Technologies

The recent Enabled Design-a-thon event was held in Sydney on 25-26 February 2017 with two Media Access Australia accessibility specialists taking part – Heidi Laidler and Monica Regalado. It attracted 16 teams of from 4-10 members who worked over the two days to design and develop prototypes of solutions to assist people with disability.

In conjunction with scheduled meetings of ISO TC 171 SC 2 working groups that will run in late November and early December, PDF Day Australia, organised by the PDF Association, was held in Sydney on Friday 25 November.

The Australian Network on Disability (AND) in conjunction with Microsoft Australia, and with accessibility support from Media Access Australia, is staging ‘Hack 4 Good’ in November 2016. It aims to bring together the best and brightest tech minds to support the development of accessible technology (AT) to remove barriers for people with a disability. You can help frame the event by completing an online survey and submitting a day-to-day barrier you’d like resolved through technology.

A new Bluetooth chat application for accessibility, called Blappy, aims to bring more people together. The app translates voice to text and text to voice, to enable people who are vision impaired to effectively communicate with those who are Deaf or hearing impaired.