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Los Angeles PL has suspended buying OverDrive ebooks because they are inaccessible to users with print disabilities
http://www.libraryjournal.com/article/CA6701693.html?
Some 30 million Americans potentially rely on software accessibility features to access library materials, according to the Reading Rights Coalition (RRC). So last spring, when text-to-speech (TTS) stopped working on OverDrive ebooks because of a software change from Adobe, millions of print-disabled patrons found themselves with fewer options for accessing digital library materials. In response, the RRC, a group of 32 organizations representing those with print disabilities, asked the Los Angeles Public Library (LAPL) in July to take action. In the letter, the RRC cited the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990 and the Rehabilitation Act of 1973, saying that "[b]oth of these laws require libraries to ensure that their communications with people with disabilities are as effective as their communications with nondisabled people."
Contributed on Mon, 16 Nov 2009 23:47:08 GMT.
Library grant buys toys, tools for disabled
http://www.ocala.com/article/20091012/ARTICLES/910121002/1402/NEWS?Title=Library...
Each school year, Andrea Brueckner receives $300 to purchase supplies for her special-needs class at Belleview-Santos Elementary. But every two weeks for the rest of the school year, she is going to bring in four new toys. Through the Marion County Public Library system, she can now check them out like books and use them in her classroom. Using a $92,000 Library Services and Technology Act grant, the library purchased a collection of toys and books designed for children with disabilities.
Contributed on Mon, 16 Nov 2009 23:44:38 GMT.
How to be a leader with assistive technology
http://www.eschoolnews.com/news/top-news/index.cfm?i=61425
Finding the right assistive technology (AT) to help students with special needs can be a daunting task - but two leading AT trainers say the simplest tools often are best. During an Oct. 21 webinar hosted by the International Society for Technology in Education (ISTE), titled "The Building Blocks of a Successful Assistive Technology Team," Sally Norton-Darr and Chris Bugaj, both AT trainers for Virginia's Loudoun County Public Schools, offered their expert advice on how to evaluate assistive technology products for use in schools.
Contributed on Mon, 16 Nov 2009 23:43:29 GMT.
Screen Reader User Survey Results
http://webaim.org/projects/screenreadersurvey2/
From WebAIM - Web Accessibility in Mind: In October 2009, WebAIM conducted a survey of preferences of screen reader users. This was a follow-up survey to a previous survey. We received 665 valid responses to the screen reader user survey. More in-depth analysis and documentation on the free-form responses will be available in the future.
Contributed on Mon, 16 Nov 2009 23:42:32 GMT.
An E-Textbook Program Aims to Benefit Students and Professors
http://chronicle.com/blogPost/An-E-Texbook-Program-Aims-to/8533/
The University of Wisconsin at Oshkosh's College of Business is creating a new type of e-textbook that will give professors more control of their content while also saving students hundreds of dollars in the process. The program, a result of a nearly $300,000 grant from U.S. Department of Education's Fund for the Improvement of Postsecondary Education, will commission professors to create texts personalized for specific classes and put them in a digital format that will bring textbook prices down from their average cost of $100 to a much more moderate $15. While the idea of money-saving digital textbooks is not new, M. Ryan Haley, an associate professor of economics at the university, sees this program as an opportunity to alter just how these textbooks are created and utilized. Using a "core concepts" paradigm, Mr. Haley will write 80 percent of the first e-textbook in the program, a statistics book, leaving room for each professor to customize the book with his or her own appendices. e books can be a boon for students and faculty with disabilities, allowing them to access the materials in a format that best suits their needs. However, if they are not developed to be accessible, they can make access next to impossible.
Contributed on Mon, 16 Nov 2009 23:41:29 GMT.
Are PDFs More Important Than Web Accessibility?
http://www.cfit.ie/news-and-commentary-archive/98-pdf-support
We recently did an audit of a website where probably close to 99% of all the information it contained was in downloadable documents, mostly PDFs. These documents contained a lot of the stuff you'd usually find on a website, structured text, data tables, application forms, complex diagrams, graphs and other images. None of those we looked at were accessible. We wondered what we should advise the client to do about it. The PDFs weren't structured or tagged, so a user of assistive technologies would find them problematic. For a screen reader user, the structure would be difficult to make out, data tables difficult to understand, information in diagrams and graphs completely unavailable and application forms impossible to fill in. So even if the HTML pages were made fully accessible, or if the PDFs could be acquired by some other means, 99% of the information and functionality on the website would still be unavailable to those users. In this case, it could be argued that the PDFs are more important for accessibility than the 'web accessibility'.
