Safari, Internet Explorer and Mozilla Firefox all have a collection of small utility applications to enhance web surfing.

There are now many ways of changing the look and way your browser works when you are working within web pages. Depending on your chosen browser you can add a series of toolbars or additional menu buttons and even complete search bars such as the one offered by the Google toolbar for Internet Explorer and Mozilla Firefox users.

Mozilla Firefox appears to have the largest collection of add-ins that can help with zooming with Nosquint for example, colour changes with Accessibar, text to speech - FoxVox, dictionaries - the British Dictionary as well as evaluating web pages for accessibility with such tools as WAVE and the Firefox Accessibility Extension add-ons.

Tim O’Brien has a blog about “A Collection of Accessibility Add-ons” for Firefox.

Microsoft have a similar page of add-ons for Internet Explorer and the Web Accessibility toolbar developed by Vision Australia can help with web page evaluations. There is also iespell checker

Mashable have provided their top 10 safari plug-ins and there are many more for Mac users on PimpMySafari. The most useful ones that may make life a bit easier when surfing are found under the ‘interface section’.

Lexdis has managed to find its way to the top of many Google searches, such as second for ‘IEEE referencing Word 2007‘ and fifth for wikilook and CapturaTalk!  We have over 500 sites linking to us and over 50 vistors each day.   There are some interesting results, such as sixth on the list for ‘dim lectures’!   A link to a strategy ‘Dim screen for note taking in lectures‘.

We are still looking for ways to make us gain improved bounce rates and top search results!  We are also trying to find ways to make the content more useful and relevant to a wide audience with a revamped interface. All ideas welcome!

We have shown how Sarah uses CapturaTalk as a LexDis strategy and now the BBC have a clip of Neil Milliken talking about this mobile technology. The journalist takes a new slant on text to speech on a mobile phone with scanning technology.  CapturaTalk has been developed by Mobispeech and is sold by Iansyst.

John Galloway, an advisory teacher, writer and consultant - author of Harnessing Technology for Every Child Matters and Personalised Learning has also written about the product this month. “The ’scan and speak’ mobile phone - CapturaTalk”

He pointed out that with the technology you can: “Take a photo of a piece of text with your mobile phone, then have it read out loud to you. If you’re not sure what a word means, just pause when the yellow scanning highlighter gets to it, then click on an icon to have the dictionary definition pop up and read out.”

It is also possible to have emails and text messages read, in fact any text on a Windows mobile phone can be read out loud with text highlighting.

Thank you so much to all those who took part in the LexDis Project
As reported on the news for the Department of Electronics and Computer Science last week LexDis wins Learning Impact Award

As said in the e-mail announcing the awards:  “Barcelona, Spain – 14 May 2009 – The (IMS GLC) today announced the results of the world’s annual competition of high impact use of technology to support and enhance learning. The Learning Impact Awards (LIAs) recognize use of technology to improve learning across all education segments and in all regions of the world. ”

Mike had to work hard that day showing every one the website and according to Sarah Price from the AccessApps team, who also won an award as the ‘Best portable Assistive Technology’ there was some praying involved.

Here is Mike receiving the  Best Assistive Technology Network ward for LEXDIS – Assistive Technologies for e-Learning - UK

In the last news item I mentioned that it might be worth trying the Google toolbar spell checker or IEspell for Internet Explorer and the British Dictionary for Firefox if you are in the UK.   Google Chrome and Safari have built in spell checkers and the present version of  Opera uses the Mac spell checker or GNU Aspell.

Since that post I have used 100 spelling errors that ranged from those that were spelt as they sounded, some had simple typos or there were those that really had bizarre types of errors where the word was hardly recognisable.  Google toolbar spell checker returned the best suggestions in the top three of a list most often.  It does not provide a squiggly link under the word so you have to check the menu button in the toolbar for the checking to occur.  The same happens with the downloadable ieSpell.  It is an older checker but still works in Internet Explorer 8 with Vista.  It came second in the list with its small dialog box that appears when you choose to spell check after you have written a note.  It is also linked to online dictionaries.

