E-Access Bulletin Live

A web database helping UK education institutions to obtain learning materials from publishing houses in accessible formats has been launched by educational IT access agency TechDis.

TechDis is funded by JISC, the education sector’s Joint Information Systems Committee, to support the sector in achieving greater technology inclusion. In an audio interview or ‘podcast’ published on the JISC website, TechDis director Sal Cooke said the Publisher Lookup UK service (www.publisherlookup.org.uk) had been developed in partnership with the Publishers Association.

The website allows people to search an online database in which publishers have entered a single point of contact for library staff or other staff seeking to support students with learning difficulties to obtain alternative formats. It is thought to be the first resource of its kind in Europe, Cooke said, though a similar service already exists in the US (www.publisherlookup.org). (more…)

by Majeed Saleh.

The Olympic Games are currently being followed avidly by sports fans, journalists and politicians worldwide, many of them using the official Beijing 2008 website (en.beijing2008.cn), the most comprehensive source of information on events.

Given the huge global interest the Olympics always stimulates, the demands and expectations on the Games website are high, and designing a site to please everyone is always going to be tough. Where accessibility for people with disabilities is concerned, however, previous organisers have not always got it right.
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Two new draft documents relating to accessibility and the future of the web have been published in the past month the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C – www.w3.org).

The first, ‘Shared web experiences: barriers common to mobile device users and people with disabilities’, notes that many of the barriers faced by internet browsers on mobile devices are the same as those experienced by people with disabilities. The document provides examples of the barriers of access to web content for both sets of users (www.w3.org/WAI/mobile/experiences). (more…)