Blog
January 14, 2010
Accessibility Knowledge Series VII – Introduction to Augmentative and Alternative Communication
Filed under: Accessibility Knowledge Series, Assistive Technologies, Elderly, Learning, Speech — @ 5:49 pmAugmentative and alternative communication (AAC) is any method that supplements or replaces speech and writing when these are temporarily or permanently impaired and inadequate to meet all or some of a person’s communication needs. AAC methods allows the user to perform that which is most human – thinking, dreaming, and planning and are effective ‘tools’ to communicate and access the environment. The users include persons with special needs and elderly.
AAC may be unaided, or aided, involving high and low technology. The array includes a simple non-tech alphabet board for spelling or display made with picture symbols and whole words, while the user just point to the symbols to frame a message. On the other hand there are software and hardware systems where the user gets support with the framing of the message (eg. word prediction), and a speech output for that message is generated.
AAC systems and voice output aids are common in the west but have been recently introduced in India. The National Resource Centre for AAC housed at Indian Institute of Cerebral Palsy (IICP) and Vidyasagar, Chennai are working in the area of research and development of AAC aids in collaboration with premier technical institutes such as IIT Kharagpur and IIT Chennai. The India Chapter of International Society for AAC has also been formed recently to take forward the movement for AAC and AT for communication in the country. The concern is to develop AAC systems that are affordable and culturally appropriate for our country.
References:
- Alant, E. (1996) Alternative and augmentative communication in developing countries: Challenges for the future. Alternative and Augmentative Communication, 12.
- Kaul, S. (2002) Silent Voices: Proceedings from the International Conference on Augmentaive & Alternative Communication, Disability and Human Rights.IICP, Kolkata.
This Accessibility Knowledge Series has been provided by Swati Chakraborty
Co-ordinator, National Resource Centre for AAC, Indian Institute of Cerebral Palsy
Disclaimer: The views expressed herein are solely those of the author as an individual with interest in accessibility and assistive technology and do not claim to represent those of Techshare India, BarrierBreak Technologies or Net Systems Informatics.
Contribute
Got an idea/product that would bring a change for persons with disabilities? Send it across to techshare@barrierbreak.com
December 24, 2009
Accessibility Knowledge Series VI – Solutions For People With Low Vision
Filed under: Accessibility, Accessibility Knowledge Series, Visual — Shilpi Kapoor @ 4:52 pmMuch often, we attend meetings and conferences; Today, mostly every speaker uses Power Point Slides to express what they will have to say. Although they speak most of the time, there would be some important content / pictures that convey information more than the talk.
Telescope or hand held magnifiers would be of immense help for people who are partially sighted to get access to these presentations.
Telescopes come in variety of ranges such as 2x, 4x etc. and they can either be hand held or can be mounted into spectacle frame and the distance can be adjusted as needed. These gadgets could also be of help to school going children who have difficulty to see the board.
Secondly, to read business cards and other printed material, portable magnifiers such as Optelec’s Portable Magnifiers could be helpful.
Using this, one can adjust size of the font, adjust the contrast as needed such as black on white, white on black, yellow on blue etc. Even one can take the snap of the material and read at a convenient distance.
Reference:
This Accessibility Knowledge Series has been provided by Srinivasu Chakravarthula, Accessibility Manager, Yahoo! India R&D
Disclaimer: The views expressed herein are solely those of the author as an individual with interest in accessibility and assistive technology and do not claim to represent those of Techshare India, BarrierBreak Technologies or Net Systems Informatics.
Contribute
Got an idea/product that would bring a change for persons with disabilities? Send it across to techshare@barrierbreak.com
December 17, 2009
Accessibility Knowledge Series V – ARIA
Filed under: ARIA, Accessibility, Accessibility Knowledge Series — Priti Rohra @ 6:57 pmInformation on the web has become intuitive and users are no longer required to submit the data for further processing on the server in order to access the same. The web today includes features of an application and at the same time provides a platform for instant exchange of data, such as photographs, instant messaging, videos, music etc. In technical terms, it happens with the use of Ajax, JavaScript, RIA, DHTML or even a combination of all of them.
Ever thought, how would people with disabilities interact with such dynamic web content?
For example, how would a person using a keyboard carry out a drag-n-drop function? Or how would someone using a screen reader read the dynamically updating information on a web page?
In order to make the dynamic web content accessible for people with disabilities, Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI) group of the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) has laid down specification for Accessible Rich Internet Application (ARIA).
ARIA specification includes techniques to define Roles, States and Properties for different web elements which will make the information available to platform Application Programming Interface (API). Assistive Technologies and Browsers render the information through APIs and convey it to the users.