Safari uses the Mac checker or its own when working in Windows and this works in a similar way to Microsoft Word with a red squiggly line appearing immediately after you have made a mistake.  It came third and was closely followed by Firefox with its British Dictionary.  It also adds a red line and is easy to use with the use of the right hand mouse button producing the suggestion list.

Opera alpha 10 now has its own built in spell checker rather than requiring you to download GNU Aspell but it was not as successful as the others. Sadly nor was the new Google Chrome spell checker although it also works whilst you type.

There is also the on-line context sensitive error checker called Ginger and this worked well with homophones where words sound similar as well as with real words that were inappropriately used.  Please aware that if you download the software data will be moving into their server and you may wish to read the terms and conditions

There is also Ghotit that has a free download plug-in and an online verison.  

The  JISC website  says: “The report, titled ‘HE in a Web 2.0 World’, will be launched at an event at The Barbican, London and will be hosted by committee chair, Sir David Melville.  He said, ‘The report evaluates the challenges for universities and their staff in keeping pace with, and capitalising on, these trends and argues there are very strong drivers for change.’ Ewan McIntosh, 4iP Digital Commissioner for Scotland and Northern Ireland will also be speaking at the event. The  committee was formed to investigate the impact of students’ widespread use  social  networking  technologies  such  as  Facebook,  blogs, twitter, podcasting,  YouTube  and  the  like  on  Higher  Education.”

It is interesting to note that David Melville (according to his own message sent via mobile web to his Twitter account) signed this report off on March 31st.

If you are interested in the ease of use and accessibility issues that surround the use of these technologies there have been several changes and additions to some of the services since the JISC report was signed off.

There is an Accessible Twitter service, iPlayer from the BBC has been updated to make it easier to use with a desktop download and Nomensa have an accessible player for podcasts and video streams.   Facebook have been working towards making further aspects of their service accessible and YouTube now take captioned and subtitled videos.   There is also an Easy YouTube player.

Worried about spell checking your blogs and wikis?  Try Google toolbar spell checker or IEspell for Internet Explorer and the British Dictionary for Firefox if you are in the UK.   Google Chrome and Safari have built in spell checkers and Opera uses the Mac spell checker or GNU Aspell.

More information about the accessibility of several Web 2.0 services and applications can be found on Web2Access

Today I tried the latest MS Word 2003/2007 Daisy add-in that allows one to avoid the complications of using Pipelines.

“DAISY is a type of digital talking book, one of the main upcoming formats offering flexibility, ‘multi sensory’ content. It is popular among both the visually impaired and dyslexic, and is also a powerful tool for non-print impaired readers”  as described by the altformat webpages.

The Daisy Consortium “Save as DAISY”  add-in for Microsoft Office Word now incorporates a “Lite” version of the DAISY Pipeline. You can select to generate the DAISY XML for further processing, or you can generate a fully conforming DAISY file set with full navigation and full text synchronized with audio. The audio is generated by the default text-to-speech (TTS) engine on your Windows computer.

Download Version 2.1.1

The download on a Windows Vista machine with Office 2007 provided an extra tab on the ribbon under Accessibility.  The ‘Save as Daisy’ menu had several options including ‘Full Daisy from single .docx’ which allows the user to have a DaisyPipeline TTS Narrator series of files with sound and navigation if the correct styles have been used.

If the addin is being used with Word 2003 the Windows compatibility pack needs to be downloaded before hand so that a docx format can be accessed by Word 2003.  The new Daisy add-in only works with this file format and XML.

Then download Daisy add-in version 2.1.1 with Net fusion etc - this will happen automatically when you download the file and it realises it is on a service pack 2 OS XP machine or Windows 2000 - this may take some time!

Open Word and check the Daisy tool bar is below the main menu bar.

Open your ‘test.docx’ file and save as Daisy - Full Daisy from Single .docx (Daisy Pipeline TTS Narrator), when the next dialog box appears - set file destination etc and off it goes - again - this may take time but the result in both cases works in AMIS and EasyReader.

The process for Word 2003 is a little more long winded but the results were the same as for Word 2007 when used with a simple document.  I have yet to try a complex one where more mark ups will be required such as images, tables and columns etc.

