In an article discussing the myths about low vision, Wayne Dick, Professor of Computer Science at California State University, argues that advocacy groups, governments, institutions and even the W3C WCAG Working Group focus on the accommodations necessary for people who are blind to the exclusion of the needs of people with vision impairment.
“WA has seen some huge leaps in technology and policy in the past twelve months,” said Dr Scott Hollier from the WA office. “But we’ve also seen the accessible web community begin to thrive.”
One of the biggest WA news stories in accessibility has been the state government’s commitment to implement the W3C Web Contents Accessibility Guidelines 2.0 to either an ‘A’ or ‘AA’ level by the end of 2013.
Accessible Web Browser was first released in March as part of Mobile Accessibility, a suite of ten accessible applications including a screen reader for Android. Due to popular demand, Accessible Web Browser is now available for individual download from the Android Market for AU$21.07.
Apple has a long history of including assistive technology in its products as standard features, and at no extra cost. This history started with the inclusion of accessibility features in Mac OS X, and has continued through to their mobile operating system, iOS.
The control panel, called Assistive Touch, will assist users who may have trouble using the standard gestures or the physical buttons on the iPad. For example, instead of using the swipe action (gesture) to move from screen to screen, you can tap on an icon instead. This may increase accessibility for users with a physical disability.
Once the feature is turned on in the accessibility settings, you can tap on a designated corner on the device to bring up the control panel.
Assistive Touch has four options in total:
