Shirish Agarwal: Density and accessibility
Around 2 decades back and a bit more I was introduced to computers. The top-line was 386DX which was mainly used as fat servers and some lucky institutions had the 386SX where IF we were lucky we could be able to play some games on it. I was pretty bad at Prince of Persia or most of the games of the era as most of the games depended on lightning reflexes which I didn t possess. Then 1997 happened and I was introduced to GNU/Linux but my love of/for games still continued even though I was bad at most of them. The only saving grace was turn-based RPG s (role-playing games) which didn t have permadeath, so you could plan your next move. Sometimes a wrong decision would lead to getting a place from where it was impossible to move further. As the decision was taken far far break which lead to the tangent, the only recourse was to replay the game which eventually lead to giving most of those kind of games.
Then in/around 2000 Maxis came out with Sims. This was the time where I bought my first Pentium. I had never played a game which had you building stuff, designing stuff, no violence and the whole idea used to be about balancing priorities of trying to get new stuff, go to work, maintain relationships and still make sure you are eating, sleeping, have a good time. While I might have spent probably something close to 500 odd hours in the game or even more so, I spent the least amount of time in building the house. It used to be 4 4 when starting (you don t have much of in-game money and other stuff you wanted to buy as well) to 8 8 or at the very grand 12 12. It was only the first time I spent time trying to figure out where the bathroom should be, where the kitchen should, where the bedroom should be and after that I could do that blind-folded. The idea behind my house-design used to be simplicity, efficient (for my character). I used to see other people s grand creations of their houses and couldn t understand why they made such big houses.
Now few days back, I saw few episodes of a game called Stranded Deep . The story, plot is simple. You, the player are going in a chartered plane and suddenly lightning strikes ( game trope as today s aircrafts are much better able to deal with lightning strikes) and our hero or heroine washes up on a beach with raft with the barest of possessions. Now the whole game is based upon him/her trying to survive, once you get the hang of the basic mechanics and you know what is to be done, you can do it. The only thing the game doesn t have is farming but as the game has unlimited procedural world, you just paddle or with boat motor go island hopping and take all that what you need.
What was interesting to me was seeing a gamer putting so much time and passion in making a house.
When I was looking at that video, I realized that maybe because I live in a dense environment, even the designs we make either of houses or anything else is more to try to get more and more people rather than making sure that people are happy which leads to my next sharing.
Couple of days back, I read Virali Modi s account of how she was molested three times when trying to use Indian Railways. She made a petition on change.org
While I do condemn the molestation as it s an affront against individual rights, freedom, liberty, free movement, dignity.
Few of the root causes as pointed out by her, for instance the inability or non-preference to give differently-abled people the right to board first as well as awaiting to see that everybody s boarded properly before starting the train are the most minimum steps that Indian Railways could take without spending even a paise. The same could be told/shared about sensitizing people, although I have an idea of why does Indian Railway not employ women porters or women attendants for precisely this job.
I accompanied a blind gentleman friend few times on Indian Railways and let me tell you, it was one of the most unpleasant experiences. The bogies which is given to them is similar or even less than what you see in unreserved compartments. The toilets were/are smelly, the gap between the station and the train was/is considerable for everybody from blind people, differently-abled people, elderly people as well. This is one of the causes of accidents which happen almost every day on Indian Railways. I also learnt that especially for blind people they are looking for a sort of low-frequency whistle/noise which tells them the disabled coupe/bogie/coach will come at a specific spot in the Station. In a platform which could have anything between 1500-2000 people navigating it wouldn t be easy. I don t know about other places but Indian Railway Stations need to learn a lot to make it a space for differently abled to navigate by themselves.
Pune Station operates (originating or passing through) around 200 odd trains, with exceptions of all the specials and weekly trains that ply through, adding those would probably another 5-10 trains to the mix. Each train carries anywhere between 750-1000 odd people so roughly anywhere between 15-20 million pass through Pune Railway Station daily. Even if we take conservative estimates of around 5% of the public commuting from Pune, it would mean around 750,000 people travelling daily. Pune Railway Station has 6 stations and if I spread them equally it would come to around 100,000 people on one platform in 24 hours. Divide that equally by 24 hours and it comes to 4,160 people per hour.
Now you take those figures and you see the Pune platforms are under severe pressure. I have normalized many figures. For instance, just like airports, even in railways, there are specific timings where more trains come and go. From morning 0500 hrs to late night 2300 hrs. there would be lot many trains, whereas the graveyard shifts would have windows where maintenance of tracks and personnel takes place.
I dunno if people can comprehend 4000 odd people on the platform. Add to that you usually arrive at least an hour or two before a train departs even if you are a healthy person as Indian Railways has a habit of changing platforms of trains at the last minute.
So if you a differently abled person with some luggage for a long-distance train, the problems just multiply.
See drag accidents because of gap between railway bogies and platforms.
The width of the entrance to the bogie is probably between 30-40 inches but the design is such that 5-10 inches are taken on each side. I remembered the last year, our current Prime Minister, Mr. Narendra Modi had launched Accessible Campaign with great fanfare and we didn t hear anything much after that.
Unfortunately, the site itself has latency and accessibility issues, besides not giving any real advice even if a person wants to know what building norms should one follow if one wants to make an area accessible. This was easily seen by last year s audit in Delhi as well as other places. A couple of web-searches later, I landed up at a Canadian site to have some idea about the width of the wheelchair itself as well as additional room to manoeuvre.
Unfortunately, the best or the most modern coaches/bogies that Indian Railways has to offer are the LHB Bogies/Coaches.
