Public sector bodies should draw up accessible publishing strategies that integrate their approaches to web and print publishing thereby ensuring dissemination of their most important messages to the most relevant audiences, delegates heard at last month’s E-Access ‘08 conference.
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A new scheme to badge certain digital TV products as ‘easy to install’ for older people and people with disabilities has been launched this week by the independent research charity Ricability.
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A European research programme to improve access to e-learning platforms and courses by people with disabilities, with a special focus on distance learning, is to hold a consultation meeting in the UK next month.
The Accessible e-Learning Platform for Europe (ALPE) (https://adenu.ia.uned.es/alpe/) complements the European accessible learning programme EU4ALL ( http://www.eu4all-project.eu/).
Local councils should carry out both technical accessibility testing and
user testing of their websites to minimise exclusion of people with
disabilities, and not just take one or other approach, a new report from
the local government Society of IT Management (Socitm) finds.
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The local government Society of IT Management (Socitm) this week published a report on website accessibility which included a round-up of the five most common accessibility errors.
The society estimates that these five errors account for 76% of all website accessibility failures, and it asked Robin Christopherson, Head of Accessibility Services at the charity AbilityNet, to describe their impact. Robin is blind and uses the popular ‘JAWS’ screen reader software to access the web.
With the switchover to digital TV rolling across the UK between now and 2012, blind people and people with impaired vision, who paradoxically are major watchers of TV, have more to cope with than most in finding and installing the best new receiving, viewing and recording equipment.
Although there is a national Digital TV Help Scheme offering (relatively) accessible digital TV receiver equipment and installation support at a low cost and free to people on benefits, people will often still be faced with tough choices about which equipment to choose or use when they want to buy outside of this scheme, or share a household with others.
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The UK government set up Ofcom in 2003 to be a ’super-regulator’ for the nation’s communications industries, merging five former regulatory bodies across the television, radio, telecommunications and wireless communications sectors.
Part of the body’s role includes ensuring equal access to communications technology for disabled people, and in its first five years of operation it has carried out various projects relating to access to television, telecommunications and radio by all users. People with disabilities have been involved for example in work by Ofcom’s Consumer panel, an advisory body representing consumer interests; its broadcasting Content Board, which looks beyond consumer issues to the broader ‘public interest’; and its Advisory Committee on Older and Disabled People.
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Despite rising awareness in the web development community of issues relating to access by people with disabilities, it appears that in one vital sector at least, things may be going backwards.
The 10th annual ‘Better connected’ review of every UK council website from the local government Society of IT Management (Socitm), published this month, has revealed an alarming picture of falling standards.
The largest conference dedicated to access to technology by people with disabilities ever to take place on the sub-continent was held in New Delhi last month, with assistance from the UK’s leading blindness charity RNIB.
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It is impossible to state a definitive number for the percentage of people who suffer from dyslexia because there is no single definition of dyslexia, delegates heard at this month’s conference on Dyslexia and the Civil Service.
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