Contributed on Mon, 16 Nov 2009 23:39:59 GMT.
Captioning YouTube Video and Providing Accessible Controls
http://wac.osu.edu/examples/youtube-player-controls/
With a little bit of work, some free online tools, and code and utilities available from this web page, you can provide your students, staff, and other users within and outside the university access to web video that is usable by everyone, including people with disabilities.
Contributed on Mon, 16 Nov 2009 23:38:20 GMT.
Redbridge: i's not all i's cracked up to be?
http://www.thepickards.co.uk/index.php/200910/redbridge-is-not-all-is-cracked-up...
I wasn't at the digital engagement conference thingummy yesterday but I was keeping an eye on the tweets of people who were talking about it, wondering if anything would strike my eye as being particularly newsworthy, or of significant import. Having quite a bit of knowledge of accessible web design and in testing against it (feel free to contact me if you want a quote for a site audit, with recommendations for fixes, by the way!), I understand how difficult it is to achieve the triple-A level of accessibility conformance level for WCAG using either version 1.0 (1999) or version 2.0 (2008). I also know that "out-of-the-box" accessibility is impossible: you simply cannot achieve it unless your content editors also know and understand accessibility requirements. Which was why I was more than a little surprised to see this tweet: Redbridge AAA-rated for accessibility at the moment, built into the CMS. Immediacy, used by BBC for their Intranet. #digieng@72prufocks. My first reactions were "triple-A? bet it isn't" and "built into the CMS? now I'm really convinced they don't understand accessibility". So, given that Redbridge i seems to be frequently lauded as an example of what local government should be doing, I thought I'd better take a look to see if it is accessible, or if it is likely to present any significant barriers to users with disabilities.
Contributed on Mon, 09 Nov 2009 23:33:49 GMT.
Canadian conference shows museums, galleries how to make art accessible to everyone
http://media-dis-n-dat.blogspot.com/2009/10/canadian-conference-shows-museums.html
Canada's museums and art galleries are filled with wonderful things, an Ottawa conference has heard. Now, if only everyone could see and enjoy them. Gallery and museum staff from across Canada spent the past four days at the National Gallery, mulling over the problems: What does "accessible" mean once the ramps are built? What if no one on staff understands sign language? How can a person who is blind get the most from an art gallery? The conference "is timely in terms of the research that the gallery has been conducting for the past several years (about) the needs of visitors with disabilities," said Megan Richardson, chief of education and public programs at the gallery. "There has been an expressed need from museums and galleries from across Canada for support in this area." An example: "We have the Stimulating the Senses program which brings together people with and without disabilities in one group to explore the artworks through sense other than sight."
Contributed on Mon, 09 Nov 2009 23:31:41 GMT.
EC calls for law on web access for disabled
http://www.computeractive.co.uk/computeractive/news/2250614/reding-calls-european
The European Commission has proposed legislating to ensure that all EU nations adopt accessibility rules to make it easier for people with disabilities to access to the internet. Last week, Viviane Reding, the Information Society and Media Commissioner talked about introducing a 'European Disability Act'. UK anti-discrimination legislation that guarantees the rights of disabled people is derived from the EU's Equal Treatment Directive. However, the main UK law on disability, the Disability Discrimination Act, is unusual in Europe because it created a duty of web accessibility that applies to private and public sector web operators. There have been criticisms over the years about major UK retailers and social networking sites not abiding by accessibility guidelines; although some moves have been made to address this problem. Ms Reding's proposal would force EU member states to adopt web accessibility rules at the same time so all websites were uniformly accessible using the new Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 2.0 (WCAG). This is a set of technical standards written by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C). They are designed to ensure that websites are constructed in a way that makes them accessible to disabled people by being structured in certain ways and being compatible with assistive technologies.
