-----Original Message-----
From: Dan Jellinek [mailto:[log in to unmask]]
Sent: Friday, December 08, 2006 7:14 AM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: E-Access Bulletin: December 2006
++E-ACCESS BULLETIN
- ISSUE 84, DECEMBER 2006.
Technology news for people with vision impairment
( http://www.headstar.com/eab/ ).
Sponsored by:
RNIB
( http://www.rnib.org.uk )
BT Age and Disability Unit
( http://www.btplc.com/age_disability/ )
Ford Motor Company
( http://www.ford.co.uk )
NOTE: Please forward this free bulletin to others (subscription details
at the end). We conform to the accessible Text Email Newsletter
(TEN) Standard:
http://www.headstar.com/ten/ .
++Issue 84 Contents.
++Section One: News.
01: Windows 'Vista' Offers Enhanced Accessibility
- packaged for retail market from January.
02: E-Petition For Accessible Websites On Prime Minister's Site
- calls for better government website design.
03: BBC iPlayer Team To Begin User Testing
- streaming device to be tested by vision impaired users.
News in Brief: 04: United Stand - UN e-accessibility; 05: Netgem No
More - set top box discontinued; 06: Nice Type - new key font.
Section Two: 'The Inbox' - Readers' Forum.
07: Subsidy Question - technology grant response; 08: Guidance
Clarity - web guidance omission; 09: Training Tips - IT training
advice; 10: Sound Clash - musical sites and screen readers.
Section Three: Focus - Operating Systems.
11: 'Vista' Changes the Image of Accessibility: Mel Poluck takes a
look at accessibility features of the latest version of the Microsoft
Windows operating system, Vista, and finds the company has taken
steps to present the tools in a more positive light.
Section Four: Focus - Web 2.0.
12: Leaving The Sensible Shoes At The Door: A lack of knowledge
about the creativity of vision impaired people and of collaboration
between the voluntary sector and entrepreneurs, may mean vision
impaired people are missing out on participating in developing Web
2.0 tools, suggests Kevin Carey.
[Contents ends].
++Special Notice: e-Access '07 Date Announcement.
We are pleased to announce the date of e-Access '07, the UK's leading
annual event on access to technologies by people with all disabilities,
hosted by E-Access Bulletin. It will be held earlier than usual next
year, on 2 May 2007 in Central London.
More information about e-Access '07 will be announced shortly, but
please hold the date in your diary if you intend to come along!
As ever, sponsorship and exhibitor opportunities will also be available
at the event. If you are interested in these please contact Claire Clinton
at [log in to unmask] .
[Special Notice ends].
Section One: News.
+01: Windows 'Vista' Offers Enhanced Accessibility.
The new version of Microsoft's Windows operating system, 'Vista',
offers enhanced access features including an improved screen
magnifier, a basic screen reader and the capability to allow users to
customise settings according to their needs.
The 'Ease of access center'
( http://www.microsoft.com/enable/training/windowsvista/eoa.aspx ),
contains a set of 'recommended settings,' pages whose function it is to
assess the level of the user's disability and make appropriate changes
Users are asked to tick boxes next to statements such as: 'I am blind,'
'Lighting conditions make it difficult to see a monitor' or 'Images and
text on a TV are hard to see' in short questionnaires grouped by
impairment.
The 'center' is available from the desktop, in a move to make access
features easier to discover, Director of the Accessible Technology
Group, Rob Sinclair told E-Access Bulletin at a Vista accessibility
briefing in Brussels last week. User feedback revealed many users
simply did not know access features existed in the previous version of
the operating system.
The software giant has also shed the wheelchair logo that was
previously used to open accessibility features available in the 'control
panel' menu of its predecessor Windows XP. According to Sinclair,
not everybody identified themselves with the symbol; particularly
those with a temporary disability.
Improvements have also been made to the system's screen magnifier
which now enlarges on-screen content by up to 16 times; and to
Narrator, a basic screen reader with a new natural-sounding speech
engine called Anna. The team aims to further improve these features
said Sinclair.
