Word to your search capabilities
Hitachi is creating an optical character recognition technology for use with captioned media, ostensibly to make it easier to find specific scenes. Of course, for this to work, captioning not only needs to be added more universally but also needs to meet reasonable quality standards…ooh, people with hearing and learning disabilities are going to like this.
Tech-On!: Hitachi’s New Technology Recognizes Characters in Video Subtitles
Olé!
In late July, the Mexican government issued a ten-item manifesto on “Usability and Accessibility for Mexican Government Websites,” the first item of which is “To ensure the democratic access to government information and services by everyone, including users with disabilities, by embracing W3C recommendations.” Recuerdos, compadres, for better luck than the Brits are having…
UA Web: Manifesto on Usability and Accessibility for Mexican Government Websites
USB your way to health
There’s now a Personal Healthcare Device Working Group whose purpose is to encourage the development of all kinds of health monitoring devices with USB connectors so that information can be uploaded to PCs and cell phones. Ostensibly this exists to make communcation with health care providers easier, but the standard could be very useful for people with visual or cognitive disabilities–or, essentially, anyone who prefers to access information in an electronic format.
Signs of light
A team of Ryukoku University researchers is working on emergency information signs that can glow in the dark in a range of colors, not just traditional blue and green phosphor. Let’s hope they include people with various visual disabilities–including colorblindness and aging-related vision impairment–in any usability testing before deciding on standards for color combinations.
Color my world
Just in time for the holidays: info on how to make sure your expensive electronic gift doesn’t end up as a couple of paperweights. We applaud the use of color-coding to help make sure Plug A goes correctly into Slot B–but that’s not going to be much help to people with colorblindness or some other types of visual disabilities. A little information redundancy could go a long way here.
Get it together: expert tips for surviving your holiday assembly
Ignoble mobile
A recent British study found that 3/4 of people who could access the Internet on their mobile phone aren’t doing so because of slow page loading, navigation difficulties, and the failure of pages to appear properly in a non-computer format. Hmmmmm…are webmasters following the Mobile Web Best Practices Guidelines, which should benefit both disabled and non-disabled users? We bet not.
Usability News: Poor usability implicated in rejection of mobile Internet
New digital media guidelines
The National Center on Accessible Media (NCAM) has come up with a new set of accessibility guidelines to supplement the WAI Web access guidelines and similar documents. While we wish it had gone a bit further in some areas (e.g., providing a discussion of when to use null ALT attributes), it’s a useful document for covering accessibility for newer technologies.