Accessible Technologies

Accessible Technlogies

Janina Sajka, AFB

Skip Stahl, CAST

Wants to discuss National File Format work first.

For past 18 months – has shared in National File Format technical panel which produced (NIMAS).  Goal was to bring together publishing community, k12, disability advocates, etc.

When it started this was voluntary – became mandatory when included in IDEA. [need to look at this act as this impacts any future state requirements]

Status: Awaiting formal release of spec from DOE.  Hope to have released soon.

Chafee only allows alternative formats to subset of reading disabled.

Majority of disabled use some form of assistaive technology for reading, writing and communicating.

Captions appeared because ADA required for all sets lowering cost (12 cents per).  First popular use of captions is those that want to sleep vs. those that want to watch, second is sports bars, third is health club, fourth is airport – so an ADA requirement became a societal benefit.

Discussion of Daisy Format by Nina.

Important to understand the structure of the book and how it is presenting things.  You don’t read a textbook like a trash novel.  You go back and forth between topics, re-examining and enforcing what you are learning.

She demonstrate how you can use this technology to go forward and back, up and down like you would through the contents or outline structure of the book. [use opml to develop structures of new media?]

Skip – Daisy Book through CAST (he’s showing Brave New World)

You want to be where the same content source can drive multiple types of output based on the reader chosen.

Demonstrates Reading Bar (at readingbar.com) that can read pages and burn MP3 files…

Read Please (free) may be most popular text reader available today…

Screen Readers – (HAL, Window-eyes are examples).  You can stop by word or go letter by letter.

Word is like a lowers common denominator.  Everyone has it… but there are issues – no built in navigation, no native assistive technology that works with word.

Reference Braille

Waiting on Braille version can take 6 weeks or more.