Some of the benefits of implementing ARIA include:
- Assistive technologies can identify the dynamically updating web page content and inform users about the same;
- Helps Assistive Technology to identify the type of different widgets/controls, such as drop-down menus, tree views, toolbar etc and inform users about the same;
- Keyboard access to different sections of a web page, such as search, navigation, main content, application, footer etc as well as interactive widgets/controls
The WAI-ARIA specification is still at a working draft stage and already user agents, such as web browsers and Assistive Technologies have started implementing the same.
Reference:
This Accessibility Knowledge Series has been provided by Priti Rohra, Senior Accessibility Consultant, BarrierBreak Technologies
Disclaimer: The views expressed herein are solely those of the author as an individual with interest in accessibility and assistive technology and do not claim to represent those of Techshare India, BarrierBreak Technologies or Net Systems Informatics.
Contribute
Got an idea/product that would bring a change for persons with disabilities? Send it across to techshare@barrierbreak.com
December 10, 2009
Accessibility Knowledge Series IV – Audio Description
Filed under: Accessibility Knowledge Series, Visual — Mamta Tandel @ 5:29 pmAudio Description – Have you heard of it?
Often people get scared to ask a blind or low vision person to see a movie. It’s a simple myth that how he/she would enjoy a movie. Yes they can listen to the dialogues and the sounds and the music, but isn’t there more to a movie than just that.
So how can we give a person who is visually impaired the experience and enjoyment of the movie/television show?
We can add audio descriptions which is basically a narration of what is happening in a movie / television show. Audio Descriptions are delivered where there is a gap between the dialogues.
The Royal National Institute of Blind People, UK, conducted a research report – “Bollywood for all: an RNIB project on demand for audio described Bollywood films in cinema and on DVD”
http://www.rnib.org.uk/livingwithsightloss/tvradiofilm/film/Pages/bollywood.aspx
Watch a great audio-visual which simulates the need for audio description http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qu0GYkuCrRg
When will we be able to have this experience for the visually impaired people of India?
Reference:
http://www.rnib.org.uk/livingwithsightloss/tvradiofilm/film/Pages/bollywood.aspx
http://ncam.wgbh.org/richmedia/strategies/AD.php
http://www.skillsforaccess.org.uk/howto.php?id=104
This Accessibility Knowledge Series has been provided by Mamta Tandel, Accessibility Project Lead, BarrierBreak Technologies
Disclaimer: The views expressed herein are solely those of the author as an individual with interest in accessibility and assistive technology and do not claim to represent those of Techshare India, BarrierBreak Technologies or Net Systems Informatics.
Contribute
Got an idea/product that would bring a change for persons with disabilities? Send it across to techshare@barrierbreak.com
No CommentsNovember 26, 2009
Accessibility Knowledge Series III – Mobile Accessibility
Filed under: Accessibility, Accessibility Knowledge Series, Assistive Technologies, Developing Technologies, Hearing, Techshare India, Visual — Shilpi Kapoor @ 7:01 pm
Mobile Accessibility
With the advent of technology Mobile Phones are becoming more and more powerful and feature rich devices and are great temptation to have one with us. The visually impaired users are no exception to this.
Apart from making and receiving call and to sending SMS a phone is a gadget full of features including variety of communication options, navigation aid, reading appliance, internet device and yes, great asset of entertainment with the option to play and record multimedia content.
Thus the mobile technology is growing at a rate out of imagination but for Person with disability, it is not that easy to opt for high tech solutions that are made available to their non disabled counterpart.
Hold on, you will be happy to know that there are companies like Code Factory working to Make Mobile Phone Accessible to visually impaired and hearing impaired.
The Screen Reader and Magnifier are available for High-tech Phones running Either Windows Mobile or Symbian Series 60 or Blackberry (Orator). The software is capable of rendering Text in Audio or in Braille on a Braille Display. Thus making most of the things accessible out of the box such as personal information management, browsing internet, etc.
There are few interesting advantages of using a high-tech Mobile Phones with accessibility products.
- For instance using Mobile Geo can give the sense of independence in navigation and is very helpful in determining Point of Interest while navigating on a unfamiliar vicinity.
- The tools like color recognizer can help you to identify colors of different objects giving sense of independence over color choices.
- On account of learning, Daisy Books can also be played on a mobile Device thus evading the need to carry a separate device to read books. The Daisy player provides all the option available on any other hardware / software Daisy player.
Thus technology is changing lives of every one with no exception of Disabled people.