The Vista operating system was launched to businesses last week and
released on the retail market at the end of January 2007.
+02: E-Petition For Accessible Websites On Prime Minister's Site.
An e-petition has gone live on the '10 Downing Street,' the British
Prime Minister's website aiming to persuade Tony Blair to ensure
government complies with basic web accessibility requirements from
when they are launched.
One of 892 e-petitions
( http://petitions.pm.gov.uk/govaccessibility/ ),
it reads: "We the undersigned petition the Prime Minister to ensure that
any website launched by the government complies with accessibility
standards (WCAG AA at least)."
The open petitions initiative, which went live last month, from non-
profit e-democracy organisation MySociety, allows the British public
to start and sign any petition on a range of topics online.
The petitioner, web designer and member of the Guild of Accessible
Web Designers (GAWDS) Ian Fenn published the plea after
discovering the website of the Department of Trade and Industry (DTI)
failed to meet basic accessibility standards despite the department's
claims that it reached level AAA according to the Web Accessibility
Initiative's Web Content Accessibility Guidelines, following a 200,000
pound re-vamp last June.
The last attempt by Clackmannanshire Council web manager Dan
Champion and Web Standards Project's Accessibility Task Force
member Bruce Lawson to gain information from the DTI using
Freedom of Information Law on why the lack of accessibility remained
was refused on the grounds that it would take too long and cost too
much money to answer, Champion told E-Access Bulletin.
"However, the new site was launched failing even basic accessibility
guidelines, hence failing to meet the DTI's own standards and
requirements as specified in official documentation," said Jon Gibbins
of Fifth November web design
A DTI spokesperson said the website reaches AAA level of WCAG for
its templates and checking and improving accessibility was an ongoing
process. The petition deadline is 21 February 2007.
The plea has so far been signed by 198 people at the time of writing,
whose names can be viewed online - meaning it has received less
signatures than a petition for the Prime Minister to stand on his head
and juggle ice-cream.
+03: BBC iPlayer Team To Begin User Testing.
A prototype of the 'iPlayer', a new online multimedia content player
developed by the BBC, is to be tested next month by 100 people with
disabilities.
The iPlayer will allow UK viewers and listeners to stream audio and
video content over the internet including all TV programmes broadcast
on BBC TV - and later BBC radio programmes, for up to seven days
after an initial broadcast. The service will include audio description
where it is already included in programmes
The iPlayer project, which began in 2003, includes the 'display settings
project' that develops the ability to customise content such as fonts
size, adjust on-screen colour contrast, the spacing between letters and
words and the ability to make content linear for ease of navigation by
screen reader users.
Gareth Ford Williams, Senior Content Producer, Accessibility at BBC
New Media said the iPlayer could create a template for a "completely
accessible interface" that could be applied to other BBC online features
and websites. "The long term plan is to get it site-wide," said Ford
Williams. "You could log on from any PC and the settings will migrate
with you."
Before the external user group begins testing the service, BBC staff
with a vision impairment are also set to test the iPlayer and provide the
development team with feedback. In future, Ford Williams said the
BBC New Media accessibility team will also weave in feedback from
users via the BBC's Web 2.0 blog and through the existing user
groups.
"Access is being built in from the bottom up," says Paul Crichton,
director of web analytics consultants net-progress
( http://www.net-progress.co.uk/ )
and author of the BBC's Web 2.0 blog. "The plan at this stage is to
make it completely malleable. The degree of customisation sounds
exciting. So if you missed the audio description version of Torchwood
on BBC2 this week, log on to the iPlayer site and eventually you'll be
able to watch it, audio description and all," said Crichton.
The iPlayer will be released in April 2007, although Ford Williams
said "In the first two years it will go through many releases. What we
put out in the first release is not the finished article."
++News in Brief:
+04: United Stand: Access to information and communication
technologies by people with a disability was the theme of the United
Nations' international day of persons with disabilities on 4 December.
