E-Access Bulletin Live

A new internet radio set has been developed for blind and visually impaired listeners, allowing people to listen online to audio books, podcasts, talking newspapers and audio catalogues, as well as internet radio stations from around the world.

Manufactured by the charity British Wireless for the Blind Fund ( www.blind.org.uk ), the ‘Sonata’ radio – claimed to be the first of its kind – was launched earlier this month, and allows users to listen to any streamable, unlicensed internet audio feed.
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A Museum of London project recruiting and training unemployed people to describe objects in its collections and relay historical information into a series of podcasts, opening up some of the museum’s collections to visually impaired visitors, is among shortlisted nominees for the 2009 Jodi Awards, which recognise best use of digital technology for disabled people in the arts, cultural and heritage sectors.

‘Podcasts from the past’ ( bit.ly/2IO1cw ) is joined on the shortlist by (among others) Leeds Library and Information Service, for its ‘Across the Board’ project ( bit.ly/PCwot ). The library offers a series of services and digital communication tools for autistic children and their parents, making it a more natural environment for those affected by autism.
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Two American universities have rejected the market-leading Kindle DX electronic book reader as a textbook replacement due to its inaccessibility for blind students. Both Syracuse University in New York State and the University of Wisconsin-Madison have chosen not to use the Kindle – manufactured by Amazon.com – as a teaching-aid, after their own trials found it was not fully accessible.

The institutions’ decision was “applauded” by the US National Federation of the Blind ( NFB: bit.ly/gBnAC ), which said that although the reader contains a text-to-speech feature, “the menus of the device are not accessible to the blind”, meaning that blind users cannot purchase books from Amazon’s Kindle store, select which book to read, or even activate the device’s text-to-speech feature.
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A lack of reliable data about the use of ICT by people with disabilities is making it harder for disabled entrepreneurs to succeed, delegates heard at a recent debate hosted by the Information Technologists’ Company, a livery company of the City of London.

The debate was on the motion: “This House believes that it is harder for disabled entrepreneurs to compete in the fast-moving digital age”.
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One of the UK’s leading experts on accessible technology has called for TV set manufacturers to provide better information on their websites about access to their products by people with disabilities.

Adrian Higginbotham, manager of cutting edge research at the UK’s education technology agency Becta, made the comments after his own attempts to buy an accessible TV set which supported audio description (AD) were hampered repeatedly by poor information online.
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A ‘European Disability Act’ has been proposed by the European Commission to standardise guidelines on web accessibility for disabled people.

In a speech in Brussels earlier this month, Viviane Reding – commissioner for information society and media – said approaches need to be harmonised throughout Europe. “We cannot achieve the single market by leaving aside certain parts of our population”, said Reding. “I am talking about e-accessibility: 15% of our population is disabled, and our rules on accessibility are still fragmented.”
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An online forum allowing anyone to become involved in accessibility reviews of major government and corporate websites has been launched in Australia.

No technical or specialist knowledge is needed to participate in the Australian Web Access Review (AWARe:
www.aware.org.au ),
which asks volunteers to evaluate the accessibility of prominent Australian websites by answering 13 questions, based around WCAG 2.0 (the international Web Content Accessibility Guidelines).
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The BBC’s hugely popular iPlayer software will now carry approximately 25 hours per week of the broadcaster’s audio described TV programmes, giving visually impaired users access to a range of well-known shows including ‘Dr Who’, ‘Little Britain’ and some children’s programmes.

Audio descriptions assist vision-impaired people by using gaps between dialogue to describe what is happening in a programme. Until now none of the BBC’s audio described output has been available on the iPlayer but there are now plans to make all such programmes available on the system over the next few months, storing them in a new category on the iPlayer site (
www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/categories/audiodescribed ).
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The purchase by Google of reCAPTCHA, the most widely used ‘CAPTCHA’ system on the internet, could lead to significant improvements in the system’s accessibility, a leading analyst has told E-Access Bulletin.

‘CAPTCHAs’ are tests used to block ‘robots’ or automated tools from accessing websites by posing a task that only humans can complete. These tests are usually visual, such as interpreting and keying in distorted letters and numbers, but audio CAPTCHAs – where letters are read out for the user to input – are crucial for visually impaired users. The reCAPTCHA system includes audio tasks.
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A low level of accessibility found in internal ICT systems for staff is creating a “depressing picture for employment of people with disabilities”, according to a new survey carried out in conjunction with E-Access Bulletin.

The research, conducted by Bloor Research with E-Access Bulletin and Ability Magazine, found private sector organisations have more accessible internal ICT systems than organisations in the public sector, with 44% of private sector companies surveyed having more than 70% of their internal systems accessible, compared with only 29% of public sector bodies surveyed.
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