Now while the Coaches/Bogies by themselves are a big improvement from the ICF Coaches which we still have and use, if you read the advice and directions shared on the Canadian site, the coaches are far from satisfactory for people who are wheel-chair bound. According to Government s own census records, 0.6% of the population have movement issues. Getting all the differently-abled people together, it comes between 2, 2.5% of the population which is quite a bit. If 2-3 people out of every 100 people are differently-abled then we need to figure out something for them.While I don t have any ideas as to how we could improve the surroundings, it is clear that we need the change.
While I was thinking,dreaming,understanding some of the nuances inadvertently, my attention/memories shifted to my toilet experiences at both Mumbai and the Doha Airport. As had shared then, had been pleasantly surprised to see that both in Mumbai Airport as well as the Doha Airport, the toilets were pretty wide, a part of me was happy and a part of me was seeing the added space as wastefulness. With the understanding of needs of differently-abled people it started to make whole lot of sense. I don t remember if I had shared then or not. Although am left wondering where they go for loo in the aircraft. The regular toilets are a tight fit for obese people, I am guessing aircrafts have toilets for differently-abled people as well.
Looking back at last year s conference, we had 2-3 differently-abled people. I am just guessing that it wouldn t have been a pleasant experience for them. For instance, where we were staying, at UCT it had stairs, no lifts so by default they probably were on ground-floor. Then where we were staying and where most of the talks were about a few hundred metres away and the shortest distance were by stairs, the round-about way was by road but had vehicles around so probably not safe that way as well. I am guessing they had to be dependant on other people to figure out things. There were so many places where there were stairs and no ramps and even if there were ramps they were probably a bit more than the 1:12 which is the advice given.
I have heard that this year s venue is also a bit challenging in terms of accessibility for differently-abled people. I am clueless as to did differently-able find debconf16 in terms of accessibility or not ? A related query to that one, if a Debconf s final report mentions issues with accessibility, do the venues make any changes so that at some future date, differently-abled people would have a better time. I know of Indian institutions reluctance to change, to do expenditure, dunno how western countries do it. Any ideas, comments are welcome. Filed under: Miscellenous Tagged: #386, #accessibility, #air-travel, #Computers, #differently-abled, #Railways, gaming
Sites like Twitter and Facebook are not fundamentally free platforms, despite the fact they don't ask their users for money. Look at how Facebook's censors 
Many marketing campaigns that have been successful today, whether they are crowdfunding, political activism or just finding a lost cat claim to have had great success because of Twitter or Facebook. Is this true? In reality, many users of those platforms follow hundreds of different friends and if they only check-in once a day, filtering algorithms show them only a small subset of what all their friends posted. Against these odds, just posting your great idea on Facebook doesn't mean that more than five people are actually going to see it. Those campaigns that have been successful have usually had something else going in their favour, perhaps it was a friend working in the media who gave their campaign a plug on his radio show or maybe they were lucky enough to be 
Ever since I read about 
I'm not an avid Kickstarter follower (if I were, I'd have gone broke
long ago). I tend to wind up backing campaigns that come to my attention via
other means (in other words, they're in the process of going viral). That said,
I've backed plenty of campaigns over the years, and so I'd like to think I have
a little bit of familiarity with how they usually operate.
When Ozobot came to my attention, I found it unusual, because they were
pre-promoting their Kickstarter campaign before it opened. To me, this looked
like a case of them trying to build hype prior to the campaign opening, which
was a new one to me. The whole thing seemed incredibly slick, and I was
surprised they were "only" seeking $100K.
The product looked like it'd be something cool for Zoe to play with, so I
decided to back it anyway. Then all the updates started flowing in about how
well it was being received at various trade shows and whatnot. Yet the amount
of dollars flowing into the Kickstarter campaign didn't seem to be reflecting
the external hype. I was watching the campaign's dashboard with great interest,
because as time marched on, it was looking more and more likely that it wasn't
going to make its funding target. This seemed highly unusual to me, given the
slickness of the product and purported external interest in it.
And then they pulled the plug on the campaign. Purportedly because they were
pursuing equity funding instead. They admitted they'd also read the writing on
the wall and it was unlikely they were going to make their funding target. I
haven't followed other campaigns to see how much of a last minute funding "pop"
they have. Usually I've found they've closed at many multiples of their
original target, and hit their target well in advance of their deadline, when
they're ridiculously popular. My interpretation of Ozobot's campaign, from a
funding perspective, is that Kickstarters gave it a big fat "MEH", which
surprised me somewhat.
Then the question comes up: was the Kickstarter campaign a ruse all along? Was
it just a new way of pitching for venture capital? The videos seemed pretty
slick. The product seemed already complete, and $100K didn't seem like enough
to take it to manufacturing.
It'll be interesting to see what becomes of Ozobot now.
In just under a month, Belgium will face Estonia in a Fed Cup World
Group Playoff tie. The winning team will participate in the world
group next year, which, in theory, opens the possibility of winning. So
this is an important encounter. When team captain Sabine Appelmans
announced the Belgian selection, it was described by the
Belgian press as the 'dream team' Clijsters, Henin, Wickmayer
and Flipkens, aka the four best Belgian female Tennis
professionals. That, combined with the possibility of a World Group
promotion, seems to excite much of the country, to the extent that
10000 tickets have been sold in no time. Yes, I'll be there too.
But one man seems unhappy. Marc Wickmayer, father of Yanina, will say
to everyone who wants to hear it, that 'Appelmans needs to choose'; that
he's 'tired of the hypocrisy', and so on. His arguments: Clijsters and
Henin have not been part of the Fed Cup selection in two years, and his
daughter should not be the fourth wheel on the wagon after having been
much of the reason why Belgium is playing these playoffs.
Sigh.
Let's check some facts, shall we?