Empowering Technologies

RAATE conference call for papers

According to the website "RAatE 2009 is the only UK conference focused on the latest innovations and developments in assistive technology. This conference will be of interest to everyone who uses, works with, develops or conducts research on assistive technologies (AT).

The conference program has, over the past years, regularly included new technological developments, service innovations, results of formal research projects, service based research and development and a wide range of other stimulating topics.

Known as a friendly and productive conference, RAatE offers you a chance to meet and share knowledge and experience with other people working in AT."

Submit a paper online

The following Keynote Speakers will be presenting at this years RAatE Conference .....

Dr Marcia J Scherer

Dr Carrie Britton

Digital Britain: The Final Report - 16 June 2009

According to the DCMS website, "The Digital Britain Report is the Government's strategic vision for ensuring that the UK is at the leading edge of the global digital economy. It is an example of industrial activism in a crucial growth sector."

Under section 39 the authors announce "the appointment of Martha Lane Fox as Champion for Digital Inclusion. Together with her supporting Task Force, her particular focus is to represent the estimated six million adults who are both socially and digitally excluded." They go on to say under the heading:

Users with Disabilities and Digital Britain
Responses to our interim Digital Britain report highlighted the needs of people with disabilities, including people with sight, hearing or dexterity disabilities, learning disabilities and dyslexia, and the potential benefits of new digital technologies to these groups. The key problems identified in the responses were low take-up and lack of accessibility.

Ofcom's annual consumer experience reports found that in 2008 only 42%, 32% and 36% respectively of people with visual, hearing and mobility disabilities had broadband access at home, as opposed to around 60% of the general population.

We recognise the need to take these concerns into account as our action plans are implemented, in particular through the Digital Inclusion Action Plan. In the proposed new European framework for communications, provisions on access to electronic communications services for Europeans with disabilities have been strengthened to ensure they can benefit from the same usability of services as other citizens, but by different means. For the first time, the EU telecoms rules will include a provision on the availability of terminal equipment offering the requisite services and functions for users with disabilities. At UK national level there is ongoing work across Government on e-inclusion which supports our work towards the European Union's 'Riga Declaration' (June 2006).

In particular there is a priority objective to 'ensure accessibility, affordability and equal participation for disabled users in the digital economy'. For example, the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills will lead a group that draws together Government, industry and third sector to explore and understand issues of e-accessibility and develop and share best practice across all sectors. Government has also helped develop the use of technology to support those living with disabilities through individual funding commitments and pilot projects. These include the work with 'Significan't' to develop 'sign video' .Significan't is a Government funded deaf and sign language led social enterprise providing 'SignVideo', offering instant and high quality sign language interpreting via the videophone. We recognise that this key area needs further consultation to agree an Implementation Plan with agreed milestones in the overall implementation of Digital Britain.

CapturaTalk makes news - Spy technology helping dyslexics!

The BBC article takes a new slant on text to speech on a mobile phone with scanning technology.

CapturaTalk has been launched by Mobispeech and is sold by Iansyst.

John Galloway, an advisory teacher, writer and consultant - author of Harnessing Technology for Every Child Matters and Personalised Learning has also written about the product this month. "The 'scan and speak' mobile phone - CapturaTalk"

He pointed out that with the technology you can: "Take a photo of a piece of text with your mobile phone, then have it read out loud to you. If you're not sure what a word means, just pause when the yellow scanning highlighter gets to it, then click on an icon to have the dictionary definition pop up and read out." It is also possible to have emails and text messages read, in fact any text on a Windows mobile phone can be read out loud with text highlighting.

EASI Free Webinar: Accessible Tables in Word and Excel

"This Webinar will be 90 minutes long and involve you in hands-on activities.
Wednesday June 24 from 2 till 3:30 Eastern (Central time 1 till 2:30, Mountain noon till 1:30, Pacific 11 AM till 12:30).

(Note this is the first Webinar in a 2-part series. Part 2 will be on August
26 and will cover Accessible Tables in PDF and HTML).

Description:
People who use tables in Microsoft Word or ranges in Microsoft Excel on a regular basis know how quickly one can get lost in the maze of rows and columns without the use of row and column titles. Learn to use the bookmark feature in Word and the naming function in Excel to create built-in column and row header names for a cell or a range of cells. JAWS looks for certain specific names to identify which cells contain row and column titles. If the titles are defined in this fashion, the information is stored right in the document rather than in a JAWS file and can be used to speak the title information to anyone using JAWS 6.1 or later. Furthermore, anyone can build these row and column names into a table or range without even having JAWS installed.

Learn some easily applied principles that increase the accessibility of documents you create. In addition, learn how users can more easily access information by knowing helpful features in their adaptive technology. NOTE:
This webinar will be approximately one and a half hours in length (90
minutes) to allow time for interactive practice. Participants will be given the opportunity to switch away from the presentation room (while still listening to the instructor) to use sample practice documents that will be provided in advance. The practice documents open in Microsoft Word and in Microsoft Excel.

Read more and register online for this free Webinar from:
http://easi.cc/clinic.htm.

Norm Coombs,
CEO EASI Equal Access to Software and Information.

Check out EASI's New Synchronous Clinics: http://easi.cc/clinic.htm.

EASI Home Page: http://www.rit.edu/~easi."

Browsealoud website text to speech reader adds Welsh voice

Browsealound version 5 offers text highlighting as it speaks out what is available on accessible websites. It sits in the system tray as a download which works with all those sites that have been Browsaloud enabled. This covers several government sites and large organisations including the BBC's website.

BrowseAloud Welsh Version :

Welsh Voice developed by Bangor University
English Voice included
Highlights text as spoken
Reads PDFs in their original format
Reads Word documents
MP3 output
International languages

For more information contact Donna on 028 9442 8105 or email d.thomson@browsealoud.com.

MacSpeech Dictate 1.5 and Dictate Medical Available

This news comes thanks to ATMac and Ricky Buchanan has noticed the increased accuracy in dictation with this version. There is a UK spelling dictionary with a vocabulary editor. It is possible to save the voice profiles and the commands menu has been set out slightly differently from previous versions.

MacSpeech Dictate Medical has a large set of vocabularies covering many aspects of medical work with US spelling.

The cost of MacSpeachDictate with the medical supporting vocabularies is £449.95