Web AxeHere is an excellent resource from Usability First on types of disabilities and corresponding assistive technologies:
Accessibility: Types of Accessibility Aids
Many devices are described, organized by the following types of disabilities:
On the first of February, Web Axe host Dennis Lembree gave a live webinar presentation “Twitter, Its Uses and Its Accessibility Issues” as part of the EASI Social Media Series. In addition to Twitter, the 4-part series covers Second Life, Facebook and YouTube. Here are the slides and an nice HTML version.
Here is the slide presentation embedded from Slideshare:
The author and main host of Web Axe, Dennis Lembree, is interviewed in a podcast on the BBC! It’s in the show entitled Haiti, BIL and accessibility on the BBC Pods & Blogs section. The BBC podcast can be found here, but is only available for seven days as it is then replaced by the following week’s program. (The interview starts at about 14 minutes 30 seconds into the podcast.)
The show notes state:
New and social media should not be left out of the equation of course. Dennis Lembree makes the Web Axe podcast about accessibility and has also created a Twitter reader that he says is 100% accessible.
Much of the phone interviewed was edited down, but it’s still another win for awareness of web accessibility. In addition to Web Axe, Dennis mentions AccessibleTwitter.com and the Detroit Podcasters Network.
Just before Dennis, accessibility expert and evangelist for Yahoo, Artur Ortega is interviewed.
You can download the BBC podcast here! (It’s no longer available on the BBC page.)
One may plainly say that Apple’s new iPad is an assistive technology device. Like the iPhone, it includes many accessibility features such as:
But as pointed out in the article Accessibility and the iPad: First Impressions, it additionally has the following helpful features:
Although I feel that the iPad is certainly better than Amazons’ Kindle, I believe that the iPad will not “kill” the Kindle, mostly because of the price difference. The iPad is much more expensive ranging from $499 to $699 while the Kindle is $259. For more on this, check out Apple Tablet Could Be A Kindle Killer.
Wow, this first month of 2010 flew by! So much going on in the Twittersphere, as usual. Here’s a quick summary of some great articles mentioned in the Twitter accessibility community. Please comment with anything outstanding that I’ve missed!
Also, on a sad note, we recently mourned the loss of Jack Pickard; a huge loss in the web accessibility community. Jack was a great web accessibility expert and advocate.