If humans are going to travel to Mars we may need to get there in a sleep state. Bear hibernation may hold the keys to inducing human hibernation. To learn more WIRED's Arielle Pardes talked with bear researcher Heiko Jansen.

Ed Maslaveckas is the founder and CEO of Bud, which started as an educational platform to help people become more financially literate. It’s now a platform used by banks to empower customers and their financial wellbeing. In this video, Maslaveckas shares how data has been powerful for the average individual, and for institutions throughout history – and that institutions and banks have a responsibility to manage the access they have to data now. He details how GDPR and open banking can coexist, as well as how the average person can shift the balance of power. #wiredsmarter For more information on WIRED Smarter: http://wired.uk/smarter ABOUT WIRED EVENTS WIRED events shine a spotlight on the innovators, inventors and entrepreneurs who are changing our world for the better. Explore this channel for videos showing on-stage talks, behind-the-scenes action, exclusive interviews and performances from our roster of events. Join us as we uncover the most relevant, up-and-coming trends and meet the people building the future. ABOUT WIRED WIRED brings you the future as it happens - the people, the trends, the big ideas that will change our lives. An award-winning printed monthly and online publication. WIRED is an agenda-setting magazine offering brain food on a wide range of topics, from science, technology and business to pop-culture and politics. CONNECT WITH WIRED Events: http://wired.uk/events Subscribe for Events Information: http://wired.uk/signup Web: http://bit.ly/VideoWired Twitter: http://bit.ly/TwitterWired Facebook: http://bit.ly/FacebookWired Instagram: http://bit.ly/InstagramWired Magazine: http://bit.ly/MagazineWired Newsletter: http://bit.ly/NewslettersWired

With the coronavirus lockdown forcing us to spend more time isolated, or indoors with families or friends, what happens when people are forced to live in isolation for a whole year? We asked Beth Healey, researching the effects of physical and psychological isolation on a group of 13 crew members for the European Space Agency, how people change when totally isolated. #isolation #europeanspaceagency #antarctica

If you close your eyes and picture an apple, how clear is that apple in your mind? Most people can visualise images in their head instantaneously - this known as the mind's eye. But in 2015, a scientific study shed new light on the relatively unheard-of phenomenon known as aphantasia, a mental blindness where the brain is unable to call images to the mind eye. This short documentary uncovers the root cause of a person's emotional detachment from people and events - and the unexpected advantages that come with it. Alex Wheeler shares the story of how his experiences with aphantasia have affected his life, particularly his grieving process after losing his mum, as he seeks answers from Adam Zeman, Professor of Cognitive and Behavioural Neurology at the University of Exeter Medical School. WIRED also talks to artist and YouTuber Amy Right, better known as @AmyRightMeow, who shares their experiences with aphantasia and how it feeds their creative process. Produced as part of WIRED Health https://www.wired.co.uk/partnerships/wired-health Director: @Simon Mulvaney Producer: Anna O'Donohue Featuring: Alex Wheeler , Adam Zeman, Amy Right Field Producer: Lewis Faithfull Studio Cinematographer: Dan McPake Studio Art Director: Deborah Du Vernay Animation & VFX: Run Zebra Run Original Music Composition: Liam Hennessy and Joe Danher VHS Digitised by EachMoment – https://eachmoment.co.uk Subscribe to WIRED UK ► https://www.youtube.com/wireduk?sub_confirmation=1 Visit the WIRED website ► https://www.wired.co.uk Subscribe to WIRED Magazine ► https://www.wired.co.uk/subscribe Sign up for one or more of our WIRED newsletters: https://www.wired.co.uk/newsletters CONNECT WITH WIRED Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/wireduk Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/wireduk Twitter: https://twitter.com/wireduk LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/wired-uk ABOUT WIRED WIRED brings you the future as it happens - the people, the trends, the big ideas that will change our lives. An award-winning printed monthly and online publication. WIRED is an agenda-setting magazine offering brain food on a wide range of topics, from science, technology and business to pop-culture and politics.

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Alan Dalton uses this, the International Day of Persons with Disabilities, to look back at where we’ve come from, to evaluate where we are, and to look forward to what’s coming next in the future of accessibility guidelines.

Happy United Nations International Day of Persons with Disabilities! The United Nations have chosen “Promoting the participation of persons with disabilities and their leadership: taking action on the 2030 Development Agenda” for this year’s observance. Let’s see how the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C)’s Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI) guidelines of accessibility past, present, and yet-to-come can help us to follow that goal, and make sure that the websites—and everything else!—that we create can include as many potential users as possible.

Guidelines of Accessibility Past

The W3C published the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 1.0 on 5th May 1999, when most of us were playing Snake on our Nokia 3210s’ 1.5” monochrome screens…a very long time ago in technology terms. From the start, those guidelines proved enlightening for designers and developers who wanted to avoid excluding users from their websites. For example, we learned how to provide alternatives to audio and images, how to structure information, and how to help users to find the information they needed. However, those guidelines were specific to the web technologies of the time, resulting in limitations such as requiring developers to “use W3C technologies when they are available […]”. Also, those guidelines became outdated; I doubt that you, gentle reader, consult their technical documentation about “directly accessible applets” or “Writing for browsers that do not support FRAME” in your day-to-day work.

