UK struggles with same problems as U.S.

Not really sur­pris­ing, but still a good read. Web inac­ces­si­bil­ity ‘cre­ates net under­class.’

Accessible Writing Links

All the tech­nol­ogy in the world won’t mat­ter if your web con­tent is hard to read. This can be a par­tic­u­lar prob­lem for any­one who uses “insider” talk, like research insti­tutes, col­leges, and non­prof­its. This isn’t a com­plete list, but I recently found two sites that might help.

Craw­ford Killian’s “Writ­ing for the Web” blog — Dis­cus­sion and resources from some­one who stays informed.

The Poyn­ter online-writing list­serv — Low-traffic list for the web-writing com­mu­nity. A cou­ple of peo­ple post writ­ing sem­i­nar announcements.

Readability.info — Ana­lyzes web text for read­ing level, like the func­tion on Microsoft Word. The site won’t write good web con­tent for you, but it might be a use­ful tool.

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Oh, a note– I’m ICI’s com­mu­ni­ca­tions spe­cial­ist, so I spent a lot of time edit­ing mate­r­ial for the web.

Speegle Speaks

speegle.co.uk is a google like search engine that reads the results to you out loud. Not all that use­full, but a pretty good demo of this company’s technology.

Research and Development of Accessible Technologies Webcast

From the NCDAE site…

Join us on Wednes­day, Decem­ber 1, 2004, for a live audio web­cast enti­tled, “Research and Devel­op­ment of Acces­si­ble Tech­nolo­gies”. The web­cast will include pre­sen­ta­tions from national lead­ers in this area and will focus on research and devel­op­ment processes for acces­si­ble tech­nolo­gies, includ­ing the moti­va­tions for devel­op­ing acces­si­ble prod­ucts, the costs of includ­ing acces­si­bil­ity fea­tures, and the mar­ket­place for acces­si­ble tech­nolo­gies. Pan­elists will be announced soon. Par­tic­i­pant com­ments and ques­tions will be wel­come via email. The one hour web­cast will begin at 2PM Moun­tain Stan­dard Time (1:00PM Pacific; 3:00PM Cen­tral; 4:00PM East­ern). You can tune in to the broad­cast free of charge. You will be able to tune in using your com­puter using either Win­dows Media Player or Quick­time. Archives (tran­script and audio) will be avail­able shortly after the con­clu­sion of the broad­cast. The broad­cast will be cap­tioned for the Deaf and hard of hearing.