Social media

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Winners of US Awards for Advancement in Accessibility announced

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America’s communications regulator, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has announced the winners of the 2014 FCC Chairman Awards for Advancement in Accessibility.

The awards, presented at the M-Enabling Summit, seek to recognise innovators who develop communications technology for people with disabilities.

This year, seven award categories were available, including Advanced Communication Services (ACS), Employment Opportunities, Closed Captions, Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities, Mobile Web Browsers, Social Media and Video Description.

The winners were:

Taxonomy: 
General
Digital technology
News
FCC, Federal Communications Commission
Disability
Blind or vision impaired
Deaf or hearing impaired
Captions
Closed captions
Inclusion
Equipment
Digital media and technology: 
Accessible gaming
Techniques
Technologies
Web browsers
Social media
Assistive technology
Mobile operating systems
Devices

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Now you can tweet accessible images

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Accessible Twitter service Easy Chirp used Global Accessibility Awareness Day 2014 to announce a new feature that allows users to tweet images with a description attached. This tool will make it radically easier to include screen reader users in social media.

Increasingly, exchanging images on social media is a fundamental way people interact online. The popularity of trends such as memes has meant that much of the information people share online is locked away in an image, beyond the reach of a screen reader.

Easy Chirp was developed by WebAxe founder Dennis Lembree as an accessible Twitter client. The service offers an alternative interface to Twitter that made up for Twitter’s inaccessibility.  As Twitter has become more accessible, Easy Chirp has continued to offer features specifically suited to blind users.

Taxonomy: 
General
Web
Digital media and technology: 
Social media
Twitter

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Coming back to Facebook

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Guest contributor and screen reader user Andrew Devenish-Meares shares his experience of giving Facebook another go.

Quite some time ago I just gave up on Facebook.  Being blind it was just too hard to deal with, navigation was awful, there were parts of the iPhone app I just couldn't use.  I deleted my account and left.

Since that time, Facebook has been working on accessibility.  The nightmarish navigation shown in the Access iQ video is gone, and the iOS app has undergone some major changes.

Taxonomy: 
General
Blind or vision impaired
Web
Digital media and technology: 
Screen readers
Facebook
Social media
News alert taxonomy: 
Blind/vision impaired Digital Technology & Online Media news

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Accessibility improvements on Twitter

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Social media tool Twitter has announced its efforts to make its website twitter.com more accessible to people with disabilities.

Their first blog, released yesterday, outlines improvements they have made to keyboard navigation on the website. According to the Twitter blog, pressing the K or J keys will now allow you to navigate between tweets. While using the Tab and Shift +Tab key will allow you to move between links within a tweet. Keyboard shortcuts allow people with mobility impairments to navigate the website through a button, providing an alternative to using mouse navigation. 

Taxonomy: 
General
Web
Digital media and technology: 
Twitter
Social media
News alert taxonomy: 
Blind/vision impaired Digital Technology & Online Media news

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Easy Chirp seeks funding for update

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Update 12 June: Easy Chirp's Kickstarter campaign successfully raised over $5000. The platform is going down temporarily from today while the new Easy Chirp is being built.

The accessible Twitter alternative, Easy Chirp, is seeking donations to continue. Easy Chirp replicates Twitter, the social media platform which allows people to post 140-character status updates, so that blind and vision impaired users can participate equally.

Easy Chirp was built in 2009 in response to Twitter’s inaccessibility. While Twitter has put significant work into improving its website and apps, Easy Chirp’s simplicity makes it the preferred option for many, if not most, blind Twitter users.

Currently, Easy Chirp uses the first version of Twitter’s API, the system which allows apps besides Twitter such as Easy Chirp and HootSuite to display tweets. Now, Twitter is updating its API and as a result, Easy Chirp needs an update too.

Taxonomy: 
General
Blind or vision impaired
Mobility
Web
News
Digital media and technology: 
Twitter
Social media
News alert taxonomy: 
Blind/vision impaired Digital Technology & Online Media news
Practical Web Accessibility news

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