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#CSUN15 wrap up

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The world’s major accessibility conference, the Annual International Technology and Persons with Disabilities Conference (#CSUN15) is close to wrapping up. If you missed some of the big sessions or want a handy recap on hot accessibility (#a11y) topics this year, check out Media Access Australia’s interviews with some of the key presenters.

Annual International Technology & Persons with Disabilities Conference (CSUN) logo

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Practical web accessibility
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Digital media and technology: 
Accessible gaming
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Web Content Accessibility Guidelines
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NVDA 2015.1 screen reader released: hands-on first impressions

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NVDA, the free screen reader for Windows which is one of the world’s most popular, continues to receive significant improvements with the latest version, 2015.1. Dr Scott Hollier provides a hands-on review and initial impressions of the latest software update from NV Access.

Headset resting next to a Windows-based laptop

While not a proficient screen reader user, I find it useful from time to time when trying to read web pages, documents and emails which are text-heavy, so I was interested to take the new version of NVDA for a spin on my Windows 8.1 machine.

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Web
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Practical web accessibility
Disability
Blind or vision impaired
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Digital media and technology: 
WCAG
Web Content Accessibility Guidelines
Techniques
Technologies
Assistive technology
Screen readers
NVDA
Microsoft Windows

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Bloggers encouraged to audiocast their posts

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A campaign has been launched to encourage bloggers and other online content creators to provide audiocasts with their posts. Speak Your Word, an initiative driven by filmmaker, photographer and writer Miguel Cano, seeks to provide the global blind and vision-impaired community with a more human experience of the web.

Speak Your Word logo

Audiocasts, also known as podcasts, are audio files commonly presented as voice recordings and broadcasts available to stream or download via the internet.

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General
Web
Disability
Blind or vision impaired
Inclusion
Audio description
Digital media and technology: 
WCAG
Techniques

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ACMA reports on Australians’ online video use

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The Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA) has issued a report which looks at the different ways that Australians are viewing TV programs, with the catch-up TV services being particularly popular. This highlights the need for captioning on these services.

Man sitting back on couch with hands interlocked behind his head, watching TV. Image credit: D.Reichardt, Flickr

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TV & video
Web
News
ACMA, Australian Communications and Media Authority
TV access
Disability
Deaf or hearing impaired
Captions

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Coles web accessibility case settled

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The case against grocery retailer Coles, for the alleged inaccessibility of its online shopping service, has been settled.

Miniature shopping cart resting on a laptop keyboard. Image credit: Tim Reckmann, Flickr

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Web
News
Legal
Disability
Blind or vision impaired
Solutions
Inclusion
Digital media and technology: 
WCAG
Web Content Accessibility Guidelines

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Harvard & MIT sued over lack of captions

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Harvard University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) are being sued for the alleged discrimination against people who are Deaf or hearing impaired by failing to caption the videos they provide online, such as in the universities’ popular Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs).

Exterior shot of Harvard's Harry Elkins Widener Memorial Library, students walking around nearby

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General
Web
News
Disability
Deaf or hearing impaired
Disadvantaged
Captions
Inclusion
Digital media and technology: 
WCAG
Web Content Accessibility Guidelines
Techniques

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YouTube admits automatic captions have a way to go

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Google’s YouTube has admitted that it needs to work harder to provide better quality automatic captions for content uploaded to its video streaming service.

YouTube logo on a frame of a filmstrip

In comments made to the BBC, YouTube said that, while it believed having automatic captioning for video content was better than have no captioning at all, there was still plenty of room for improvement.

Taxonomy: 
Web
News
Disability
Deaf or hearing impaired
Captions
Digital media and technology: 
WCAG
Web Content Accessibility Guidelines
YouTube

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YouTube embraces HTML5

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The accessibility of Google’s YouTube video service looks set to improve thanks to the recent decision by the internet giant to abandon Adobe’s Flash technology in favour of the fifth and final version of the Hyper Text Markup Language, HTML5.

HTML 5 logo

In a recent blog post, YouTube Engineering Manager Richard Leider wrote that this was largely due to a maturing of HTML5—a core technology underpinning the web, and as at late 2014, an official Word Wide Web Consortium (W3C) Recommendation.

Taxonomy: 
Web
News
Practical web accessibility
Disability
Blind or vision impaired
Deaf or hearing impaired
Captions
Inclusion
Audio description
Digital media and technology: 
WCAG
Web Content Accessibility Guidelines
Techniques
HTML5
YouTube

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Web accessibility is everyone’s responsibility

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As anyone familiar with the web accessibility space will have noted, discrimination complaints against companies who do not make their websites and online services accessible to people with disabilities appear to be on the rise.

Word cloud comprised of several key terms relating to web accessibility. Image credit: Jil Wright, Flickr

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General
Web
News
Practical web accessibility
Disability

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Call for participants in new Twitter and communication disabilities study

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A new Australian study into the ways in which people with communication disabilities use the social media platform Twitter for information exchange has been announced.

Left hand holding a smartphone with the Twitter logo, map in background representing communication around the world

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General
Web
News
Disability
Digital media and technology: 
Social media
Twitter

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