Assistive technology for the disabled is an article describing assistive technology (AT) for those with visual, hearing, and mobility impairments. The author is physically challenged himself.
Category: “assistive technology”
Here’s a video on Yahoo!’s YUI Blog that gives a good example of how screen magnifier tools are used. Karo Caran walks us through ZoomText 9.1.
Karo Caran and Victor Tsaran: “Introduction to Screen Magnifiers”
The BBC reports on a new technology from IBM that helps visually impaired access content of web video. The tool is codenamed “A-Browser” and should release later this year. IBM hopes to make it free.
Technology giant, IBM, is soon to launch a multimedia browser to make audio and video content accessible to people with vision impairments.
Categories
Alternative Mouse
Part of web accessibility is ensuring that any input device can be used to navigate through a web site. In the Accessites.org article, “I Saw a Mouse! Where?“, Mel Pedley discusses this issue and describes several alternatives to the “normal” computer mouse including:
- Assistive Mouse Adaptor
- Ballpoint Mouse
- Air Mouse
- Head Mounted Pointer
- Touchpad
- Touchscreen
- Mouse Keys
Dennis converses with Mark McKay founder of SpokenText.net which is a new, free online application that converts documents to audio files. Excellent tool for making documents accessible by providing an alternative format. Good for iPod usage also!
Download Web Axe Episode 42 (SpokenText web app)
This site allows you to upload text (.txt), Acrobat (.pdf) or Word (.doc) files and have them converted to spoken audio. We also let you record emails, text from a website or enter the text you need converted directly.