To mark the event, the UN held a conference on e-accessibility; held
the first meeting of the Global Initiative for Inclusive Technologies;
and launched a "Global Audit of Web Accessibility," commissioned
from UK consultancy Nomensa:
http://fastlink.headstar.com/un4 .
+05: Netgem No More: The Netgem i-Player set top box for receiving
accessible, audio described programmes via audible on-screen menus
has been discontinued. The company that produced the device,
Netgem, says it will not know until the new year what replacement
device may be made available, if any. Some models are still available
from the online 'BT shop' although these would need to be upgraded
by Netgem to receive audio description:
http://www.netgem.com/EN/index.php .
+06: Nice Type: An easy-to-read font aimed at low vision technology
users for use by designers and manufacturers of any equipment with
keys such as telephones, cash machines, computer keyboards, kitchen
appliances and medical equipment has been released by accessibility
organisation Tiresias. The font, Tiresias Keyfont V2, can be freely
downloaded from:
http://www.tiresias.org/fonts/keyfont.htm .
[Section One ends].
++Section Two: 'The Inbox'
- Readers' Forum.
Please email all contributions or responses to
[log in to unmask] .
+07: Subsidy Question: Roger Wilson-Hinds writes in response to a
feature by Kevin Carey 'All Change!' published in our September
issue, on the UK government's technology grant scheme Access To
Work.
"I don't know whether Kevin Carey is unlucky, too patient in putting
up with shoddy stuff, or typical of users. The equipment I use is great. I
have an ET embosser which is like a workhorse. My low cost software
LookOUT and more recently Thunder, crashes perhaps once or twice a
month and even then I don't know whether it's the computer itself,
other software or the screen reader at fault.
"I have been self-employed since 1992 and am delighted to be able to
say that for the past four years I have earned enough to purchase my
own equipment which is a great source of personal satisfaction and
achievement.
"As far as unemployed people are concerned, I have become
evangelical in promoting the freeware model: there should be and is a
screen reader which is free for home personal use and chargeable to
organisations on an annual subscription basis. Much better this way, I
think, than hoping for cooperation from the charities, government and
access suppliers.
"My experience is that there is good technology about and sometimes
this is overpriced and oversold. Access To Work is highly desirable,
but the very existence of such a subsidy only pushes the prices higher,
leaving unemployed, unfunded or inarticulate people further behind
and unable to pay.
[further responses to [log in to unmask]].
+08: Guidance Clarity: Julie Howell Technical Author, PAS 78 and
Director of Public Relations at Fortune Cookie web designers
( http://www.fortunecookie.co.uk )
writes in response to a story in the last issue, 'Public Sector Needs
Better Guidance On Web Accessibility'.
"The piece makes no mention of key guidance that was published early
in 2006," writes Julie. "I am referring to Publicly Available
Specification 78: Guide to Good practice in Commissioning Accessible
Websites (PAS 78), commissioned by the Disability Rights
Commission and published by the British Standards Institution. RNIB
was the Technical Author and the document was redrafted by a
steering group that included: Abilitynet, the Cabinet Office, IBM,
Tesco.com, University College London and the Usability Professionals
Association. It was then reviewed by 120 industry experts and
interested parties including representatives from Adobe, the Web
Accessibility Initiative (WAI) and disabled people ourselves.
"PAS 78 contains detailed guidance on the process for developing
accessible websites, and includes information on the role of automated
testing tools, WAI guidelines and other web standards, and advice on
when and how to involve disabled people in user testing your website.
It is available free from:
http://www.drc-gb.org/pas .
"I hope that everyone who cares about the inclusion of disabled people
in public life will read PAS 78 and recommend it to everyone in the
public sector who has responsibility for government websites. It would
be tragic to overlook this document - the DRC invested public money
in its production and I truly believe that it contains much valuable
information that complements the WAI guidelines."
[Further responses to [log in to unmask]].
