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open and accessible

Google, Microsoft, Yahoo and AOL have announced their participation in the Internet Captioning Forum (ICF) established to promote the use of captioning for online video. They will be working with the National Center for Accessible Media (NCAM) at WGBH Boston. You can read quotes from Vint Cerf and other representatives from each of the big […]

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Aaron Cannon at NorthTemple.com offers insight from the perspective of a blind user on the importance of alt text. First from Aaron, as quoted by Ted Boren:
For some reason, some folks get it into their heads that being blind is really terrible and the only way our lives can be whole is for us to […]

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From the AT TechNET @ VCU: Assistive Technology Blog, a link to Communicate: Webwide, the first symbol-supported web browser. Everything happens in the browser where you can view pages in normal view, with plain text or using symbols. Their icon library contains over 29,000 words. It also reads any text that you highlight.
Is this type […]

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There is plenty of discussion happening on the upcoming version 2.0 of the WCAG. Fortunately, there has also been some good discussion regarding impact of the Web 2.0-volution on accessibility. The rush to ajaxify user interactions and the opening of the floodgates of user contributed floodgates has not necessarily been a good thing for […]

Continue reading “The Other Web Accessibility 2.0” »

Let’s say that you have a burning accessibility question that you are dying to ask someone and your roommate/spouse/pet are no help at all- where do you go? Here are a few good places to start:

Accessify Forums from the good folks at Accessify. The forum has been around since August of 2003 and has over […]

Continue reading “Where to Discuss Accessibility- Forums, Mailing Lists and Blogs” »

I don’t know why you are reading this blog, but I there are a number of reasons that people become interested in accessibility issues. Do any of the below categories sound familiar to you or maybe someone you have worked with? Presented with no authority and in no particular order:
Why do you care about accessibility?

Following […]

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Of these three, which is the largest obstacle to the free and open flow of online information?
Consider the following:

A 12-year old boy in Western Africa has learned how to read Braille. He has also recently received an inexpensive laptop as part of a corporate initiative to save the world with cheap computers. Unfortunately, he […]

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A few links that I would like to unload off of my docket:

Learning with a Disability PhD Program
“…a doctoral program designed to provide a broad and comprehensive education, realistic work experiences, and opportunities for problem centered research in the area of learning with disability.”
IBM Strives For Superhuman Speech Tech
” ‘At IBM, we have this superhuman […]

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I’ve recently been looking for a standard set of icons to represent materials available in alternate formats. I didn’t find much, here are a couple that I came across:

Sense, a UK Deafblind Charity has a set of symbols that they use on their site.
The Graphics Artists Guild has created a set of twelve disability access […]

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I like the idea of using a content management system for on some projects. However, if accessibility is a priority then options are quickly go from many to far fewer. Fortunately, many of the larger open source content management systems have taken on a goal of achieving some level of accessibility, if only as a […]

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