Digital technology

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Researcher receives award for using social media to support the education of people with disabilities

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Yesterday the Hon. Bill Shorten MP, Parliamentary Secretary for Disabilities, announced Dr Denise Wood as the inaugural winner of the Telstra-TJA Christopher Newell Prize for Telecommunications and Disability. Dr Wood is a researcher and senior lecturer in the School of Communication, International Studies and Languages at the University of South Australia.

In accepting the prize for her paper “Communicating in Virtual Worlds through an Accessible Web 2.0 Solution,” Dr Wood said that her research, which is part of an Australian Learning and Teaching Council project to improve access to 3D virtual learning environments, had identified the benefits of Web 2.0 and 3D Virtual Worlds such as Second Life for people with disabilities.  Media Access Australia also contributed to the research by providing accessibility feedback on the Second Life interface.

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Digital technology

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Guidelines for describing images in the sciences and engineering

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The National Centre for Accessible Media (NCAM) in the US has published guidelines for describing images in Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) where images are often used to convey important information about these disciplines.

The freely available online guide Effective Practices for Description of Science Content within Digital Talking Books by Bryan Gould, Trisha O'Connell and Geoff Freed is the result of a four-year project that included multiple surveys of people who were either describers or students/scientists who are vision impaired or blind.
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Digital technology

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Video shows state of online captioning in the US

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Spreety TV is an American website which provides a guide to all the TV shows which have been made available for viewing online by the networks there, including whether they are available with captions. It has produced a number of short videos which can be watched on YouTube, including Closed Captioning for Online TV.

Although the programs themselves aren’t available for viewing in Australia for copyright reasons, the video gives a good idea of the current levels and quality of online captioning in the US.

In Australia, the ABC is the only network offering captions on online videos, on their iView player.    

 

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Digital technology

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Google has an accessible new look and new features

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Google has considered access in the recent updates to the look and feel of its interface and the addition of left-hand navigation on the results pages.

If you’ve visited Google’s search and results pages, you will notice that there have been some changes to the look and feel of the pages and that there are new features to assist you with your search. Google is known for its clean interface design, and its continued adherence to web accessibility means people who use assistive technologies are still able to obtain full access to Google.
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