accessibility « WordPress.com Tag Feed

Bike Racks on LTC Buses

fowgre — Sun, 07 Sep 2008 01:15:37 +0000

Spotted in this week's CAPS agenda, in a letter to the committee. Subject to final approval of it's 2009 budget, the LTC "will operate a one-year project, providing for the installation of bike racks on forty (40) buses."⁰¹ As currently planned, the pilot project will be limited to the #10/14 (Wonderland/Highbury), #16 (Adelaide), and #17 (Oxford West) routes.

Sources:
01. 2008/09/08 - City London: CAPS Agenda item #2

Audible Pedestrian Signals

fowgre — Sun, 07 Sep 2008 00:37:31 +0000

This seems very strange. Item #8 of the 7^th report of the Accessibility Advisory Committee is requesting that it's $7500 budget be retained "to continue to allow the ACCAC to support the implementation of audible pedestrian signals..."⁰¹

The city is currently flush with cash from the upper levels of government for transportation-related projects. If there's a need for audible pedestrian signals, shouldn't their cost be borne the same way that ordinary pedestrian signals are? And doesn't such need deserve at least as much consideration as the extension, widening, and paving of roads?

Sources:
01. 2008/09/08 - CAPS Agenda item #1

Hope to see many of you Tuesday, the 9th after 6 pm...

jdondoyle — Fri, 05 Sep 2008 23:20:49 +0000

And, yes, the building is very accessible...ramp up the east side of the building, between the auditorium and bldg 1, and elevators inside! Library is on the main floor once you get up the ramp!

Leo Burnett

Suffian Rahman — Thu, 04 Sep 2008 11:20:02 +0000

Leo Burnett's a great agency but their website redesign is a puzzle to me.

Apart from adding a few more steps, more copy to read and a greater perception of depth, I don't really see any difference in terms of accessibility or functionality, compared to the old site.

There's tons of hidden content. There's not enough call to action. And there's not much tactile control; trying to guide your pointer across the screen and choosing stuff to click on is like navigating in bullet-time. The most painful thing about the site, though, is that it forces you to learn how to use it, all over again.

On the bright side, that logo does look real spiffy in 3D. Heh.

Slow Food

fullharvest — Wed, 03 Sep 2008 06:37:41 +0000

I went to the Slow Food festival this weekend in San Francisco as a volunteer. Upon going,I expected to see people I know, others in the industry passionate about sustainable foodways,artisinal products, the preservation of cultural food traditions, and so on. I knew one person at the festival and she happened to be catering for the musicians.The festival was $65 or $69 to get beyond the gates. The price tag on the event was enough to make the event somewhat exclusive. So what's the goal? If it is so expensive to educate and inform, what are we accomplishing? In this country (the USA), the lower income population, in general, has the poorest health, the highest rates of diabetes and eat the most processed foods, which coincidentally are often the least connected to the ancient and artisinal foodways, and have the greatest exposure to fast food.The following picture appeared in the New York Times

Scott Chernis

NO ZOOMING Volunteers poured samples of olive oil for tasting at the Slow Food Nation gathering in San Francisco.

Google chrome is inaccessible

slimprize — Wed, 03 Sep 2008 01:44:35 +0000

Ok, nothing esoteric about a browser but I just had to get this off my chest. Google has a fantastic search interface but with chrome, things have gone down hill. The download is very small and the installation is painless. But, Accessibility is nonexistant. See my letter to google below.
[start of letter]
At this point, google chrome is junk as far as I am concerned. It has virtually no screen reader accessability. There are no menus that I can find and I suspect the tool tips if any are again nonstandard. The search box is ok and the installer is quite accessible. It would be nice if you could put the "customize" button of the installer in the tab order.

