Home > Web Services > Resources > You are here Industry news

Industry news

18 September 2006

Call for tenders to analyse assistive technology industry

The European Commission's Directorate General for Information Society and the Media has published a call for tenders to analyse and federate the assistive technology information and communication technologies (ICT) industry.
http://cordis.europa.eu/

New RNIB Section

The RNIB now has a section on software (as distinct from web) accessibility on its website.
It aims to be "a source of information for software designers and developers, systems integrators, procurement professionals and accessibility policy makers. Here you will find advice on how to design, procure and test the most accessible systems for all manner of users."
http://www.rnib.org.uk/

Free Text to Speech Phone Calls!

Using a demo form at cdyne.com you can make free phone calls using the latest text to speech technology. It's as easy as enter a few details about you and your recipient and your call will be sent for processing. This could prove to be quite interesting for hearing impaired users.
http://www.aftervoice.com/

Textic Talklets

Textic have just released Talklets - a purely web based screen reading application, which is aimed at both individual users and web developers. It seems to work by holding your mouse over a block of text. So not really appropriate for severe vision impairment, but might be suitable for other user groups (literacy issues, dyslexia etc).
http://textictalk.com/

Tricks ‘n tips

For more info about the use of display:none for screen readers see:
http://css-discuss.incutio.com/

Also using letters like ‘c’ and ‘r’ for accesskeys is not ideal as they often conflict with screen reader or other keyboard shortcuts – this is a real pain but what is becoming a common standard is the use of the numbers 0 – 9 – while not very memorable they are the safest keys to use – for example the BBC use them – see http://www.bbc.co.uk/accessibility/

There is also a technique to make accesskeys customizable to get round this problem, see
http://www.456bereastreet.com/

Back to the Industry news home page.

For more information:

Email accessibility@AbilityNet.org.uk
Phone 0800 269545

Go to Top.