Blind or vision impaired

In late May, Dr Scott Hollier travelled to Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, to teach a web accessibility course to 22 students. As part of the assignment work, the students learnt how to use the basic functionality of screen readers and other Assistive Technology (AT). While the work went well, it quickly became apparent that there were a number of issues relating to the way in which Arabic was supported by the tools, and how those tools interacted with the web.

The UK communications regulator Ofcom has found that a number of UK-based channels owned by AXN and MTG breached access regulations by not providing enough captioning or audio description on services broadcast to Italy, Denmark and Sweden in 2014.

The trial of audio description on the ABC’s iview service is about to enter its third month, with feedback from viewers on the choice of programs and quality of the description being very positive.

The University of Antwerp is hosting a special international symposium on Accessible Live Events on 29 April 2016 and is seeking proposals for papers and presentations.