I also use Dragon Naturally Speaking and J-Say. I cannot even test to see whether Dragon Naturally Speaking can click on anything since Chrome is not screen reader friendly at this point.
[end of letter]

Six Steps to Elevating Web Analytics in Your Organization

dpascoe — Tue, 02 Sep 2008 21:07:16 +0000

A website exists to further the organizational objectives of its owners. Those objectives are directly related to the nature and purpose of the organization. For example, the challenges for pure online companes like Amazon.com, Overstock.com, eBay and others are quite different from bricks-and-mortar businesses with online presence, which in turn is completely different from government agencies, universities or non-profit organizations.

Large organizations, particularly those with online/offline operations, have many competing interests and stakeholders. It is imperative for the organization to know whether their website is pointed in the right direction, whether it is structurally sound and able to deliver on its objectives, and whether landing and conversion event pages are being optimized over time. To the extent a site does this, it is in turn contributing to the organization's larger goals and objectives - their true KPIs - increase leads, increase revenue, decrease cost per customer, improve self-serve rates, decrease complaint rates, increase inventory turn rate, etc.

Visitor measurement enables organizations to determine the effectiveness of their online presence. Online web analytics has received, and continues to receive, significant attention. A whole new discipline and career choice has emerged. Articles and blogs are written about it. It has its own industry association. Events have evolved that are devoted to it. All these things have cemented the term "web analytics" firmly in the online dictionary, and linked it at the hip with "visitor traffic".

The downside is that online metrics have taken on a life of their own, as if the website is separate from the organization. The development of web-specific KPIs for example, puts the focus on short-term goals, not organization goals. While measuring web analyics data points that contribute to the organization's overall success metrics is valid, those measurements are only a piece of the puzzle.

Management is bombarded everyday by people who claim to have the one thing to cure all ills. Managers may not understand the web environment well enough to ask for analysis that goes deeper than conversion rate or page views or any of the other basic measurements, and frankly, they shouldn't be expected to. What they want is the "big picture" information, and what they need are people that understand these dynamics and that can be proactive in putting the web analytics information into the broader perspective.

In the recent "Where in the Organization is the Web Analyst" Survey, when asked "How do you feel about your web analytics activities", 41% responded that they are frustrated because the organization does not act on the information, and 30% indicated they are overwhelmed with the amount of information they have to deal with. I believe this is a symptom of the internal disconnect between online and offline objectives.

And in the face of chaos lies great opportunity :-)

With that framework, here are six things I believe savvy web analysts can to to raise their profile within their organizations.

Understand the total business. Are you in an organization where inventory is important? Are you in an organization where supplying information or support after the sale is vital? Are you in an industry where the website drives leads for sales that occur offline? Are you a non-profit whose goal is to educate people and secure donations? Are you in a government agency, providing information and services to citizens? Are you in the news business, where despite falling subscription rates, lots of people still get their news from the daily paper? Even if you are in a business that "grew up" on the web, offline activities such as fulfillment, customer service and returns come into play.
Understand how your organization measures itself against its strategic goals. If you don't know what the overall organization goals are, ask. If you don't get an answer, keep asking.
Identify the "goal gaps". Think about how the website contributes to - or gets in the way of - those goals, and identify how the information you see every day sheds light on where the two are aligned and where they are in conflict with each other.
Apply the 80/20 rule. With enormous volumes of data, it can be difficult to know what to focus on - another issue pointed out in the Survey results. As you gain more clarity around the organization's goals, and how the strategy for the website supports them, focus on the 20% of the visitor data that supports overall organization goals, and disregard the rest.
Frame your conversations with management in the broader context. Even if you don't get it exactly right, at a minimum, you'll make your boss aware that you are interested in the success of the business as a whole and you'll create an opportunity to expand the conversation.
Widen your circle. Seek out and network with the people in your organization that are responsible for web standards, search optimization, search marketing, overall site quality, responding to customer comments about the site, responding to customer inquiries that come in through the site. Encourage them to share their insights with you and share yours with them.

Web analysts that can get outside the box, look at the nature of the organization they are part of, think about why it is there and what its goals are, how the website fits into the picture and what other moving parts impact decisions, and present their data in that context will elevate web analytics - and themselves - in the organization. Those that focus on short term goals based on web-specific KPIs risk being sidelined.