Contributed on Mon, 09 Nov 2009 23:30:26 GMT.
EC considers web accessibility legislation
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/10/05/eu_web_accessibility_plan/
The European Commission has proposed legislating to ensure that all EU nations adopt accessibility rules designed to ease people with disabilities' access to the web. Information Society and Media Commissioner Viviane Reding has for the first time talked of a 'European Disability Act' that could compel EU nations to adopt web accessibility rules together so that all of Europe's websites become accessible at the same rate. "We cannot achieve the Single Market by leaving aside certain parts of our population," said Reding in a speech yesterday. "I am talking about e-accessibility: 15% of our population is disabled and our rules on accessibility are still fragmented." "We should in my view encourage the European-wide adoption of the global web accessibility standard, the new Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG)," she said. "We should do it together and in step so that the online services industry can reap economies of scale and the users get a decent and reliable framework. I believe the way we should do this is to develop together with stakeholders a European Disability Act."
Contributed on Mon, 09 Nov 2009 23:28:02 GMT.
Call for law to improve websites for disabled
http://news.zdnet.co.uk/internet/0,1000000097,39785385,00.htm
European information commissioner Viviane Reding has proposed a pan-European law that would ensure website accessibility for people with disabilities. Reding said in a speech on Thursday that a potential 'European Disability Act' should ensure European approaches to e-accessibility are not fragmented. "Each member state is going its own way," Reding said. "We have to consider that this is costly for industry because they have to respond to a wide range of fragmented national standards. It also leaves disabled people without a consistent level of service that they can expect." Reding added that World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) standards, called the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG), should be adopted by websites on a pan-European scale.
Contributed on Mon, 09 Nov 2009 23:27:06 GMT.
European Accessibility laws - a misguided move?
http://techdis.ac.uk/blog/?p=163
Today I received the text from a speech made on 1st October 2009 by Viviane Reding, Member of the European Commission responsible for Information Society and Media. The speech was to launch "The Digital Single Market: a key to unlock the potential of the knowledge based economy EDiMA's White Paper on Policy Strategy for the Development of New Media Services 2009-2014? In principle the speech contains several very useful proposals, including investigating market fragmentation, e-books, network neutrality and so on. However, two sections are of great concern to those of us who believe in a holistic approach to accessibility. In one, Ms Reding discusses the subject of website trustmarks, and while she refers to the '.eu' domain as being an appropriate symbol of trust, her remarks regarding accessibility cannot help but raise in our minds the prospect of an EU accessibility kitemark for websites. There are many papers discussing why such a system has huge limitations, three of the best of which I will direct you to by Phipps and Kelly, Kelly et al. 2005 and Kelly et al. 2007, but imagine for one minute a web-based teaching resource designed for a class comprised completely of students who are blind. The page may well have white text on a white background and no images, it may have a 'talking head' video with no captions - which for that discrete audience doesn't matter at all. But the site will be unable to win a kitemark, and the college providing it may suffer when it's neighbour announces it has kitemarked all its pages (despite them being vastly inferior learning resources). Senior Managers, who do not have time to fully grapple with the nuances of accessibility, then issue a diktat that all web resources have to meet the kitemark standard and immediately teachers have to waste their valuable time modifying a resource that realistically does not need to be modified - they don't have the time to do this, and the resource is shelved. We go back to the lowest common denominator.
Contributed on Mon, 09 Nov 2009 23:26:23 GMT.
It Shall Be Unlawful to Sell Non-accessible Books
http://go-to-hellman.blogspot.com/2009/09/it-shall-be-unlawful-to-sell-non.html
Here's an assertion that a few years ago would have been preposterous. Today, it's still pretty far out on the fringe. In ten years I think it will be obvious: It shall be unlawful to sell books in the United States without making accessible versions available on the same terms. The reason that this assertion has not been true in the past and may well be true in the future is the continuing progress in e-reader and digitization technology, combined with the structure of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA). To review, the ADA forbids discrimination against those who are disabled, and includes the following in its definition of discrimination: "a failure to take such steps as may be necessary to ensure that no individual with a disability is excluded, denied services, segregated or otherwise treated differently than other individuals because of the absence of auxiliary aids and services, unless the entity can demonstrate that taking such steps would fundamentally alter the nature of the good, service, facility, privilege, advantage, or accommodation being offered or would result in an undue burden". Offering a book for sale without offering an accessible version can only be considered discriminatory if 1. Making a book accessible "would fundamentally alter its nature" or 2. Making a book accessible would not pose an "undue burden" on the entity offering the book for sale.
