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Canadian disability service providers appalled at government appeal

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The Canadian National Institute for the Blind (CNIB) and the Alliance for Equality of Blind Canadians (AEBC) have come out with strong statements against the Canadian government’s appeal of a court ruling that federal government websites are to be made accessible to sensory impaired users by 2012.

John Rafferty, President and CEO of CNIB, said, “The fact that it took a court case to plead for full web accessibility in the first place is bad enough, but to learn that the government plans to spend more time and taxpayer money fighting the court’s ruling is just appalling.”

Robin East, President of the nationwide Alliance for Equality of Blind Canadians, echoed these sentiments, saying, “we are outraged by the government’s decision to appeal this landmark decision”.


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Amazon provides accessibility plug-in for Kindle for PC

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Amazon has released a plug-in to improve the accessibility of its Kindle eBook reader software for PC.

The accessibility features that are enabled in the plug-in, which is currently not available in Australia, include:

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Google Chrome OS to have inbuilt screen reader

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According to Google support, the next version of Google Chrome Operating System (OS), an operating system targeted at netbooks, will have an inbuilt screen reader.

The information came to light when Dallas Despain, Accessibility Web Developer at RightNow Technologies, reported on the RightNow blog that the next release of Google Chrome OS will include an inbuilt screen reader available via a Chrome extension called ChromeVox.

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Boxee Box now supports playback of ABC iView captions

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The D-Link media player Boxee Box has recently updated its firmware, and now supports the playback of captions on the ABC’s iView service.

Boxee Box is a device that streams Internet content to your television via an active Internet connection. The Firmware update, which includes many improvements to the Boxee Box web browser, now allows for ABC iView content to be played back correctly and with captions, as tested by a Media Access Australia staff member.


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Canadian access coalition calls for 100% accessibility by 2020

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The Access 2020 Coalition has sought the support of the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) for its new Access Initiative to assist broadcasters to become accessible to all Canadians who are Deaf, hearing impaired, blind or vision impaired.

The initiative would see 1% of all TV ownership transactions from 2010 to 2015 allocated to a not-for-profit fund that would finance the transition to complete accessibility on all distribution platforms.


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Canadian government to appeal accessible website ruling

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The Canadian government is planning to appeal a court ruling that federal government websites are to be made accessible to sensory impaired users by 2012.

The court decision was won by a blind Toronto woman in November 2010 after she discovered she could not apply for a federal job online or complete the 2006 census. The court found that government websites were not compliant with accessibility standards and constituted a breach of equality rights. It gave the government 15 months to make its websites compliant with the Canadian Charter of Rights, under supervision by the court.


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Apple hosts free accessibility webinars for teachers

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Apple is hosting a free series of on-demand webinars which demonstrate how Mac computers and Apple devices can be used to enrich engagement with students of all abilities. These webinars will be available to teachers until 1 April.

The increasing use of digital technology in the classroom has led to a greater need for teachers to address the particular access needs of students. Apple continues to improve the accessibility of its products, providing a number of in-built features that can improve learning for students with sensory impairment and particular literacy and learning needs.

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Closed captions at Hoyts Broadway. What’s it like?

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The new closed caption sessions at Hoyts Broadway in Sydney have been running for a couple of weeks now. As Media Access Australia’s cinema project manager, I thought it was a good time to pop into the cinema to talk to staff and trial the system for myself.

After making my way past the mesmerising Ben & Jerry’s ice cream store at the front of the complex, I enquired about the system at the ticket counter. The staff member, although helpful, wasn’t too sure of what I was asking about but had no hesitation in calling the manager to assist me. This was the only blip in my experience at the cinema.

Location manager Daniel Wlodarczyk had all the answers I needed and rightly pointed out that the service was quite new and procedures were still being tested and finalised across all areas of the cinema.


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New Android app provides accessible onscreen keyboard

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A new Android app, Touchtype, will provide Android owners who are blind or vision impaired with their first accessible onscreen keyboard, an accessibility feature that is currently lacking in Android.

Touchtype is an iOS-inspired onscreen keyboard for Android devices developed by Nolan Daerilek, who also created the Android screen reader Spiel.

The app is not only an onscreen keyboard, but also provides spoken feedback when arrowing through text fields and provides (optional) spoken feedback for shift and alt keys, along with common Android action keys.

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US access provider releases caption quality survey results

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The WGBH National Center for Accessible Media (NCAM) has now released the results of a survey of caption viewers who were presented with examples of cpationing errors and asked to rate them according to how they affected their comprehension.

The survey was part of NCAM's development of a prototype automated assessment system for live captioning (including the captioning of news programs). The first stage of this process was to determine the relative severity of different sorts of errors.


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