e-Access is a yearly conference in London reviewing accessibility and technology. I could not attend last year so I found it particularly interesting to compare the change in emphasis over two years. See my blog Accessibility to direct the mainstream for my views on e-Access 06.

I will compare the conferences' emphasis on: management, hearing impairments, new technology and delegates.

Management: Two years ago the discussion was all about what had to be implemented and why accessibility was important. The discussion had moved on this year to how to manage the implementation of accessible solutions

Julie Howell, from Fortune Cookie, in her opening keynote speech told the conference that PAS 78 "Guide to good practice in commissioning accessible websites" is going to be upgraded to a British Standard. Julie is chairing the IST/45 committee that will develop the new standard and plans to publish it in Q1 2009. The standard will build on PAS 78 and the experience of its use in the last two years. It will also address issues relating to WEB 2.0 social networking technologies that have matured enormously since the development of PAS 78.

A further example of the importance of managing accessibility was Judith Russel's excellent presentation "Managing e-access in large organisations" in which she discussed he experience implementing accessibility in the Environment Agency. I picked up two particularly important messages from her

• You need to get buy in from all areas and a persuasive way to do that is to collect and present stories from users with disabilities. A personal description of how the right technology enabled a user to perform their tasks effectively, and progress in their career, provides an overwhelming argument for implementing accessibility.
• Organisations like the Environment Agency are big enough to have significant buying power. They can, and should, use it to be uncompromising in their procurement. Whether it is commissioning an outsourced application, or buying an application off the shelf, or implementing an e-Learning system, accessibility should not be a 'nice to have' but a 'buy-no-buy' criteria.

Hearing impairments: Two years ago the special problems of the deaf community where not discussed at all.

This year the main tent presentations were supported by a palantypist (the speeches were converted simultaneously into text and displayed on a big screen in the hall). This service was provided by Caption First, a company based in the US. An audio link was set up from the conference to Chicago where a palantypist converted the speeches in real time and the text was sent back over the Internet. Roy Graves, of Caption First, told me that they can provide this service anytime anywhere, they prefer a day or two's notice but have provided instant support when required.

In one of the main tent sessions, Malcolm Wright of ITV demonstrated ITV SignPost. He showed the use of British Sign Language (BSL) on television and on the Internet but I was particularly impressed by the children's book that combined synchronised pictures, written English, spoken English and BSL. It enables hearing parents with deaf children to read and discuss the book together; this sharing will reinforce the child's understanding of written English and at the same time improve the parent's and hearing sibling's signing.

The support of the hearing impaired is a complex and at time contentious issue and I plan to write an in-depth article on it soon.

New Technologies: New technologies provide opportunities and can create barriers to accessibility.

Simon Walsh is a wheel chair user and he has found Second Life (SL) a liberating environment, not as you might imagine because his avatar need not be disabled but because in Second Life he founded Wheelies, a club for real life (RL) wheel chair users. The club means that he can meet lots of wheelers, many more than he can easily do in RL and they can provide support and fun together. Simon is now an international celeb. SL is providing a variety of opportunities to support and discuss disabilities such as Fez Rutherford's blindness simulator, which gives people a better idea of what it is like to be blind. However there are still issues relating to the accessibility of SL as I described in my blog Second Life is now too important not to be accessible.

Tara Alexander of the RNIB and Rachel Bagust of Dolphin discussed the future of DAISY, the talking book format. At present only 4% of books are available in accessible formats but with the publishing industry moving rapidly to using electronic source it is hoped that the percentage of accessible books will rise rapidly. To aid that process, Dolphin have developed Easy Converter that will convert original source into a variety of accessible formats including DAISY.

And just to show the range of technologies on show, Xerox had a stand where they displayed Xerox Copier Assistant, which improves the accessibility of photocopiers and printers, by displaying the controls on a PC rather than the small built in touch screen.

Delegates: The only thing that has not changed from two years is the disappointing lack of delegates from the private sector. If I exclude vendors and sponsors of the conference then there appeared to be only 4 delegates, out of more than 100, from the private sector. I hope that there will be a better turnout next year.