The UK charity and provider of audio, braille and large-print books has named it the “I’d miss…” campaign, encouraging people to consider the children’s stories that they would have missed had they been unavailable. According to RNIB, less than 5% of books are available in braille, audio and large print.
Mobile Accessibility, developed by CodeFactory, consists of a suite of 10 accessible applications for everyday online activities such as email, phone calls and contact lists, SMS, calendar and web. It also has a screen reader that works with these applications, as well as outside the suite to navigate the standard interface.
The volunteer-based project provides an easy way for people with disabilities to make complaints about inaccessible websites. Funded by Nominet Trust, Fix the Web has successfully addressed issues on 36 sites, with 60 website owners acknowledging access issues and a total of 83 owners informed.
Websites that have addressed accessibility issues on their sites after Fix the Web reports include the BBC, Facebook, Coventry Building Society and the Royal National Institute of Blind People (RNIB).
Under the Government’s rules, these channels are exempt from the captioning requirements that cover the primary channels. The only programs which must be captioned on them are those which were previously screened on the same network’s primary channel with captions. The survey shows that, in general, the commercial multichannels are only captioning the bare minimum they are obliged to do.
The iOS 4.3 update has seen some bug fixes to accessibility features. Apple has now fixed the issue preventing controls from being dismissed in some cases, and where the keyboard could not reappear when highlighting and browsing search results. Apple has also adjusted VoiceOver so that it reads entire charts in the ‘Stocks’ app when it is in landscape mode.
Features to the iPad 2 itself that may improve the accessibility for some users include:
Convergence refers to the “development of digital broadcasting, data compression and internet-based technologies, coupled with improved infrastructure capability, [which] means that content and services that were previously constrained to one delivery channel can now be delivered over many different platforms”. Examples of convergent media include online TV catch-up services and smartphones, which have phone and Internet capabilities.
Hosted by the National Education Association (NEA) in partnership with the Described and Captioned Media Program (DCMP), the campaign aims to bring the use of captions to the forefront of the minds of teachers and parents around the country, encouraging them to turn captions on.
The latest survey, with 1245 valid responses, was a follow-up to the original WebAIM Screen Reader User Survey of January 2009 and the follow-up survey from October 2009.
The survey showed that the usage of free and low-cost screen readers such as NVDA and VoiceOver has increased significantly since the last survey.
The program, which airs on TVNZ, was selected to be the first to be audio described by the Association of Blind Citizens of New Zealand.
It is planned that the audio description of Coronation Street will continue until the end of the year. The success of the service will then be evaluated, and it is expected that more programs will follow. The service can be received on Freeview HD and Freeview Satellite TV receivers, and has been funded by a grant of NZ$500 from NZ on Air.
To ensure the highest possible standards are reached before the launch, we would like to invite anyone who is interested to give the website a test run and provide us with feedback. Your contribution will help all our website visitors, including people who are blind, vision impaired, Deaf, hearing impaired and with mobility impairments, to access the site.
