Hot Compost
12-14-2008, 07:23 AM
I'm in the middle of taking a final for a Flash programming class at the JC, & happened upon a section that is relevant to web discourse.
This is a quote describing federal law. I don't mean it in any threatening way, like, "you're not complying with federal accessibility standards" ... this is just the part of the text book that got me thinking about making a forum like this more accessible.
"Captions are also appreciated by the deaf and hearing impaired, as they provide a much needed accessible alternative for audio tracks when it comes to dialog and descriptive audio services.
The United States government passed a law, commonly known as Section 508 (because it is Section 508 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973), which introduced certain accessibility mandates for content developed for government use. Many private entities, particularly those serving the educational markets, also require accessible content. As the demand for this requirement increases, captions will play an increasingly more important role in digital video."
(from Learning ActionScript 3.0, by Shupe & Rosser)
I am vision-impaired myself, by way of a bad outcome from LASIK eye surgery. I also have experience working with a completely blind person, as a math tutor for a grad student in Computer Science at Stanford, which helped me understand the "attitudes that work" in dealing with partially disabled people.
The section about adding captions to video relates to deaf people. At Waccotalk we have the converse situation - how to make visual content accessible to people who can hear but not see.
There are web browsers that will read content (Opera 8.5) - if the person can see well enough to highlight it. There are speech recognition programs that facilitate the interaction, like Dragon Naturally Speaking & actually now built into Windows Vista.
However, to make the entire problem seamless - so that a completely blind person could participate in a discussion without stress (most people come here to relax, right ?) - that is a worthwhile challenge. It may already be a done deal, where I'm not aware of the progress that has occurred.
I suspect that the people at the Earle Baum Center could provide more info -
https://www.earlebaum.org/
Anyway, I was in the middle of taking the final and saw the section about accessibility standards in the textbook, after having just read some email from WaccoBB, and it got me thinking.
This is a quote describing federal law. I don't mean it in any threatening way, like, "you're not complying with federal accessibility standards" ... this is just the part of the text book that got me thinking about making a forum like this more accessible.
"Captions are also appreciated by the deaf and hearing impaired, as they provide a much needed accessible alternative for audio tracks when it comes to dialog and descriptive audio services.
The United States government passed a law, commonly known as Section 508 (because it is Section 508 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973), which introduced certain accessibility mandates for content developed for government use. Many private entities, particularly those serving the educational markets, also require accessible content. As the demand for this requirement increases, captions will play an increasingly more important role in digital video."
(from Learning ActionScript 3.0, by Shupe & Rosser)
I am vision-impaired myself, by way of a bad outcome from LASIK eye surgery. I also have experience working with a completely blind person, as a math tutor for a grad student in Computer Science at Stanford, which helped me understand the "attitudes that work" in dealing with partially disabled people.
The section about adding captions to video relates to deaf people. At Waccotalk we have the converse situation - how to make visual content accessible to people who can hear but not see.
There are web browsers that will read content (Opera 8.5) - if the person can see well enough to highlight it. There are speech recognition programs that facilitate the interaction, like Dragon Naturally Speaking & actually now built into Windows Vista.
However, to make the entire problem seamless - so that a completely blind person could participate in a discussion without stress (most people come here to relax, right ?) - that is a worthwhile challenge. It may already be a done deal, where I'm not aware of the progress that has occurred.
I suspect that the people at the Earle Baum Center could provide more info -
https://www.earlebaum.org/
Anyway, I was in the middle of taking the final and saw the section about accessibility standards in the textbook, after having just read some email from WaccoBB, and it got me thinking.