Do you agree? Disgree? Let me know your thoughts.

SubPLY: Making YouTube Captioning a Reality

Tyler — Tue, 02 Sep 2008 19:05:58 +0000

Via Tech Crunch

by Roi Carthy on September 2, 2008

A few days ago YouTube announced the addition of Closed Captioning support to its videos. One small problem though… YouTube included neither the tools nor the services to help video owners create the actual captioning source files– SubViewer (*.SUB) and SubRip (*.SRT)—needed to activate this feature. This is where SubPLY, the new video captioning service by PLYmedia might be helpful. With the launch of the service the company is providing an exclusive offer for TechCrunch readers: Free professionally produced English and Spanish closed captioning for YouTube videos!

SubPLY will provide English & Spanish captioning to 5000 YouTube videos submitted by TechCrunch readers. The video source language must be English and video duration cannot exceed 5 minutes. The captioning will be available within 24-hours of video submission. Offer details and how-to, here.

Is captioning videos really worth the hassle? YouTube clearly believes as much and PLYmedia’s internal research supports this claim as well. SubPLY was piloted with a video publisher that tested ten different videos for a period of six weeks, in three different languages (English, Spanish and French). Here are the results for videos watched with captioning:

Foreign language usage and viewership increased over 700% in a 5 week period.
19% more viewers watched videos to completion than those without subtitles.
The share function (sending the video to others) was used by viewers watching subtitles 171% more often (the viral effect was boosted).
A 37% increase in both users who watched the video in full screen mode and users who replayed video.

Over Ten Years Of Accessibility Work

Brian Kelly (UK Web Focus) — Tue, 02 Sep 2008 08:22:50 +0000

David Sloan and myself have had a paper on "Redefining Accessibility for a Web 2.0 World" accepted for the ADDW08 (Accessible Design in the Digital World) conference which will be held at the University of York on 23-24^th September 2008. The paper reviews our work in Web accessibility from the early days of promoting the WAI model and use of WCAG guidelines through to our realisation of the limitations of this approach, initially in the content of e-learning accessibility and then more wider concerns. This work led to the development of alternative approaches to enhancing the accessibility of Web resources which were published in eight peer-reviewed papers (not included the two papers which have been accepted for the ADDW08 conference).

I order to collate the historical data for the paper I created a Dipity time line of my involvement in accessibility work since attending the WAI launch meeting in July 1997. This is illustrated below.

I found the timeline very useful in giving me a bigger picture of my work in this area and provides me with fresh insights which I was unaware of from just looking at my lists of papers and presentations. In particular I can spot several different phases in my work which are summarised in the table below.

