April 30th, 2012

RoboBraille is an email service which will convert digital text documents into either Braille or audio files. You can email or use the web to give them your file and the system will give you a document that is either an audio file or Braille file. Your file can be a .doc, .docx, .pdf, .txt, .xml, .html, .htm, .rtf, .epub, .mobi, .tiff, .tif, .gif, .jpg, .bmp, .pcx, .dcx, .j2k, .jp2, .jpx, .djv and .asc file.  The file they send back can be mp3 audio, Daisy A publishing format that provides audio, text, and image versions of text within a single file. This facilitates access for people who need audio output, as well as for those who need synchronized audio and visual presentation of information. Developed and maintained by the DAISY Consortium. full text and audio, e-Book, document conversion, or Braille. For the audio files, you can choose 12 languages other than English, as well. While it is a computer generated voice, the speech is very high quality and is fairly engaging. It takes a day to get your file.

The inventors were honored with a 2010 BETTS Award. The system is being funded in Europe and users can make contributions. It is free to individuals and commercial users pay a licencing fee.

March 9th, 2012

Contrast Rebellion - to hell with unreadable, low-contrast texts!

Web Access Advocates: See some great examples of low contrast vs high contrast websites at Contrast Rebellion.

 

 

March 8th, 2012

 

Perkins School for the Blind is calling all entrepreneurs to focus on improving opportunities and quality of life for people with disabilities. As part of MassChallenge 2012, Perkins is offering the Perkins Assistive Technology Prize. The $25 thousand grant, drawn from a donation earmarked for technological solutions, promotes Perkins’ mission to empower individuals with disabilities to reach their personal potential.

Administered through MassChallenge, The Perkins Assistive Technology Prize seeks to encourage competitors to develop new, low- and high-technology devices that could have a significant impact on the quality of life for individuals with disabilities. Such assistive technology could apply to any sector of life (education, transportation, recreation, communications, vocational, etc.). The assistive technology could be designed for a certain group of individuals with a disability (vision loss, hearing loss, mobility, etc.), or have a more universal market application. Details and application information are at www.MassChallenge.org.  Registration begins March 1 and runs through April 11, 2012, at noon EST.

February 22nd, 2012

BrailleTouch: A team from Georgia Tech, led by Post Doctorate Fellow Mario Romero (School of Interactive Computing) has designed BrailleTouch for touchscreen mobile devices. The prototype appShort for "application"; usually a program that runs on a portable device or wireless phone such as an iPhone. allows visually impaired people to easily type and opens the door for everyone to text or type without looking at the screen. For more information, watch their video on YouTube or refer to their press release.

February 9th, 2012

The W3C WAI Education and Outreach Working Group (EOWG) has updated the Before and After Demonstration (BAD). BAD is useful for presentations, for learning about specific web accessibility barriers and their implications, and as an example of conformance evaluation reports. BAD shows an inaccessible website and a retrofitted version of the same website with the accessibility barriers fixed. BAD has in-line notes ("annotations") for you to get more information, and reports that list the accessibility problems for each page.

There is a 'wish list' for improving and expanding BAD in the future – such as adding WAI-ARIA, video, and scripting. Please send any comments or questions on BAD to the publicly-archived list: wai-eo-editors@w3.org