Reference:
Follow us on Twitter at http://twitter.com/codefactory and on our blog at http://codefactoryblog.wordpress.com/
Website: http://www.codefactory.es
This Accessibility Knowledge Series has been provided by Caroline Ragot, Marketing Director, Code Factory, S.L
Disclaimer:The views expressed herein are solely those of the author as an individual with interest in accessibility and assistive technology and do not claim to represent those of Techshare India, BarrierBreak Technologies or Net Systems Informatics.
Contribute
Got an idea/product that would bring a change for persons with disabilities? Send it across to techshare@barrierbreak.com
November 19, 2009
Accessibility Knowledge Series II – DAISY: Books Which Every One Can Read!
Filed under: Accessibility, Accessibility Knowledge Series, Alternate Formats, Assistive Technologies, Daisy, Elderly, Learning, Mobility, Print Disability, Visual — Shilpi Kapoor @ 2:17 pmDAISY: Books Which Every One Can Read!
Any one who has a problem in reading a normal print book can read the book prepared as a DAISY Book. Persons with blindness, low vision, Dyslexia, Learning Disability or those who cannot use both hands due to any disability and thus are not able to hold a book and turn pages can benefit from DAISY Books.
Types of DAISY Books:
- Master document that can be used for creating Braille, large print or DAISY Digital books. These are also called DAISY-xml documents.
- Audio Only DAISY Books: These are advance and new generation talking books.
- Full Text full audio DAISY Books: While listening the books, you can also view the text of what is being spoken.
- Text only DAISY Books: You will need to have a mobile phone or computer or a DAISY Player with Text to speech engine to read such DAISY Books.
Navigation in the book based on sentence, page, chapter or subsection is a unique feature of DAISY Books.
Another advantage of DAISY system is that once the source document is produced, Braille, talking book, large print or e-text versions of the book can be prepared with in minutes.
We can read these books on mobile phones, computers, CD players and dedicated DAISY Players. DAISY books are also available through internet or telephone based libraries.
We can produce DAISY Books using special software for production of DAISY Books. Many of these software are available free of cost. Some of these are sold by companies such as Dolphin Computer Access, Innovative Rehabilitation Technology Inc or Plextalk.
For information on DAISY Forum of India and list of organizations visit: www.daisyindia.org. Bookshare India also provides text only DAISY Books to its members. Or send e-mail to dfi@saksham.org
Reference:
http://www.daisy.org
http://www.saksham.org
http://www.daisyindia.org
This Accessibility Knowledge Series has been provided by Dipendra Manocha, Director of the Regional Resource Centre (New Delhi), DAISY for All
Disclaimer:The views expressed herein are solely those of the author as an individual with interest in accessibility and assistive technology and do not claim to represent those of Techshare India, BarrierBreak Technologies or Net Systems Informatics.
Contribute
Got an idea that would bring a change for persons with disabilities? Send it across to techshare@barrierbreak.com
November 12, 2009
Accessibility Knowledge Series I – Audio-Visual Content Accessible to All!
Filed under: Accessibility, Accessibility Knowledge Series, Assistive Technologies, Hearing, Techshare India — Shilpi Kapoor @ 8:30 pmAudio-Visual Content Accessible to All!
Whenever I talk of accessibility, one of the first reactions is that accessibility is for the visually impaired. Since we don’t visually see any problems with the deaf and hearing impaired, people are of the opinion that deaf or hard of hearing DO NOT face any accessibility issues.
It’s time to break this myth, especially in a day an age where content is available in audio-visual formats, the deaf or hard of hearing are at a major disadvantage.
Often you and I have problems in communicating with the deaf or hard of hearing since we might not know sign language, we often resort to gestures and to writing out what we are trying to explain to them. In the case of the web or on television or in movies where audio-visual is being used, the deaf or hard of hearing are surely impacted.
So whats the solution for them? It’s very simple, “Captioning“. I have often noticed that persons having no disability are watching captioned movies. People who don’t understand the accent often use captioning, senior citizens also can benefit from captioning. So it isn’t only the deaf and hard of hearing!
Shouldn’t we be captioning audio-visual files? Find out a lot more at Techshare India 2010.
Reference:
This Accessibility Knowledge Series has been provided by Shilpi Kapoor, Managing Director, BarrierBreak Technologies
Disclaimer:The views expressed herein are solely those of the author as an individual with interest in accessibility and assistive technology and do not claim to represent those of Techshare India, BarrierBreak Technologies or Net Systems Informatics.
Contribute
Got an idea that would bring a change for persons with disabilities? Send it across to techshare@barrierbreak.com
No CommentsNext Page |