+09: Training Tips: Jonathan White from Crewe in Cheshire, UK
writes in response to a note from Claire Cheskin in the last bulletin on
her difficulty accessing European Computer Driving Licence (ECDL)
training materials. "Royal National College for the Blind have
produced training materials for ECDL, plus other courses, for use with
Jaws version 7.1 and Supernova version 7.0," he says.
Julia Cosgrove adds: "I worked for the National Health Service and,
four years ago, it was suggested I should do one of the college courses.
Instead of doing this on my own, they referred me to North Tyneside
College where, they have facilities for those who use screen readers,
large print, etc.
In class, you are provided with your own personal assistant who reads
you the questions. If you get stuck, the tutor is asked to help and the IT
people there were helpful. As well as the ones in the normal help files
of Word and Excel, JAWS also has its own range of keyboard
shortcuts which can be found in help files. It has been three years since
I did the course and I rather think Jaws will have improved quite a lot.
"I did all the modules within the year as we were tested after each
module and this was placed in a book which was sent to the examining
board at the end of the year. Powerpoint was, of course, the most
difficult but my personal assistant and class tutor were very helpful and
they even let me have extra lessons before the end of the summer term.
"I would advise Claire Cheskin to ask her employers to get in touch
with a local college and see if they have the right facilities for her.
Also, she should make sure they have an up-to-date version of JAWS."
[Further responses to [log in to unmask]].
+10: Sound Clash: David Bates, from Dudley in the UK writes: "I
recently visited a website to check some technical figures. The
homepage was fine, but on clicking the required link I was met with a
blast of music. Having recently lost most of my sight I use a
programme, which reads out the text on the screen with a synthetic
voice, which on this site was completely obliterated by the music.
I waited for the music to finish so that I could listen to the text but,
you've guessed it, the music was continuous.
"Does this trend mean that I will eventually be barred from all
websites, or will I be allowed a 'no sound or video' option as the first
link on the homepage? People who lose their sight can use a screen
reader, just so long as website developers don't drive them away with a
compulsory soundtrack."
[Responses to [log in to unmask]].
[Inbox ends]
++Section Three - Focus
Windows Vista.
+11: 'Vista' Changes the Image of Accessibility.
by Mel Poluck
'Vista', the new version of Microsoft Windows available to businesses
from last week and released to the public at the end of January,
includes a range of new accessibility features. And interestingly, two
of the most noticeable differences in its accessibility offerings
compared with Windows XP are simple changes in terminology and
imagery.
Microsoft's accessibility team has eliminated a couple of accessibility
stalwarts: the old wheelchair symbol usually found in the 'control
panel' option under settings' in the 'start' menu and the well-
established term 'accessibility' has been ditched altogether.
"People had to click on a wheelchair. People don't identify with that,"
Rob Sinclair, Director of the Accessibility Team at Microsoft, told E-
Access Bulletin. So unobvious were the access were access features in
XP that, worryingly, when Sinclair demonstrated them, "people got
excited because they think they're brand new," he said.
In its place, there is a set of short questionnaires allowing users to "let
the system know" about their personal access needs, enabling the
system to tailor its interfaces accordingly. The 'Ease of access center'
has a set of 'recommended settings,' pages whose function it is to
assess the level of the user's disability and make appropriate changes.
The first set of questions relates to vision impairment and asks user to
tick boxes next statements like: 'I am blind,' 'Lighting conditions
make it difficult to see a monitor' and 'Images and text on a TV are
hard to see.' Other question pages relate to cognitive, hearing, and
mobility impairments.
"I'm curious because it's our first attempt at asking questions of the
customer and recommending settings." But he is cautious not to give
the impression this is the be-all and end-all of the operating system's
accessibility. "We see this first 'Ease of access center' as a baby step,"
said Sinclair.
