and “we don’t have the ability to care about those people, we’ll stick with our traditional customers.”

I recall the stories recorded in the Gospel narratives and beyond about Jesus and how his fame spread further than he travelled. And by at least once account, it wasn’t just aware of his fame traveling, but that people wanted him to come along with it. But, that wasn’t his place, he served a specific geographic area and embedded within the lives of others the ability to go to those areas where Jesus’ fame was (and where it would eventually be), and be the proof of redemption that Jesus was sent to be.

That Pew Internet report will be read and instead of asking “how can we teach people in our community how to share the Gospel message,” many ministries and people will go about trying to become or fill yet another channel. They will create mobile sites, language specific websites, close some offices and open others as funding and marketing resources will need to be shifted. And they will be surprised at the results – few people will come to Christ and stay, and others will reject Him because the message was devoid of a person being attached to it. 

Are you where people are? Or, are you just filling a pipe to where you’d hope they’d be?