[1152] in IS Home Pages
Fwd: Interesting news from CSUN (ADA web site stuff.. Rob)
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Rob Smyser)
Tue Apr 4 14:29:51 2000
Message-Id: <200004041829.OAA23383@melbourne-city-street.MIT.EDU>
Date: Tue, 04 Apr 2000 14:29:45 -0400
To: is-home@mit.edu
From: Rob Smyser <smyser@MIT.EDU>
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>X-Sender: kcahill@po12.mit.edu
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>Date: Tue, 04 Apr 2000 13:40:37 -0400
>To: web-access@mit.edu
>From: Kathleen Cahill <kcahill@MIT.EDU>
>Subject: Interesting news from CSUN
>Cc: atic@mit.edu, barbarar@mit.edu, richg@mit.edu, ccount@mit.edu,
> usability@mit.edu
>
>Hi;
>
>Two weeks ago, I attended the CSUN conference on Technology and Disability.
> There were some very interesting presentations and I'm listing a few of
>them here for your enjoyment:
>
>1. BBC has a tool called Betsie that converts web pages to text only. You
>can download and install it yourself for your own site:
>http://www.bbc.co.uk/education/betsie/index.html
>
>2. Sun Microsystems gave a presentation on Java accessibility. There is a
>Java accessibility programming interface contained in the Java Foundation
>Class/Swing Set user interface components that will work with certain
>screen readers. More infromation is located at www.sun.com/access
>
>3. This is slightly off the web accessibility topic, but interesting.
>There is a new standard for digital talking books called DAISY. This new
>format is being tested by Recordings for the Blind and Dyslexic by some of
>their customers at different schools and universities. It is now
>multimedia based, so that those with vision can listen and read along;
>blind people can listen to the audio, which is much clearer and allows for
>random access (yay!). More info on this is available at
>http://www.rfbd.org/techup.html The big problem is that converting books
>into this format is time consuming and expensive. Also, if digital talking
>books become the norm, organizations and individuals will need to buy
>digital audio players which cost around $400-500 and it will be a huge
>layout for places like the Library of Congress and RFBD.
>
>4. U. of Toronto is updating its review of web courseware and how
>accessible it is. I believe they are still in the process of collecting
>the information. The web site about their project is at
>http://snow.utoronto.ca/initiatives/crseval/oltproposal.htm#EXECUTIVE
>
>5. The California Community Colleges have established Distance Education
>Guidelines to ensure that any distance ed. course offered is accessible.
>Their initiatives include establishing a statewide alternative media center
>to convert course materials to audio tape, Braille or large print as well
>as captioning of old videos, purchasing captioning decks so new videos
>will have captions, and setting up training centers for faculty and staff.
>It adds up to $7 million. More on this amazing effort is at
>http://www.acvc.htctu.fhda.edu/
>
>6. Version 3.2 of Bobby (web accessibility checker) is due to be released
>in a few weeks. 3.2 has some new features including better online help,
>Java accessibility reporting, and improved handling of foreign character
>sets. Bobby 4.0 (not due out for 1-2 years) will also be valildating
>Cascading Style Sheets and may even have a fix it option.
>
>7. SMIL (Synchronized Multimedia Integration Language) is an XML based
>markup language that allows captioning and audio description of videos.
>The World Wide Web Consortium has released the 3rd draft of SMIL, called
>Boston. There are a number of authoring tools that produce SMIL, include
>MAGpie, developed by WGBH/NCAM. That is located at www.wgbh.org/ncam
>
>8. There seem to be more complaints filed by students at colleges and
>universities regarding lack of accessibility of web sites and courseware.
>Stay tuned. Usually the Office for Civil Rights of the federal Dept. of
>Education investigates these and enters into agreements with the
>institutions.
>
>9. Went to a neat talk on using Voice XML which allows users to access web
>sites via a phone and voice. Businesses and organizations would have to
>write a voice user interface for their web sites, but they would get much
>more market penetration (since many more people have phones than
computers).
>
>Talk to me if you would like more information.
>
>Kathy
>
>
>Kathy Cahill
>MIT ATIC lab 11-103
>253-5111
>kcahill@mit.edu
>
----------------
Rob Smyser Business Liaison Team, MIT Information Systems, N42-040
smyser@mit.edu 617.253.1358 http://web.mit.edu/blt
