Accessibility on the Fourth Plinth in Trafalguar Square London

Starting on Monday 6 July 2009 for 100 days the Fourth Plinth in Trafalguar square will be occupied by a succession of members of the public, each having their hour of fame.

Amongst them will be Jane Scaybrook who at 5am on 15th July will describe what she can see as London wakes up to a new day. My interest in this particular hour is the Jane will be using Nuance’s Dragon Natural Speaking speech recognition technology to capture her thoughts.

Once again the Fourth Plinth and accessibility come together again (you may remember the sculpture of the disabled artist Alison Lapper that I wrote about in 2005.

Jane uses DNS on a daily basis as the most effective way of creating Word documents and Excel spreadsheets, in order to produce dyslexia assessment reports on learners.

Jane said: “Dragon is an important part of my life. Everyone who knows me knows that I’m always talking about Dragon and telling people how useful it is. It seemed appropriate therefore that I should use Dragon to document my comments, and use One & Other to expose it to more people who might benefit one day from what Dragon offers.”

After the event I will report on her hour and share some of her collected thoughts.

If you want to watch her live, or any of the other participants, go to Trafalguar Square or watch the live video stream at http://www.oneandother.co.uk/ .

For those who do not know about the One and Other project: The Fourth Plinth in Trafalguar Square was empty for many years when it was decided that modern pieces of art should be installed on it in a rolling exhibition. One and Other is the latest and is the conception of Anthony Gormley, famous for, amongst others, the Angel of the North and Field for the British Isles. One and Other entails the plinth being occupied for 100 days by a different member of the public each hour. There are no restrictions (besides legality) as to what the people do and Gormley sees this as a reflection of the common man.