Date	Phase	Comments
1997-1999	Naivity	The first few year were based on learning more about the WAI approach to Web accessibility, including the WCAG, ATAG and UAAG guidelines. Advice was provided based of this approach. During this time I was also a member of the DISinHE Steering Group.
2000-2001	Silence	The timeline indicates little activity in this period. Perhaps there was little new to say, as the view then was that WCAG conformance was all that Web developers need concern themselves with. In this case, best practices would primarily be a training issue to be carried out by bodies such as Netskills, rather than a development/innovative activity which is a key aspect of UKOLN's work.
2002	Evidence-gathering	During 2002 a number of automated accessibility surveys were carried out in order to gather evidence of institutional adoption of WCAG guidelines. The findings showed low levels of conformance, and as further manual testing would be needed in order to provide proof of conformance with the WCAG guidelines, it was starting to become clear that the WCAG approach was failing to have impact amongst practitioners, despite its clear political success.
2003	Debating alternative approaches	Panel sessions on "Web Site Accessibility: Too Difficult To Implement?" at the ILI 2003 conference and "Web Accessibility: Will WCAG 2.0 Better Meet Today's Challenges?" at the WWW 2003 conference and a debate on "Web accessibility is difficult to implement" provide opportunities to raise doubts over the effectiveness of the WAI approach.
2004-	Alternative approaches for e-learning accesibility published	Lawrie Phipps (then at TechDis) and I discuss alternative approaches for e-learning accessibility and, together with Elaine Swift (then an e-learning developer at the University of Bath) have a paper on Developing A Holistic Approach For E-Learning Accessibility published in the Canadian Journal of Learning and Technology. These ideas are further developed for a prize-winning paper on "Implementing A Holistic Approach To E-Learning Accessibility" presented at the ALT-C 2005 conference and a paper on "Holistic Approaches to E-Learning Accessibility" published in the ALT-J journal in 2006.
2006-	Alternative approaches to Web accessibility framework published	A paper on "Forcing Standardization or AccommodatingDiversity? A Framework for Applying the WCAG in the Real World" was presented at the W4A 2005 conference. This paper was co-authored by myself, Lawrie Phipps and David Sloan, who have been the main driving force behind this work. Further papers which further developed our holistic framework for accessibility and applied the approach beyond e-learning accessibility were published at the W4A 2006 ("Contextual Web Accessibility - Maximizing the Benefit of Accessibility Guidelines"), W4A 2007 ("Accessibility 2.0: People, Policies and Processes") and W4A 2008 ("One World, One Web ... But Great Diversity") conferences.
2006-	Alternative approaches to Web accessibility disseminated	From 2006 to date the alternative approaches to Web accessibility have been disseminated to UKOLN's core communities, including the UK's higher and further education communities, the library, museum and the public sector organisations. This work has included taking part in a panel session on "Web and Access" at the "e-Access'06 Conference", chairing a Public Sector Conference on Accessibility, helping to organise the Accessibility Summit II, giving a talk on "The Accessible Web" at the "Web Adept: Museums and the Web 2007 conference", facilitating a session on "What Does Accessibility Mean To The Blogging Community?" at the blogs.ac.uk conference, facilitating a professional forum on "Accessibility 2.0: A Holistic And User-Centred Approach To Web Accessibility" at the Museums and the Web 2007 conference, giving an online interview on "Web Accessibility" in an Access to Experts interview organised by CHIN, contributing a chapter on "Accessibility in the Future for book on "Web Accessibility: Practical Advice for the Library and Information Professional" as well as writing a series of posts on accessibility on this blog.

The timeline has helped me to gain a better understanding of my work in Web accessibility over the past decade and how this work, led initially by myself and Lawrie Phipps and later supported by David Sloan) has been furthered developed and refined by ever-growing numbers of accessibility practitioners and researchers in the UK and Australia. So I would like to take this opportunity to thank the co-authors of my peer-reviewed papers for their contribution to this work: in order of date of publication these are: Lawrie Phipps, Elaine Swift, David Sloan, Helen Petrie, Fraser Hamilton, Caro Howell, Liddy Nevile, Ann Chapman, Andy Heath, Stephen Brown, Jane Seale, Patrick Lauke, Simon Ball, EA Draffan and Sotiris Fanou, not forgetting Stuart Smith, although the publication of that paper has been delayed.

What lies ahead, I wonder? The release of the WCAG 2.0 guidelines should provide an opportunity for institutions to rethink their approaches to Web accessibility as these guidelines remove some of the more flawed of the WCAG1.0 checkpoints and are, I'm pleased to say, format-agnostic. But what of the implications of the popularity of many Social Web and Web 2.0 services? And can the Semantic Web finally start to provide useful benefits to the user community, including accessibility benefits? These are some of the questions which Liddy Nevile and myself will be raising in our paper on "Web Accessibility 3.0: Learning From The Past, Planning For The Future" which will also be presented at the ADDW08 conference. More of that work in a later post.

FreeVRS Usage to deaf and hard of speaking people.....

swathin2 — Mon, 01 Sep 2008 07:39:56 +0000

IP Relay allows people who have difficulty hearing or speaking to communicate with anyone in the world through an Internet connection. IP Relay is accessed using a computer and the Internet, rather than a TTY and a telephone. So individuals who use IP Relay do not need to invest in a TTY; they simply use the computer to communicate. When conversing over IP Relay, people who are deaf, hard of hearing, or have difficulty speaking can participate in a conference call or go online while holding a conversation.

