Blind or vision impaired

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DVD distributors confirm their commitment to access

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The Australian Visual Software Distributors Association (AVSDA), representing the home entertainment film and TV industry, has announced that all major film distributors and some smaller Australian independents have committed to making audio description and captions available on the majority of theatrical films when released on DVD.

The distributors making this commitment include Disney Studios Home Entertainment, Hopscotch Entertainment, Madman Entertainment, Paramount Home Entertainment, Roadshow Entertainment, Sony Pictures Home Entertainment, Twentieth-Century Fox Home Entertainment, Universal Pictures Video and Warner Home Video.

These distribution companies have committed to ensuring that the majority of theatrical films released to standard definition DVD will contain both audio description and English captioning or subtitles.  (A theatrical film is a film that is shown in cinemas.)

Taxonomy: 
Video

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British firm develops the first accessible set-top box

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The British firm Ocean Blue Software, in collaboration with ST Microelectronics, TW Electronics and the Royal National Institute of Blind People (RNIB), has developed the world’s first ‘talking’ digital set-top box, called the Chatterbox.

When a channel is changed on the box, a voice reads out the title of the new program that has been turned on, the duration, and whether it has captions or audio description. A demonstration video is available for viewing on the Ocean Blue website.

The Chatterbox was demonstrated earlier this month at the International Consumer Electronics show in Las Vegas. It is expected to go on sale in the UK soon, while Ocean Blue is currently looking for a partner to bring it to the US arket.

Taxonomy: 
Television

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Kurzweil to release free interactive Blio e-reader with access features

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Kurzweil, best known for its development of SMS on mobile phones and assistive technology products, will release a free PC e-reader application called the Blio that includes access features and a million free books.

The application differs from other e-readers in that it uses both speech and a visual representation of a book, highlighting the text as the narrator readers through it. Based on PDF files, the voice is either pre-recorded and read out with the story, or the application uses high quality text-to-speech to deliver the audio content. 

Taxonomy: 
Digital technology

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Kurzweil to release free interactive Blio e-reader with access features

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Kurzweil, best known for its development of SMS on mobile phones and assistive technology products, will release a free PC e-reader application called the Blio that includes access features and a million free books.

Kurzweil, best known for its development of SMS on mobile phones and assistive technology products, will release a free PC e-reader application called the Blio that includes access features and a million free books.

The application differs from other e-readers in that it uses both speech and a visual representation of a book, highlighting the text as the narrator readers through it.Based on PDF files, the voice is either pre-recorded and read out with the story, or the application uses high quality text-to-speech to deliver the audio content.

Taxonomy: 
Web

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