The main issue with this add-in is obviously the fact it has to be used with Microsoft Word and cannot take in any type of document such as PDF or rtf etc as offered by Dolphin EasyConverter.  Output is possible as an XML, audio book and with some navigation depending on the original document.  If anyone else has tried this download I would love to receive some comments.

The Ofcom Research and Marketing website has the following news. (published 18|03|09)

“In order to ensure that its resources are targeted effectively, Ofcom commissioned an independent study from i2 media research to identify the areas where Ofcom could have the greatest potential impact in supporting the future development and application of new assistive technologies in the communications sector.  The study focussed on three key areas:

1. The current provision of assistive technologies in the field of communications, with a view to the identification of unmet needs
2. The identification of recent technological developments that may enable new services (eg speech recognition, touch screens, smart materials)
3. The identification of existing assistive technology developments, including those funded by the European 7th Framework Programme and relevant charities such as RNID & RNIB.

The main output of this study was a prioritised list of areas where Ofcom involvement could provide the stimulus for industry to develop new assistive products or services.

The study makes two key recommendations:

1. That Ofcom commissions a small-scale technical development project aimed at making voice over IP (VOIP) telephony services more accessible for hearing impaired users. This project would bring together an existing speech to text software package and an open source voice over internet protocol application to provide a speech to text demonstration platform. The use of VoIP would enable a functional system to be created by a small-scale development and could potentially produce a platform that would be of benefit to hearing-impaired users. The performance of the platform would be evaluated against draft ETSI requirements for captioned telephony services, and against user needs, through trials with deaf and hearing impaired users.
2. That Ofcom explores how the development of personalised Web 3.0 entertainment services, including WebTV and radio services, might be used in the future to enable the provision of personalised user interfaces adapted to different users’ needs.

This report present the findings of work conducted on Ofcom’s behalf. The opinions and conclusions stated within the reports are those of the organisation who conducted the research and may not reflect the view of Ofcom or necessarily imply any future work in related areas.

The full document is available below

Assistive technologies in communications: unmet needs, new technologies and ongoing research and development programmes [pdf] Full Print Version”

When James died earlier this year, we lost a dear friend and colleague with an enormous sense of fun and ability.  We all felt that we should never forget his contribution to ideas for accessibility and ease of use when thinking about technologies.  There will be the introduction of an annual prize available to students in the School of Electronics and Computer Science who make a significant contribution to the development of accessible technologies.

James not only gained a first class degree and the Zepler prize during his time in the School of Electronics and Computer Science, but he continued to remain in touch with friends and colleagues and was key in the development of the accessible database holding the data for the LexDis project.   He was meticulous in his work and always complained that it never reached the standards to which he aspired… often over and above anything we ever hoped for when planning the project.  His comments along the way were wonderfully dry and he invariably managed to work his way round sticking points with a witty comment!

Twitter should be very accessible as it appears so simple but as can be seen from the Web2Access evaluation not all is well.  However, Juicy Studio have an article on the subject where they discuss the “Focus Twitter Greasemonkey script which puts the favourite, reply and delete links into the keyboard tab order to make it easier for keyboard-only users to use Twitter”.

Steve Faulkner has been discussing “the WAI ARIA specification  that defines a set of specialised “landmark” roles.  These roles provide a method to programmatically identify commonly found sections of web page content in a consistent way. they can be used now in whatever flavour of (X)HTML you prefer. This allows assistive technologies to provide users with features which they can use to  identify and navigate to sections of page content.”  He shows how he added them to “the TPG blog (uses WordPress) in about 20 minutes…”  Word Press is one of the most accessible blogging applications.

There has also been a debate about the use of HTML 5 and ARIA which has been described by Bruce Lawson in a recent blog ‘ Redesigning with HTML 5 and WAI-ARIA’  The blog ends with a link to a useful IE browser tester for checking web sites if you are not already using Browsershots as cross platform browser checker.

In July 2008 YouTube hosted a video about Enhancing Web 2.0 Accessibility Via AxsJAX: A Tutorial by Charles Chan and T.V. Raman  and finally, Worldspace™ says it will be the first on-line web page checker to be using W3C WCAG 2.0 guidelines.