Importantly, this feature is available from the desktop, so users may
now find themselves more easily stumbling upon accessibility features
whether they want to or not. And, juxtaposed against the previous
situation, this becomes an important point, because according to
Sinclair, based on customer feedback on previous Windows versions,
XP and 2003, users often simply did not know accessibility features
existed. Consequently, while the software giant's marketing team has
decided to shed one piece of terminology, accessibility, they have
coined a new one to help drive their strategy: 'discoverability.'
The 'Ease of access centre' is also the gateway to a set of new access
features including a speech recognition feature, carried over from its
predecessor XP, 'Narrator.' The screen reader has an updated, natural-
sounding voice, 'Anna,' designed to read Vista operating system
screen content only. Sinclair said this could not yet replace added-on
assistive software. "We've focused on building a foundation," he said.
For the first time in its history, Microsoft invited the collaboration of
assistive technology vendors during the development phase, which
lasted around five years. Last February for example, some 25 assistive
technology vendors including Freedom Scientific, Dolphin and GW
Micro, came to Microsoft headquarters in Redmond where they wrote
code alongside staff allowing the smaller companies to build
compatible products. "Many left with a product running on Vista," said
Sinclair. In turn, this allowed Vista accessibility developers to garner
valuable feedback about the operating system. "We sent them a
preliminary version of Vista and they built their product on that. In the
past we'd ship Windows then assistive technology vendors would
spend time getting their products ready," said Sinclair.
Another change is improvements to the built-in screen magnifier with
the capacity to enlarge text to 16 times its original size. "The way the
screen reader draws the screen is completely reinvented for Vista. It
offers high quality magnification without jagged edges," he said. "It
was harder than we imagined."
He added that with more time and people the team could have further
improved the magnifier, but Sinclair doesn't see the development
phase as over yet. "The infrastructure is in place to do more interesting
things," Sinclair told E-Access Bulletin. "We still have a long way to
go. Vista is the first step down a new path."
[Section three ends].
++Sponsored Notice - Becta consultation.
- 'Reasonable adjustments' for educational software.
http://industry.becta.org.uk/display.cfm?resID=25444 .
Becta has launched a consultation process to seek your views on the
'reasonable adjustment' to be expected in future educational software
and electronic materials for pupils with special educational needs or
disabilities. This is an important milestone in the progress toward an
inclusive and accessible curriculum.
We have produced draft guidelines and invite your comments and
contributions regarding the criteria for 'reasonable adjustment,'
available from the Becta community pages:
http://communities.becta.org.uk/digitalresources/reasonableadjustment/
The site also offers the opportunity to participate in open debate on this
issue, which will continue after the consultation.
The consultation period is open until 12 December, after which the
guidelines will be revised and made available on the Becta website in
February 2007.
[Sponsored notice ends].
++Section Four - Focus
- Web 2.0.
+12: Leaving The Sensible Shoes At The Door
by Kevin Carey.
We are already on the leading edge of what is somewhat pretentiously
called Web 2.0, or "The Social Media". By the end of this year there
will be: 100 million blogs and the number is said to be doubling every
six months; 120 million YouTube downloads per day; and 130 million
members of MySpace.
Meanwhile, back in the world where the one-eyed man is king, we are
still wringing our hands or sitting on the edge of our seats in
anticipation of the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.0.
I can understand why we have concentrated on accessing and
processing data but as far back as the writer and futurist Alvin Toffler's
book The Third Wave of 1980, it was clear that to consume would
never be enough; that to survive we had to become both producers and
consumers - "Prosumers" he called them.
The nostrum of Mr Micawber, the Charles Dickens' character from
David Copperfield - "Annual income twenty pounds, annual
expenditure 19 pounds 19 and six, result happiness. Annual income 20
pounds, annual expenditure 20 pounds ought and six, result misery' -
was not peculiar to the Victorians, nor even to the analogue age!
In addition to the economics of creativity over consumption, there is
the dimension of pleasure; it is rewarding to be able to contribute.
So what is the sector supposed to do? First, recognise the problem.