Guidelines of Accessibility Present

The W3C published the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.0 on 11th December 2008, when most of us were admiring the iPhone 3G’s innovative “iPhone OS 2.0” software…a long time ago in technology terms. Unlike WCAG 1, these guidelines also applied to non-W3C technologies, such as PDF and Flash. These guidelines used legalese and future-proofed language, with terms such as “time-based media” and “programmatically determined”, and testable success criteria. This made these guidelines more difficult for designers and developers to grasp, but also enabled the guidelines to make their way into international standards (see EN 301 549 — Accessibility requirements suitable for public procurement of ICT products and services in Europe and ISO/IEC 40500:2012 Information technology — W3C Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.0) and even international law (see EU Directive 2016/2102 … on the accessibility of the websites and mobile applications of public sector bodies).

More importantly, these guidelines enabled designers and developers to create inclusive websites, at scale. For example, in the past 18 months:

• Intercom made their web Messenger accessible, achieving Level-AA conformance;
• Vimeo made accessibility updates to their video player to achieve Level-AA conformance;
• Stripe designed a new accessible colour system to conform with success criterion 1.4.3 (“Contrast (Minimum)”).

The updated Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.1 arrived on 5th June last year—almost a 10-year wait for a “.1” update!—and added 17 new success criteria to help bring the guidelines up to date. Those new criteria focused on people using mobile devices and touchscreens, people with low vision, and people with cognitive and learning disabilities.

(If you need to get up to speed with these guidelines, take 36 minutes to read “Web Content Accessibility Guidelines—for People Who Haven’t Read Them” and Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 2.1—for People Who Haven’t Read the Update.)

Guidelines of Accessibility Yet to Come

So, what’s next? Well, the W3C hope to release another minor update (WCAG 2.2) in November 2020. However, they also have a Task Force working on produce major new guidelines with wider scope (more people, more technologies) and fewer limitations (easier to understand, easier to use) in November 2022. These next guidelines will have a different name, because they will cover more than “Web” and “Content”. Andrew Kirkpatrick (Adobe’s Head of Accessibility) named the Task Force “Silver” (because the initials of “Accessibility Guidelines” form the symbol of the silver element).

The Silver Task Force want the next major accessibility guidelines to:

• take account of more disabilities;
• apply to more technologies than just the web, including virtual reality, augmented reality, voice assistants, and more;
• consider all the technologies that people use, including authoring tools, browsers, media players, assistive technologies (including screen readers and screen magnifiers), application software, and operating systems.

That’s quite a challenge, and so the more people who can help, the better. The Silver Task Force wanted an alternative to W3C’s Working Groups, which are made up of employees of organisations who are members of the W3C, and invited experts. So, they created a Silver Community Group to allow everyone to contribute towards this crucial work. If you want to join right now, for free, just create a W3C account.

Like all good designers, the Silver Task Force and Silver Community Group began by researching. They examined the problems that people have had when using, conforming to, and maintaining the existing accessibility guidelines, and then summarised that research. From there, the Silver Community Group drafted ambitious design principles and requirements. You can read about what the Silver Community Group are currently working on, and decide whether you would like to get involved now, or at a later stage.

Emphasise expertise over empathy

Remember that today’s theme is “Promoting the participation of persons with disabilities and their leadership: taking action on the 2030 Development Agenda”. (The United Nations’ 2030 Development Agenda is outside the scope of this article, but if you’re looking to be inspired, read Alessia Aquaro’s article on Public Digital’s blog about how digital government can contribute to the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals.) In line with this theme, if you don’t have a disability and you want to contribute to the Silver Community Group, resist the temptation to try to empathise with people with disabilities. Instead, take 21 minutes during this festive season to enjoy the brilliant Liz Jackson explaining how empathy reifies disability stigmas, and follow her advice.

Choose the right route

I think we can expect the next Accessibility Guidelines to make their way into international standards and international law, just like their predecessors. We can also expect successful companies to apply them at scale. If you contribute to developing those guidelines, you can help to make sure that as many people as possible will be able to access digital information and services, in an era when that access will be crucial to every aspect of people’s lives. As Cennydd Bowles explained in “Building Better Worlds”, “There is no such thing as the future. There are instead a near-infinity of potential futures. The road as-yet-untravelled stretches before us in abundant directions. We get to choose the route. There is no fate but what we make.”

About the author

Alan Dalton worked for Ireland’s National Disability Authority for 9½ years, mostly as Accessibility Development Advisor. That involved working closely with public sector bodies to make websites, services, and information more accessible to all users, including users with disabilities. Before that, he was a consultant and trainer for Software Paths Ltd. in Dublin. In his spare time, he maintains StrongPasswordGenerator.com to help people stay safe online, tweets, and takes photos.

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