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Communications Minister launches NBN consumer guide

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Senator Stephen Conroy, Minister for Broadband, Communications & the Digital Economy, today launched the release of a comprehensive consumer’s guide to the National Broadband Network (NBN).

Produced by the Australian Communications Consumer Action Network (ACCAN), NBN: A Guide For Consumers is intended to explain the processes, facts and rollout plans of the NBN using simple language in a variety of formats for convenience.

ACCAN developed the guide so that people who do not have the political or technical expertise to pick up on the jargon-laced details that have been released to the public so far will be able to readily grasp the finer details of the network.

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iPhone app ZoomReader provides cost effective alternative to more expensive devices

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The new iPhone app ZoomReader enables people who are blind or vision impaired to use their iPhone to convert images taken with their iPhone into text, and at a much more affordable cost than specialised devices with similar kinds of features.

Ai Squared, creators of screen magnification software for people who are vision impaired, including the highly popular screen reader and magnifier software ZoomText, developed ZoomReader after iPhone became the smartphone of choice for the blind and vision impaired community.

Here is how the app works:

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Blind or vision impaired

Digital technology

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US online movie service uses remote DVD technology with support for captions

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A new American streaming video service uses old-fashioned technology to deliver the latest release films to devices, with support for closed captioning.

Zediva has an interesting approach in that it has a data centre in California that has hundreds of DVD players set up like an automated jukebox. When you ‘rent’ a movie from Zediva, you are actually renting the DVD player with the movie loaded.

You can access various features such as closed captioning, subtitles, director’s commentary and languages if included on the DVD. It is not yet understood if this includes audio description, which is usually a special feature not currently enabled by Zediva.

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Closed captions

Video

Deaf or hearing impaired

Web

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