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New eGlasses can improve vision for many who are legally blind

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Canadian company eSight creates futuristic glasses that use images from a forward-facing camera to overcome vision loss, even for many people who are legally blind. The makers claim that their latest variant, the eSight 3 augmented reality headset, is a real wearable breakthrough for those people living with vision loss.

eSight 3 electronic glasses

eSight 3 electronic glasses

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Five tips for teachers of students with hearing impairment

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So you’ve started a new term this year and you’ve discovered that one (or perhaps more) of your students has a hearing impairment or doesn't have English as their primary language. Check out five quick tips to help you make the most of your classroom.

Kids using tablets in class

Kids using tablets in class


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Free captioning and description editing tool launched

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The National Center for Accessible Media (NCAM) in the USA has just launched CADET (Caption and Description Editing Tool) which was previously only available as a Beta project. This official launch version of CADET was developed with partial funding from the Massachusetts Attorney General's Office with the rest coming from crowd-funding, and is available via a free download.

Dashboard of CADET being used

Dashboard of CADET being used

CADET has taken over two years to develop from the initial beta test, and is the result of a mix of grant funding and crowd-funding from an Indiegogo campaign launched in late 2015. It is a free, downloadable caption-authoring software tool that can also be used to generate audio-description scripts.


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How to caption a YouTube video

YouTube is a popular way to share videos online. Providing captions on videos makes them accessible to a wider audience, including Deaf and hearing impaired users. Captions also help to increase the search ranking of a video so that it is more easily discovered through search engines.  

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4 leading Startups in the Deaf and hearing-impaired space

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1 in 6 Australians are affected by hearing loss including around 30,000 Deaf Auslan users with total hearing loss, according to the Australian Network on Disability (AND). On a global scale, the World Health Organization puts the total number of those with disabling hearing loss at about 360 million people, so it’s no wonder more Startups are springing up to help.

International Symbol for Deafness

International Symbol for Deafness

Around the world, dedicated research teams and tech experts working for Startups are striving to address hearing loss in a wide variety of ways. A few of the most prominent Startups that are making a real difference in the Deaf and hearing-impaired space are covered in this news piece.


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US restaurant chain has trouble on the menu

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The Olive Garden restaurant group in the US is accused of having a website that is inaccessible to the vision impaired, with a lawsuit filed in Florida in April 2017. The company is alleged to be violating the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), which is the US equivalent of the Disability Discrimination Act (DDA) in Australia.

Red slash through wheelchair

Red slash through wheelchair

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Ava app makes group conversations accessible

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For those with hearing disability, simple dinner table group conversations can be pretty painful to stay on top of. However, the Ava app aims to bring Deaf and hearing impaired people back into group conversations with each other plus people of all abilities – and the May 2017 update provides even more functionality.

Image of Ava being used on a smartphone

Ava being used on a smartphone

The Ava threaded speech-to-text application gives people with hearing disability an easy way to stay engaged in conversation with a group of friends, colleagues or family.

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Live, Work and Play: NSW the State of Inclusion Conference is on 17 & 18 May

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Don't miss the NSW Department of Family and Community Services ‘State of Inclusion’ conference, running 17 and 18 May in Sydney. The event will showcase the progress being made in NSW towards building an inclusive society for people with disability and highlight the opportunities and challenges for the future.

Image of Live Work Play NSW The State of Inclusion

Live Work Play NSW The State of Inclusion

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JAWS screen reader gets more bight

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Freedom Scientific has recently released JAWS 18.0.2738, which incorporates several important improvements made between the JAWS February 2017 release and this mid April 2017 update, plus dozens of less revolutionary but very practical enhancements.

Image of JAWS screen reader logo

JAWS screen reader logo

JAWS (Job Access With Speech) is the world's most popular screen reader, developed for computer users whose vision loss prevents them from seeing screen content or navigating with a mouse. It allows blind and vision-impaired people to read the screen either with a text-to-speech output or by a refreshable Braille display.

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Aipoly Vision is a truly visionary app

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‘Aipoly Vision’ is a very useful object-and-colour recogniser app that helps the blind, vision-impaired, and colour blind to understand their surroundings. It does so by using artificial intelligence to recognise objects through a device’s camera and then announces the name of each object to the user.

Image of Aipoly Vision logo

Image of Aipoly Vision logo

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