Both employees and those who are too old to work - the majority of
vision impaired people - need a balance between consumption and
production. A symptom of our problem is the time it has taken for any
consciousness in the sector of the importance first of television and
then, more recently, of games. The message here is that production is a
key concept in the unfolding of the 'Information age'.
Secondly, this initiative to create authoring tools cannot be left to the
third sector, academia, business or government alone. We need:
government commitment to creativity in general and that of disabled
people in particular; academic interest in solution-based, closed-ended
research; business interest in solutions which benefit our sector but
have wider commercial possibilities; and voluntary sector leadership
and seed capital.
Thirdly, the voluntary sector, primarily RNIB, needs to establish a
major study into the creativity of blind and visually impaired people,
looking at education, work and leisure in the digital age.
A survey of the British Journal of Visual Impairment, and the Journal
of Visual Impairment and Blindness of the American Foundation of the
Blind, shows how far behind academics are. We know precious little
about digital creativity in general and know next to nothing about the
creative processes of blind and visually impaired people in particular.
The reason why third sector initiative is so important is that business
and government are primarily concerned with consumption because
this preserves the top-down model of sales and service delivery. The
social media have arisen exclusively out of the tie-up between the
entrepreneurial and third sectors.
It has to be admitted, however, that the US third sector is more
independent and flexible than ours, relying as it does on unconditional
tax-concession fuelled philanthropy rather than on project-funding
painfully extracted from a grudging public sector.
Our dependence makes us cautious and so the conjunction of third
sector and entrepreneurship has been rare. What our third sector needs
to do is to float off some of its funding into satellite creativity
ventures.
The culture of corporate worthiness - all sensible shoes and safe pairs
of hands - is not conducive to the kind of enterprise which involves
kids in jeans ordering in pizza at midnight and sleeping next to their
computers. Postmodern problems need postmodern solutions.
NOTE: Kevin Carey is director of social digital inclusion charity
HumanITy, Vice-Chair of the RNIB and editorial advisor on E-Access
Bulletin.
[Section Four ends].
++Special Notice: Web Accessibility Forum.
Accessify Forum is a discussion forum devoted to all topics relating to
web accessibility. Topics cover everything from 'Beginners' and 'Site
building and testing' through to projects such as the new accessibility
testing tool WaiZilla and the accessibility of the open source forum
software itself.
All you need to register is a working email address, so come along and
join in the fun at:
http://www.accessifyforum.com .
[Special notice ends].
++Special Notice: Braille Translations.
Braille Translations provides a fast, cost-effective, high quality service
of translating any document into Braille. We are able to provide Braille
menus, public leaflets and business cards in Braille and help make you
compliant with the Disability Discrimination Act. We can translate
from large print, audio tape or audio CD.
We can also help with premises accessibility including Braille Tactile
Signs for toilets and other doors.
All work is proof-read before dispatch and we are able to provide an
express 24-hour service. Please call our offices for an immediate
quotation or for further information on Freephone number 08000 190
946; Mobile: 07903 996533; email [log in to unmask] or
see:
http://www.brailletranslations.co.uk .
++End Notes.
+How to Receive the Bulletin.
To subscribe to this free monthly bulletin, email
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You can list other email addresses to subscribe in the body of the
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Please send comments on coverage or leads to Dan Jellinek at:
[log in to unmask] .
Copyright 2006 Headstar Ltd http://www.headstar.com .
The Bulletin may be reproduced as long as all parts including this
copyright notice are included, and as long as people are always
encouraged to subscribe with us individually by email. Please also
inform the editor when you are reproducing our content. Sections of
the bulletin may be quoted as long as they are clearly sourced as 'taken
from e-access bulletin, a free monthly email newsletter', and our web
site address http://www.headstar.com/eab is also cited.
+Personnel:
Editor - Dan Jellinek
Deputy editor - Derek Parkinson
Senior reporter - Mel Poluck
Additional reporting - Jude Pope
Technical advisor - Nick Apostolidis
Editorial advisor - Kevin Carey.
ISSN 1476-6337 .
[Issue ends.]
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