Video Relay Service (VRS) lets people use sign language when making phone calls. With VRS, a caller using sign language can communicate with a live VRS interpreter by using a video connection. The VRS interpreter signs the telephone conversation with a sign language user and voices to a hearing person who uses a standard telephone. There is no charge to use VRS.

FreeVRS Usage : Video Relay service is FREE and you may connect any H.323 video device to us. Our trained ASL (American Sign Language) operators are standing by 24 hours a day to help you for all your relay needs.

To connect to us simply point your video set top box to the following address.

freeipvrs.tv

If you need assistance with your individual setup, you can contact us at

service@freerelay.com

IP relay is a free service. All you need is a computer or other Web-capable device and an Internet connection. All IP Relay service providers' costs are recoverable from the interstate TRS Fund.

Benefits of Using VRS.....

swathin2 — Mon, 01 Sep 2008 07:15:49 +0000

Benefits of Using VRS:

Speed - Conversations are faster and more natural than traditional relay services.

Feels Natural - Sign language users can express themselves naturally, including facial expressions and body language.

Functional Equivalency - The ease and speed of conversation are similar to a hearing-to-hearing call.

You Can Interrupt ( and no "GA") - It's a natural two-way conversation with no long waits.

No Need To Worry Over English - Slow typists and exclusive sign language users dont face any communication barriers.

Privacy - All calls are confidental to maintain your privacy.

No Delays With Automated Telephone Transfer System - You can get through those "...for customer service, press one" phone systems much faster and easier than ever before.

Equipment Choices - Works with most videophone systems, which means that you can choose the videophone you want.

Telecommunications Relay Services for FREE.....

swathin2 — Mon, 01 Sep 2008 06:25:31 +0000

Telecommunications Relay Services provide people who are deaf or hard of hearing with access to the public telephone network; making their use of the system “functionally equivalent” to the way a hearing person uses the telephone network.

You can choose any of the following to make the call:

FREE RELAY – TEXT - This will open a window in allowing you to communicate with Communication Assistant (CA) who can relay your call.
AIM® – If you have a screen name on AMERICA ONLINE INSTANT MESSENGER you simply IM us to freerelay
FREEVRS –VIDEO – Video relay is designed for speaking with a video CA in ASL

FreeRelay services are free and are designed to provide services to the hearing impared and hard of hearing community. You are free to refer customers to us or recommend your relations or friends to use our service 24 hrs a day.

Free Relay services for Deaf and hard of speaking people....

swathin2 — Mon, 01 Sep 2008 05:59:28 +0000

Unlike traditional TRS, where a TTY user contacts a TRS center via telephone lines and the communication assistant (CA) at the TRS center calls the receiving party via voice telephone, the first leg of an IP Relay call goes from the caller's computer, or other Web-enabled device, to the IP Relay Center via the Internet. The IP Relay Center is usually accessed via a Web page. The second leg of the call, as with traditional TRS, is from the CA to the receiving party via voice telephone through the public switched telephone network. The CA can also accept IP relay calls from persons with hard-to-understand speech and repeat the calls in an easily understandable form for the called party.

You can choose any of the following to make the call:

FREE RELAY – TEXT - This will open a window in allowing you to communicate with Communication Assistant (CA) who can relay your call.

AIM® – If you have a screen name on AMERICA ONLINE INSTANT MESSENGER you simply IM us to freerelay

FREEVRS –VIDEO – Video relay is designed for speaking with a video CA in ASL

To Caption or Not to Caption

Spirit of the Time — Sun, 31 Aug 2008 22:11:21 +0000

that is, no doubt, not THE question, but a question, one asked by Seek Geo in the captioned video appearing below the fold that shows its author signing a message that is also captioned. I would be curious to know if anyone with a screen-reader can read this (and those with them who cannot, which I suspect is most if not all, let us know)--and what they think about either the medium or the message (or both). And to know what deaf readers think about the same. And what sighted hearers also think.

