Dolphin software helps Nottingham City Council provide inclusion for all their staff
Industry leaders provide access software for Social Services
2nd Jun, 2004
Nottingham City Council, in the heart of the East Midlands, employs over 14,000 people directly or indirectly, across the region. The Council operates a policy of inclusion, which means that no one is discriminated against or disadvantaged because of disability and many new systems and procedures have been implemented to ensure that all their employees have the means to work effectively.
In June 2001 The Social Services department upgraded their information systems to CareFirst. Developed by OLM using Oracle, CareFirst is used extensively across Social Services departments in over 75 local authorities in the UK.
Nottingham City Council has predominantly deployed CareFirst on a Citrix Meta Frame network, which allows for remote access to the database via thin clients (within a terminal server environment). A thin client is the term used for a simple hardware device which relies on most of the function of the system being within the server. Generally thin clients have no processing capabilities, and are merely connection points using monitors, keyboards and mice in order to input data to the server, or to view data on the server.
Visually impaired staff at the Council had been using an alternative screen reader software to access their systems but this could not function in a thin client environment. This has meant that 'chubby client' accounts (with full processing capabilities), maintained through a Novell network, had to be provided to enable access. The drawback of this solution was that Oracle software, including all CareFirst forms and reports, had to be installed locally. This made on site maintenance of these machines very costly and time consuming, especially as the users are spread across the region. This also caused problems at more remote sites where available network bandwidth was low. Novell sessions are very bandwidth dependent and response times can be very slow and even unworkable.
A further complication arose when OLM developed MyCareFirst which has a graphical front end which could not be accessed using their existing screen reader. This meant that the Authority was unable to deploy this new development.
This led to Nottingham City and the RNIB approaching Dolphin Computer Access to evaluate Supernova and to see if a solution to MyCareFirst could be found.
Dolphin was the first access software company to develop a screen reader magnifier that was capable of working within a terminal server environment. Generally, a screen reader needs to be installed on a system which has its own processing capabilities in order for the speech output to function correctly. However, both Supernova and Hal from Dolphin, offer a screen reader capable of functioning fully in a terminal server environment. Not only do Supernova and Hal offer speech output but they also offer Braille support for blind computer users and Supernova also includes a screen magnifier.
In order to successfully map Supernova to the My CareFirst program various difficulties had to be overcome. The Oracle operating platform gave all the controls the same class name and the same control ID so differentiating between them was very difficult. Edit areas were created dynamically when in focus, so everything was picked up as incidental text apart from the one active edit area (normally all edit areas are detectable whether they are active or not). Selectable checkboxes had their labels to the left instead of the Windows convention of having the labels to the right. There was nothing displayed on the screen to show that a checkbox had the focus (normally in Windows a dotted outline is present around the label for a checkbox to show the focus area). Some edit areas had a special button associated with them which needed to be identified to the user as soon as these edit areas were in focus.
With the help of the RNIB and Nottingham City, Dolphin's technical support team were able to create a map that would allow Supernova to function with CareFirst. Using it's virtual focus features Supernova could be configured to successfully access the new My CareFirst program.
The results were excellent.
"The support from Dolphin was exceptional. Without Dolphin we would not have been able to consider fully deploying CareFirst in a thin client environment. Additionally the solution they have developed will enable us implement MyCareFirst across the whole department" Said Tim Freer, at Nottingham City Council. Tim continues "Relocation of blind staff to areas of the authority with lower bandwidth would mean additional investment of around £15,000 per user without the Dolphin solution. With Supernova installed on the network users can work from any Nottingham Council location using the Citrix network, users can also 'hot desk' within the premises, by using individual profiles that are saved on the server. The other beauty of Supernova is that it combines a screen reader and a screen magnifier, as well as offering Braille support, this means that it satisfies users that are partially sighted as well as blind users."
Nottingham City Council have now committed to Supernova as their preferred option and purchased licences for all visually impaired staff. The Council is also recommending that The CareFirst Access Consortium adopts Supernova to be an officially supported access product .
The 'CareFirst' Access Consortium (www.cfaccess.org.uk - link opens new window) was formed some two years after BBC Radio Four's 'InTouch' programme (www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/factual/intouch.shtml - link opens new window) reported that access problems with the software - manufactured by OLM Systems (www.olmsystems.co.uk - link opens new window) - had prevented a visually impaired person getting a job with Glasgow social services. It's main function is to improve access to the Carefirst group of software products for all users, particularly those with disabilities who use assistive technology products to work with a computer.
