Archive for February, 2009

The LightHouse is currently call for submissions to its 20th Insights exhibition. “The LightHouse is accepting up to five submissions of original works by artists who are blind or visually impaired for consideration for Insights 2009.” Submissions are due by Friday, April 24, 2009. Chosen entries will be shown in Fall 2009 at the...
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A few days ago, I had begun to despair that my attempt to bring about more iPhone accessibility would be a long, lonely waste of time. Apple has been unresponsive to my campaign. Few contacted developers responded to my suggestions. I turned to a few iPhone developer forums. At rirst, I had little luck...
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Today Amazon announced that it was surrendering to the Author’s Guild – Amazon Backs off Text-to-Speech Feature in Kindle – Bits Blog – NYTimes.com. The new Talk To Me feature, a form of text to speech, in Amazon’s Kindle will be disabled at the whim of the publisher. How many publishers will not exercise...
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Following up on my rant against the Blount Op-Ed piece, the AFB has a well-written (much better than mine) blog post on the same issue: Kindle sparks a flame war, but fails to light the fire for accessibility – AFB’s Blog. While the Kindle offers text-to-speech options, it doesn’t include talking menus or fully...
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Coalition of Organizations for Accessible Technology is pushing its petition to support legislation that makes technology more accessible to all people. Sign the Petition to Support the Bill: COAT now has an online petition to support passage of the 21st Century Communications and Video Accessibility Act.  Sign it now, and spread the word! I don’t...
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As you can tell, I am a big fan of WordPress, which I use to publish this blog. But I am not always at my desk when a good idea for a post strikes. I have been looking into ways to blog on the go, so to speak, even if that just means while...
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Shortcovers, the alleged Kindle killer, went live this morning. So what is shorcovers? It is a e-book service built around mobile devices. The idea is to read books on your iPhone, your Blackberry or whichever smart phone you might use. Unlike other great e-book software, like Stanza, shortcovers is paired with a commercial bookstore...
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As seen on the Talking Books Librarian, the American Foundation for the Blind’ is conducting a Survey on Small Screen Visual Displays at http://www.afb.org/Section.asp?Mode=Survey&SurveyID=101. Taken from the website: AFB TECH, the technology arm of the American Foundation for the Blind, is currently working to establish standards to improve the readability of small screen visual...
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Apple has just released the latest itereation of its web browser, Safari, for Mac and Windows. As well as Apple may play with screen readers, I have not been a fan of Apple software from a readability perspective. I have found the fonts tiny (both on web pages and in the program itself) and...
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On today’s Op-Ed page in the New York Times, Roy Blount, Jr, head of the Author’s Guild, has penned a piece, The Kindle Swindle?, defending his organizations attack on the new text to speech (TTS) feature in the new Amazon Kindle 2. Over at O”Reill Media, there is An Open Letter to Roy Blount,...
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Each month the Assistive Technology Blog Carnival presents a a series of themed posts on assistive tech. This month’s issue, the February 2009 Edition of AT Blog Carnival, features Perfect Pairings of Assistive Technology Tools. Welcome to The AT Blog Carnival for February is “Perfect Pairings”, highlighting combinations of assistive technology that work together....
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Dean, over at Bushido Designs, has responded to my call for an accessible WordPress theme. In a recent post, Surprise! Your “semantic, accessible, search engine friendly” WordPress theme is none of the above, Dean announced his development and release of the initial version of the Access theme. Among other things, the themes is designed...
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The American Foundation for the Blind is doing a Survey on Social Networking Sites . They are looking at MySpace, Facebook, Twiter, etc. This month AccessWorld asks about social networking sites. We want to find out whether you use them and how accessible you think they are. Personally, I find myself using Twitter as...
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Spotted on the Talking Books Librarian post, there is a “Cool contest for young artists living with disabilities“. Accelerate, sponsored by VSA arts and Volkswagen of America, Inc., is an open juried exhibition for young disabled artists. The deadline for submissiotn is June 19, 2009. There are several prizes, including a Grand Prize of...
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Boston.com’s The Big Picture offerss some wonderful photos of Carnival. It is Carnival Season in many countries around the world with a Roman Catholic heritage. Celebrations and parades put on just prior to the observance of Lent. Tomorrow will be the Mardi Gras in New Orleans, but the past couple of weeks have seen...
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