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Industry news

13 November 2006

News from the week:

IBM Home Page Reader is Dead

An announcement from IBM this week that they are no longer updating Home Page Reader. They say:
“While IBM does not have plans for any further updates of HPR, we will continue to invest strongly in innovation for accessibility, and we are fully committed to continuing to advance the state-of-the-art.”
http://ability.aol.com/

Web 2.0 Conference: Flash and Firefox to unite

Adobe will contribute source code to the Mozilla Foundation as the two organisations aim to establish a standard scripting language that developers can use to create interactive applications for Flash Player and Firefox.
http://www.macworld.co.uk/

Perceiving the true potential of technology

ZDNet interviews Robin, on a nice feature on how technology has affected his life.
http://resources.zdnet.co.uk/

U.Va. Aims to Improve Accessibility of Web Site

The University of Virginia plans to install software that can convert its 3.5 million Web pages into a format optimized for users with disabilities.
http://www.computerworld.com/

A useful series of articles has started to be published:

Designing for Dyslexics: Part 1 of 3

This is the first in a series of three articles examining the specific learning difficulty known as dyslexia and how web design can impact the ability of those afflicted to access information on web pages.
http://accessites.org/

Useful resources

Install multiple versions of IE on your PC

An installer which installs IE 3, 4, 5, and 6 on your machine. Coool.. Especially as IE7 because an ‘optional update’ in the Windows updater this week. Might suddenly find a lot more people using it.
http://tredosoft.com/Multiple_IE

Useful Firefox extension: CLiCk Speak

Open source, free extension to Firefox which reads web pages. It is not for visually impaired users, more users that have literacy or cognitive problems and want to have text read to them.
http://clickspeak.clcworld.net/

Browser shots

Screen shots from various versions of Safari, Firefox, MS-IE, Opera, several Linux browsers. And is the bargain price of free!
http://browsershots.org

Upcoming event

The Future of Web Apps

Two-day conference next February focusing on the development technology you'll be using tomorrow. Registration opens 13 November.
http://www.futureofwebapps.com/

Something to do on the weekend?

Geocaching

Hide and seek with a GPS. Sounds like well-cool fun!
http://www.geocaching.com/

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For more information:

Email accessibility@AbilityNet.org.uk
Phone 0800 269545

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