CEA Foundation Grant for Accessibility Electronic Products Database

Introduction

The CEA Foundation, a charitable foundation affiliated with the Consumer Electronics Association (CEA), announced its support of Raising the Floor (RtF) with a grant to support expansion of the RtF Unified Listing to include accessibility-compatible consumer electronic products.

Main Item

The database will enable consumers to easily identify devices that best meet their accessibility needs. Additionally the information will be openly available to be used by existing databases such as the FCC Accessibility Clearinghouse.

Raising the Floor is an international consortium of individuals and organizations working together to ensure that the Internet, and everything available through it, is accessible to people experiencing accessibility barriers due to disability, literacy, digital literacy, or age.

"The work that Raising the Floor is doing mirrors the mission of the CEA Foundation," said John Shalam, Chairman of the CEA Foundation. "This listing will enable consumers to identify which devices best meet their needs, regardless of age or disability," added Shalam.

This effort includes the expansion of the Unified Listing, as well as the taxonomy and metadata necessary to accurately match consumers with accessibility features in consumer electronic products. The information will enable consumers, industry, and retail to accurately meet accessibility needs. The product information will also be openly available, to be connected with other accessibility databases.

"Having data on accessibility features in mainstream products and not just assistive technologies makes the listing much more effective and relevant in today's consumer electronic environment where assistive technologies just aren't available for many of the technologies that people need. The support of the CEA Foundation, and its assistance in helping to coordinate industry data entry into the listing, is invaluable in accomplishing this," says Gregg Vanderheiden, Co-Director of the Raising the Floor Consortium.

"Our mission is linking people with disabilities and seniors with technologies to enhance their lives," said Steve Ewell, executive director, CEA Foundation. "Raising the Floor, and this program in particular, is doing just that for the millions that can benefit from accessibility features."

CEA Foundation

The CEA Foundation is a public, national foundation affiliated with the Consumer Electronics Association. It was established with the mission to link seniors and people with disabilities with technologies to enhance their lives. The Foundation is focused on strategic support of programs to impact these communities and has launched its first series of grants in 2012. It also serves to facilitate dialog between industry, consumers, government, advocacy groups and other key stakeholders around important issues.

About Raising the Floor

Raising the Floor (RtF) is an international consortium of individuals and organizations working to ensure that the Internet, and everything available through it, is accessible to people experiencing accessibility barriers due to disability, literacy, or age.

Its goal is to raise the level of access technology (the floor) that is available to everyone, and to create an infrastructure that facilitates the development, distribution, and support of a wider range of more affordable accessibility solutions internationally. Based on the AccessForAll standard and approach, Raising the Floor introduces automatic personalization of user interfaces and content adaptation, to match user needs and preferences.

Attribution/Source(s):
This quality-reviewed publication was selected for publishing by the editors of Disabled World (DW) due to its significant relevance to the disability community. Originally authored by CEA Foundation, and published on 2013/06/13 (Edit Update: 2022/01/28), the content may have been edited for style, clarity, or brevity. For further details or clarifications, CEA Foundation can be contacted at cea-nc.org. NOTE: Disabled World does not provide any warranties or endorsements related to this article.