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Led by Citizens Online, Fix the Web is a volunteer-based project which aims to 鈥渕ake it super easy for disabled and older people to report problems with websites鈥� and hopefully get them fixed in the process.听

Rather than taking on the responsibility of getting the problem sorted yourself by trying to explain it to an organisation or site owner, just report the difficulty to Fix the Web and someone else will do the rest. You don鈥檛 need to be technical or know the right terminology.

Anyone听can raise a report by sending an email, filling in a simple form on the project鈥檚 website, posting a message on Twitter, or by downloading their toolbar.

The FixTheWeb Bar, as it is known, is a new addition to the project and can be downloaded from the web site. It uses technology developed by the University of Southampton for their own Assistive Tech Bar product which has over 3 million users globally. As well as giving you the option to report a problem with a website, Fix the Web's toolbar includes a spell checker (useful if you're filling out a form or adding a comment to an article), the ability to adjust font and text on the page and an it also has the option to have the site read aloud.

Once your issue has been listed, it joins the pool of all other outstanding reports, ready to be tackled by a volunteer or 鈥渇ixer鈥�. Fixers - usually web designers, developers or other technically minded types - select the reports they feel able to take forward based on their own skills and experience. Using their knowledge and research, plus some suggested text, they then contact the problem site. If the owners are interested in addressing the issue, the fixer can then signpost advice and sources of help available.听

Damon first blogged about when it launched in November last year, and since then, the campaign has been slowly gathering speed.听 125 users have reported problems with more than 500 websites and 36 of these have been fixed so far; over 400 volunteers have signed up to help resolve future issues.听听

The project was thrust into the spotlight in early February 2011 when actor, writer, technology enthusiast and prolific Twitter user, Stephen Fry, heard about it and tweeted the following: "Shocking so much of the web can't be used by disabled people. We can all help #FixTheWeb - here's how: www.fixtheweb.net"

Stephen Fry鈥檚 message was then passed on - ReTweeted - almost a thousand times in 24 hours; the website received over 10 thousand hits that day.

The ongoing direction and development of Fix the Web is determined by a steering group of reporters and fixers. This sub-group is currently looking for more people to join them.

One issue the group is addressing at the moment is around how the flow of information between reporters and volunteers can be improved, so that the person who first experienced the website problem is kept better informed of any feedback or results.

The whole project is funded for a limited time. The founders are hoping that once a community of reporters and fixers has been established, the whole process will become self sustaining.听

It's conference season and with the having just finished and both the and Persons With Disabilities Conference and the all coming up ... I've been looking through their programmes, to get an idea of what the main focus will be.

Here are details of two innovations being discussed at these events, which I predict we'll be seeing a lot more of.

Assistive tech users and specialist software developers are increasingly finding that devices, such as mobile phones and ultra portable computers, don鈥檛 have sufficient power to drive the latest OCR text scanning products.听Such software is regularly used by visually impaired people to read print off a page using a phone's camera.

One solution developers have come up with is to do the hard work somewhere else and deliver the result back to the user via the internet. For example, you snap a photo of a document that you want read aloud, but rather than having it converted to text right there on your phone as with current products like KNFB or Beyo reader, the image is sent off to a computer somewhere in the world and a second or so later you receive that text back on your phone. It can then be read by the on-board speech synthesizer or screenreader.

This way it is not always essential to have the latest and most powerful device, plus batteries last longer and tasks are completed more quickly.
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Be warned though, using technology of this sort, including the $20 text reader app for iPhone (previewed at ATIA by A-squared, the makers of the popular Zoomtext computer magnification package) does depend on a reliable internet connection.

In the past decade, satellite navigation has taken the world by storm and is on most new mobile phones. It has also been added to specialist products which give voice guidance to the vision impaired. SatNav is dependent on a clear view of the sky however and so hasn鈥檛 penetrated indoor or undercover environments. Enter near field communication technology.听

NFC allows devices to exchange messages over short distances and can be used to trigger actions in other software.听It鈥檚 currently being used in contactless payment systems, the ones听which will听let you buy a bar of chocolate directly from your phone.听

The first mobiles with this technology onboard are just becoming available and already future potential uses for disabled people are being explored. Bombarding you with special offers as you walk by the branch of a given store may be one use, but, 鈥淗ey! The entrance is 2 metres to your right鈥�, 鈥渟tep this way to pay鈥�, or 鈥渢urn left for the gents sir鈥�,听might well be a lot more helpful.听Look out for what Nokia have to say in their upcoming presentation on听indoor wayfinding technology at CSUN.