About the Project
The ÆGIS (Ontario) project will explore inclusive design approaches to develop an Open Accessibility Framework to address the design, development and deployment of sustainable, needs-based, accessible mainstream ICT. The framework will provide built-in accessibility solutions, as well as toolkits for developers, for embedding accessibility in existing and emerging mass-market ICT products, thus making accessibility open, plug-and-play, personalised and configurable, and sustainable in various contexts.
The project will produce broad-impact open source results that are expected to:
- Bring key contributions to a collective change in the ICT development mindset towards placing users and their needs, such as utility, accessibility, simplicity and learnability, at the centre of all ICT developments.
Focus on providing new solutions for embedding accessibility in current and future mass-market ICT-based products and services. Solutions shall be open, plug-and-play, personalised and configurable, realistic and applicable in various contexts.
Offer significant supports to ICT developers, in order to encourage and empower them to contribute towards the inclusive ICT vision. Such supports includes, but are not limited to, the delivery of standards and design guidance, component toolkits with accessible components, software architectures that enable modular reconfiguration, knowledge transfer through training and other means, and investigation of methods and tools for simulating the user interaction and behaviour, in order to enable developers to verify and optimise the accessibility of their prototypes at all development stages.
- Facilitate the development of simple, visible, cost-effective, accessible, usable, and ultimately, adoptable ICT. Particular attention is paid to solutions and approaches that will extend the current population of ICT beneficiaries to encompass the growing population of users that require alternative access (both a production force, and concurrently an unexploited market share).