Contributed on Mon, 09 Nov 2009 23:24:13 GMT.
OSU football: closed-captioned
http://uweekly.com/newsmag/09-30-2009/12491
A lawsuit was filed last summer against The Ohio State University, challenging the level of equal access the University provides for those who are disabled. The case was dismissed this month, according to director of media relations Jim Lynch, yet the circumstances revealed aspects about the system that might need to be addressed and, last weekend, OSU associate vice president and director of athletics Gene Smith announced that captioning would be available on concourse area video and televisions. The captioning began Saturday for the home game against Illinois, providing fans with text translations of calls made by on-field officials, play descriptions, and all other audio announcements at the game, according to the University. The case for closed-captioning: Vincent Sabino, an OSU fan who is hearing-impaired, initiated a lawsuit against the university on June 30, arguing that the Buckeyes should provide captioning on televisions and scoreboards at Ohio Stadium as well as within the Schottenstein Center and St. John Arena. The suit says captioning would help fans who are hearing-impaired by explaining such things as referees' calls. The Americans with Disabilities Act requires new stadiums to be accessible and accommodating to people with disabilities so that they, their families, and friends can enjoy equal access to entertainment, recreation, and leisure. The National Collegiate Athletic Association does not specify regulations requiring closed captioning at collegiate games.
Contributed on Mon, 09 Nov 2009 23:23:15 GMT.
National Federation of the Blind and American Council of the Blind File Discrimination Suit Against Arizona State University
http://www.readingrights.org/458
The National Federation of the Blind (NFB) and the American Council of the Blind (ACB) filed suit today against Arizona State University (ASU) to prevent the university from deploying Amazon's Kindle DX electronic reading device as a means of distributing electronic textbooks to its students because the device cannot be used by students who are blind. Darrell Shandrow, a ASU student who is blind, is also a named plaintiff in the action. The Kindle DX features text-to-speech technology that can read textbooks aloud to students. The menus of the device are not accessible to those who are blind, however, making it impossible for a blind user to purchase books from Amazon's Kindle store, select a book to read, activate the text-to-speech feature, and use the advanced reading functions available on the Kindle DX. In addition to ASU, five other institutions of higher education are deploying the Kindle DX as part of a pilot project to assess the role of electronic textbooks and reading devices in the classroom. The NFB and ACB have also filed complaints with the Office for Civil Rights of the U.S. Department of Education and the Civil Rights Division of the U.S. Department of Justice, asking for investigations of these five institutions, which are: Case Western Reserve University, the Darden School of Business at the University of Virginia, Pace University, Princeton University, and Reed College. The lawsuit and complaints allege violations of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) and the Rehabilitation Act of 1973.
Contributed on Mon, 09 Nov 2009 23:22:02 GMT.
Higher Education's Studied Indifference to People with Disabilities Reflects the "Rehab Model" Ad Nauseum
http://jfactivist.typepad.com/jfactivist/2009/09/higher-educations-studied-indif...
There's a great article over at Getting Hired dot Com about the lawsuit that's been filed against Arizona State University by several blindness advocacy groups. The issue has to to do with ASU's decision to provide its students with the Kindle Reader as a means of accessing textbooks, and yes, the Kindle is still inaccessible to people who are blind. I'll leave aside for the time being the relative technical issues involved in making the Kindle accessible for the talking points are tedious. Trust me, the Kindle can be made to talk without difficulty save for the fact that it needs a more expensive "out of the box" operating system. ASU adopted the Kindle because it seemed easy. It seemed like a good thing. My general point (such as it is) is that higher education administrators tend to imagine that "someone else" will "take care" of "those people" who have disabilities. American higher education still imagines that the Victorian approach to disability is acceptable, that those with disabilities are taken care of by people who will read to them in the dark or laboriously turn their books into tape recordings or Braille. This "rehab" model of Disability is of course the very thing that disability studies has dissected and about which we know a good deal. We know for instance that college administrators who imagine that accessibility is merely an inconvenience and that they can pass along the issue to others are ignoring the ADA and many state laws. But they do so with the built in assurance that the rehab model is acceptable. Someone else will retrofit inaccessible learning environments or physical facilities and assure accessibility for those who are blind or the wheelchair users or the deaf or what have you. Those "rehab people" will take care of that.
