Until the end of National Literacy and Numeracy Week (25 – 31 August) Australian teachers can sign up to become a Captions Champion, receiving a free kit containing resources to help them introduce captions to their classroom. Kit items include posters and flyers to display around the school, practical information on caption use and some novelty items to bring a smile to their face.
The Chinese government has released regulations stating that the national university entrance exam must be made available in Braille and electronic formats. Prior to this, these students were unable to attend mainstream universities, which drastically reduced their chances of employment and equal participation in society.
The new system is an adaptation of Ai-Live, which allows students who are Deaf or hearing impaired to view real-time captions of a lesson on their personal device. It is used widely in universities and some schools. The new autism application of Ai-Live simplifies the teachers’ language to better meet the needs of people with an autism spectrum disorder.
The DIAGRAM Center in the USA is a research and development centre focussing on making content accessible for students. Part of the Benetech Global Literacy initiative, DIAGRAM provides information, tools and tips for creating accessible images. The centre runs a series of webinars such as on topics such making maths accessible and integrating accessible images into eBooks.
The national campaign has now completed its third successful year, with interest growing every year. The campaign calls on teachers, principals and librarians to become Captions Champions and advocate for captions to be used throughout the school.
The Scootle portal houses an increasing range of content from a variety of educational sources. From an accessibility standpoint, only some of the content is captioned and Scootle has put processes in place to include more captioned educational content in the future.
Starting today, VisCon features a keynote address by Ike Presley from the American Foundation for the Blind’s National Literacy Centre. His work focuses on the link between assistive technology and literacy.
The Survey of Disability, Ageing and Carers shows that the percentage of Australians with a disability has remained steady since at 18.5 per cent since the survey was last conducted in 2009.