Readers of the blog who do have acceptable access to this video might also be interested in Seek Geo's vlog on the question "What is wrong with gay marriage".

AccessNSDL

dwakimoto — Sun, 31 Aug 2008 20:55:12 +0000

Okay, so it has been a quiet week in online science resource-land. But fear not, I have a great new site.

AccessNSDL is a fabulous site all about accessibility on the web. Come here to get great advice and best practices for making accessible content for everyone. Sponsored in part by the Internet Scout Project.

How not to do error messages - Flickr

duncancumming — Sun, 31 Aug 2008 17:35:55 +0000

Added a photo to Flickr. Clicked the 'Send To Group' button. Saw the following helpful error:

Instead of dumping out raw XML to a Javascript alert, this might have been more useful if they'd actually output just the msg value from the err element, and ideally into the page rather than a modal dialog box.

Web 2.0 Accessibility

annewelsh — Sat, 30 Aug 2008 19:24:49 +0000

Looking for a decent introduction to the issues around social software and accessibility for visually-impaired people? This report from Cheris A Carpenter (Columbia County Public Library) [*] provides a good overview:

Research into 'Web 2.0 accessibility' for people with disabilities has recently gained momentum in library and information science studies due to the unique problems disabled individuals face because they must rely on digitized formats. People with disabilities who use assistive technologies are often restricted by incompatibility issues involving software and hardware when retrieving Web content since many resources have been constructed without consideration for disabled users. The result has been a new dilemma emerging for many information centers and libraries regarding how to provide access to Web 2.0 technologies which are not designed for persons with disabilities and are incompatible with many assistive technologies. Careful consideration must be given in the development stage of web design to the layout, navigation and compatibility of different assistive technologies used to view the site. (Abstract)

Cheris A. Carpenter. Making Web 2.0 accessibility mainstream. Unpublished report, 2008.

(Via Resource Shelf)

[New] NVDA Portable 0.5

Felix — Sat, 30 Aug 2008 17:40:15 +0000

Version: 0.5
License: Open Source
Description: NonVisual Desktop Access (NVDA) is a free and open source screen reader for the Microsoft Windows operating system. This software can enable blind or vision impaired people to access computers running Windows for no more cost than a sighted person. NVDA allows the user to find out what is happening on the screen by querying the Operating system and using a speech synthesizer to output the information.
Website: http://www.nvda-project.org/
Size: 14.8 MB (installed) / 7.01 MB (compressed)
Installer: Download

Accessiblity and YouTube - How close is YT to meeting GOC standards?

Tyler — Fri, 29 Aug 2008 15:57:36 +0000

Author: Tyler Knowlton

With the announcement of closed captioning for youtube videos, the number of barriers to Federal Government use of the video sharing service are declining.

I'm going to try and get as close to compliance as possible today.

1. Official Languages Act - We live in a bilingual country and that's the law. Uploading a french version and an english version of the same video is no problem but how about the interface?

At the top of the screen next to the YouTube logo click "Worldwide" and Choose Canada
Then Select Français from the languages options if you want the french interface

2. Closed Captioning

technical explanation
MocCaptioner (closed captioning software)

3. Screen Readers & Scripts

for the purposes of this test, I will be checking to see if the description field is able to contain the entire script, thus enabling the screen reader of a visually impaired individual to access the content.

4. Descriptive Audio

You Tube does provide additional audio track capabilities at this time. However, if the video in question is simply a "talking head" then descriptive audio is not necessary. Descriptive adio could be included in the primary audio track if necessary.

Further Testing:

Upon having completed the process, I have discovered that if the video is embedded in another website (such as above) the closed captioning does not work. If anyone has any insights into this please let us know! as far as I can tell, the closed captioning function is only available when the video is viewed on the YouTube website.

PS There was no sound on the test video originally.