Contributed on Mon, 09 Nov 2009 23:20:39 GMT.
People with disabilities and the promise of ICTs
http://globalvoicesonline.org/2009/09/29/people-with-disabilities-and-the-promis...
"I MAY be 100% blind but the internet has taken away 50% of my disability," Silatul Rahim Dahman told Cindy Tham of the Nut Graph, an independent Malaysian news site. During my recent visit to his office in Brickfields, Kuala Lumpur, he chats with ease on Skype with another blind friend attending a conference in Los Angeles. When he opens an e-mail, the JAWS screen-reading software installed on his Lenovo laptop reads out the content in a robotic voice, which he seems quite accustomed to. When told that The Nut Graph is in the midst of incorporating disabled-friendly features into its website, he goes to the website to find out how accessible it is to his screen reader and keyboard navigation, and provides some helpful feedback. Rahim relies on the internet for e-mail, to chat with friends and contacts on Yahoo! Messenger and Skype, which is much cheaper than on telephone, and to find out what's happening in the rest of the nation and world. He is also planning to develop a website to promote his family's body massage and foot reflexology centre, run by the blind, in Penang. The World Health Organization estimates 600 million people live with disabilities, accounting for one in ten people on the planet. The World Bank claims three-out-of-four people with disabilities live in the developing world. In any corner of the globe, poverty and disability are often interrelated. For instance, more than 18 percent of adults with disabilities in the United States live below the poverty line. In Canada, the unemployment rate among persons living with disabilities recently jumped to nearly 15 percent. Because technologies and communication devices help reduce physical barriers, ICTs provide a model to allow people with disabilities to better integrate socially and economically into their communities, argues Deepak Bhatia of the World Bank. Another promise of ICTs is they provide access to knowledge, the ability to organize and network. Perhaps most importantly, the education sector is being slowly transformed by technology, providing greater access to a variety of learning materials.
Contributed on Mon, 09 Nov 2009 23:19:23 GMT.
MU strives to be fully accessible
http://www.themaneater.com/stories/2009/9/29/mu-strives-be-fully-accessible/
For most college students, everyday activities like going to class and taking notes on a lecture are simple tasks. But these jobs can be more complicated if a student is in a wheelchair or trying to take notes on a lecture they can't hear. Lee Henson, the MU Americans with Disabilities Act coordinator, distinguished between the two types of disabilities MU primarily works to accommodate. "We do a fairly good job on mobility accessibility, but we have a lot of room to improve in communications accessibility," Henson said. Students with sensory disabilities, most commonly the blind and deaf, make up this category. Office of Disability Services Director Barbara Hammer said granting them access presents an entirely different challenge. MU's top priorities for improving communications accessibility are captioning for any media with an audio component for the deaf as well as accessible Web sites and media for the blind, Hammer said. "Those are the kinds of things that are just as important as building accessibility on a campus," Hammer said. "Our main focus is that we follow the principles of universal design wherever possible." The struggle to keep up with new technology is one reason communications accessibility lags on campus.
Contributed on Mon, 09 Nov 2009 23:17:43 GMT.
Recommendations to Improve Web Accessibility
http://glenfarrelly.blogspot.com/2009/09/recommendations-to-improve-web.html
In July, I completed my MA thesis researching diffusion issues for web accessibility. I'm hoping to get the full thesis published, so any journal suggestions would be appreciated. In the meantime, below are the recommendations that developed out of consultations with 21 web practitioners (designers, managers, producers, consultants, and developers).
Contributed on Mon, 09 Nov 2009 23:16:54 GMT.
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