EASI: Equal Access to Software and Information Home "Amazon and the National Federation of the Blind "Amazon and the National Federation of the Blind will collaborate on improvements to Amazon's education content, platforms, and applications, and will meet on an ongoing basis to review progress and exchange ideas and feedback..." Amazon welcomes the agreement, according to spokeswoman StephanyRochon. "We are seeing more educational institutions embrace digital learning, and this shift provides a great opportunity to improve accessibility for blind students," she said in an email. "We look forward to collaborating with the National Federation of the Blind to work together..." The 2016 Independence Science, Learning a New Direction, Conference on Disability is just around the corner We are now requesting abstract submissions from possible presenters. The ISLAND conference will be held on Friday, September 16, 2016 at the Kurz Purdue Technology Center located at 1281 Win Henschel Blvd in West Lafayette, Indiana 47906. The conference will begin at 8:00 AM with continental breakfast and conclude by or before 5:00 PM. Presentations are estimated to be 30 minutes in length with time for discussion following each presentation. Please submit a title of no more than 20 words and an abstract containing no more than 150 words to Cary Supalo, conference chair at [log in to unmask] by or before June 15, 2016. Please also include all authors and their organization affiliations in the document. Presenters will be notified if their presentation was accepted by or before July 1, 2016. All presenters are expected to register for the conference. Early bird registration concludes September 1, 2016 and will be available through the Independence Science website soon EASI soliciting sponsors for captioning Webinars We are planning to do real-time captioning of many of EASI Webinars again. We have one vendor committed to provide financial support for real-time captioning and are soliciting other sponsors. If your organization would become a sponsor, email Norm at ([log in to unmask]) EASI planning several months of Webinars We are organizing Webinars covering May through the end of the calendar year. Many of these will be based on CSUN presentations from last March. This should be up and ready long before the end of April. Accessing Higher Ground: Accessible Media, Web & Technology Conference November 14 - 18, 2016 Accessing Higher Ground 2016 is now accepting proposals for its 19th Annual Conference in Westminster, Colorado. This conference's focus is on accessible media, universal design, best practices for Web & media design, accessible curriculum, alternate format and other topics related to accessibility and usability in higher education and other environments. The speaker proposal form can be found at: (http://accessinghigherground.org/proposalform2016.php). View last year's sessions to get a sense of the typical agenda and range of topics. If you have further questions, email Howard Kramer at: [log in to unmask] or visit it on the web: URL: http://accessinghigherground.org/ ----- You received this email because you are subscribed to the Equal Access to Software & Information: (distribution list) (EASI) mailing list. If you would like to unsubscribe from this list, simply send an email to [log in to unmask] No subject or message is necessary in the email. For any questions or problems, contact the list administrator at [log in to unmask]