Target Settles Accessibility Lawsuit with National Federation of the Blind (NFB)

dpascoe — Thu, 28 Aug 2008 20:04:43 +0000

August 27, 2008 - Target settled the suit brought against it in 2006 in California by the National Federation of the Blind.

Jared Smith's article on the WebAIM site provides a summary of the settlement, commentary, and opinions of some WebAIM readers.

From the Joint Press Release

Dr. Marc Maurer, President of the National Federation of the Blind, said: “Access to Web sites is critical to the full and equal participation of blind people in all aspects of modern life. The National Federation of the Blind is pleased to have reached a settlement with Target that is good for all blind consumers, and we recognize that Target has already taken action to make certain that its Web site is accessible to everyone. We look forward to working with Target in the coming months to help make additional improvements that will enhance the experience of blind visitors to Target.com. It is our sincere hope that other businesses providing goods and services over the Internet will follow Target’s example and take affirmative steps to provide full access to their Web sites by blind consumers.”

From the AP story on MSNBC:

"We feel that it is a wake-up call to companies that have Web sites that are selling goods and services," said Christopher S. Danielsen, a spokesman at the NFB. "They need to pay attention to accessibility. It is the right thing to do." He also pointed out that the benefits of attracting new users far outweigh the costs of making changes to the site...Danielsen said that currently there are many retail sites that are "at least somewhat accessible" to the blind, but there's more work to be done.

Back to WebAIM, their site contains excellent, detailed information about accessibility issues surrounding PDF and Flash, how they can be made accessible, as well as challenges and shortcomings.

I also recently ran across information about a browser specifically designed for visually impaired persons, called WebAnywhere.

Webguild tried it out and provided some observations.

The challenge of organizations to make their sites accessible is not going away. In looking at the comments above, I believe that the NFB, which has right on their side, is pretty comfortable being proactive on this front. Most, if not all, of the states have already passed or are considering legislation. Even though this settlement did nothing to clarify ADA Section 508 requirements where corporates are concerned, individual states have not stood still. Because of that, the NFB has plenty of other venues to press their case, if (when) they identify other opportunities to raise awareness.

Your comments/thoughts/observations welcome.....

YouTube adds Closed Captioning

Tyler — Thu, 28 Aug 2008 19:46:48 +0000

Via Tech Crunch http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/08/28/youtube-adds-closed-captioning/

YouTube has turned on the ability to add full closed captions to videos. This will not only allow videos to appeal more directly to foreign audiences, but will give YouTube excellent data for searching videos and targeting ads to them. After all, a complete set of subtitles is the same as a transcript of the video. And you can upload subtitles for as many languages as you want. It’s excellent data. From the YouTube blog:

You can add captions to one of your videos by uploading a closed caption file using the “Captions and Subtitles” menu on the editing page. To add several captions to a video, simply upload multiple files. If you want to include foreign subtitles in multiple languages, upload a separate file for each language. There are over 120 languages to choose from and you can add any title you want for each caption. If a video includes captions, you can activate them by clicking the menu button located on the bottom right of the video player. Clicking this button will also allow viewers to choose which captions they want to see.

Here’s a Japanimation video with the closed captions (cartoon nudity alert). They can be turned on and off by clicking on the “CC” button that pops up at the bottom right. More info here.

Supporting Learners with Disabilities - Challenges and Opportunities

Andy — Thu, 28 Aug 2008 13:22:00 +0000

Susan Smith is a learning support officer for Leeds Metropolitan University and Isabel Arreola is one of the students Susan supports. In this JISC podcast interview, they talk to Philip Pothen about the very different challenges they face.

The Accessibility Essentials materials that Susan mentions are available from the JISC TechDis website. The four publications in the series are:

Accessibility Essentials 1 - Making Electronic Documents More Readable

Accessibility Essentials 2 - Writing Accessible Electronic Documents with Microsoft Word

Accessibility Essentials 3 - Creating Accessible Presentations

Accessibility Essentials 4 - Making the Most of PDFs