See more information about text/typographical layout issues and accessibility on the WebAIM website.

Keep the following guidelines in mind for displaying text:

• Avoid very small text. This not only impacts some users with low vision, but many users with cognitive disabilities as well.
• While serif fonts (e.g., Times) are more readable when printed, both serif and sans-serif fonts are appropriate when displaying body text onscreen, as long as the font is clean and readable.
• Underlined text should be avoided, except to designate links.
• Minimize the number of different fonts used on a page. Two to three fonts is optimal.
• ALL CAPS should be used minimally. It is more difficult to read and is often interpreted as “shouting.” Additionally, screen readers may read all-caps text letter by letter (like an acronym) rather than as full words.

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Photo credit: Image licensed through Creative Commons by .reid

When I had the opportunity to meet with one of the focus groups, most of the other faculty were rather traditional types who had graced the campus for many years and appeared to enjoy their roles as “sage on the stage.” There was quite a bit of skepticism about distance learning and even though I had a positive reputation for teaching in the traditional modality at that university, the majority of faculty didn’t really seem to value what I was doing.

When it came my time to talk, I chattered away about my views and how as an institution we needed to get out there and expand out “presence” on the Internet and World Wide Web, that we needed to build more server capacity and in particular, not invest in the large scale college library expansion program that was in the works. I remember the look of disdain on the faces of my colleague, but I pressed forward. I can remember one asking me if I really believed that there would come a time when traditional students would actually take distance learning classes in lieu of the campus-based, terrestrial offerings that then were the norm.

The gentleman who was leading the focus group appeared to welcome my vision and even though I suspect he was not suppose to shape the discussion, he gave me lots of clear messages that he thought my vision was indeed the correct one.

The library project did go forward, but on a much smaller scale. Fortunately, the director of the library was also a very smart guy and he and his staff had already seen the writing on the walls. In fact, he eventually became the vice president in charge of information technology at the university and shepherded through a rather dramatic number of technology advances in the next decade.

With this backdrop, I read the recent news story about the pending closure of the medical library at Johns Hopkins University. While this is a loss of tradition, it is clearly, as the title mentions, a sign of the times. The author makes this clever observation:

People don’t go to Johns Hopkins for appendectomies. They go there with rare and difficult conditions to seek help from the top medical minds in the world. If I’m at Hopkins as a patient and not to visit old friends and colleagues, I don’t want my team of physicians and residents to be searching through the stacks for possible answers or keys to my treatment. I want them to pull out their iPads and have instant access to the information they need to make me better.

Read the whole article “Sign of the times: Johns Hopkins shutters its medical library.”

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Photo credit: Image licensed through Creative Commons by Brett Jordan

A few weeks ago, I wrote about the announcement from Google that they had markedly improved the accessibility of various free apps they deliver to the public. In a article from the E-Access Bulletin of October, Brian Gaff, an accessibility columnist says “not so fast!”

Google Gaps:

Our regular correspondent Brian Gaff, who is on the committee of the Kingston upon Thames Association for the Blind, writes in to grumble about accessibility issues relating to Google services.

“Judging by the comments in the Google group ‘accessible’ it seems that Google have painted themselves into a corner with their new online apps like Google Plus and Google Docs,” Gaff says. “Half of them won’t work with most basic screenreaders and so they add ChromeVox to their Chrome browser. Hardly what blind folk would want, to have to alter access technology just to use Google’s stuff.

“The failing here surely is that the folk writing the code are not aware enough of what works and what does not for blind access. It’s sad that in this age we are still saying that the writers of code are not educated in making sites that just work out of the box, so to speak.

“Surely in this age when people want more users to generate more revenue, it ought to be a no-brainer to get as many folk as possible to be able to use web sites, software and online systems, but it seems it’s not. We are invisible I suspect.

“I block Google’s ads now as they persist in trying to sell me Venetian blinds… grin.”

Copyright 2011 Headstar Ltd http://www.headstar.com .

• The education (K-12) textbook publishing business is very different from other forms of educational publishing (e.g., college textbooks) or general commercial book publishing. In many ways things have not changed in K-12 textbook publishing industry as dramatically as they have elsewhere. They had better get moving.
• There are 22 U.S. states called “state adoption states” where the curriculum is selected by a single statewide board of education and all schools use the same books. The remaining states are considered “open territory states” where the curriculum is selected by local school boards. In state adoption states, textbooks are chosen and remain in classroom use usually for a minimum of seven years because of the large replacement cost to the state. Many of the “state adoption” states actually have a customized set of textbooks geared specifically to their state curriculum and state learning standards. Texas is a “state adoption” state; Maine is an “open adoption” state. Here is a nice resource about textbook adoption process from the Association of American Publishers.
• The economics of school textbook publishing industry are complex and starting to change as pedagogy changes. I suspect, but I don’t have the data, that instructional materials are now more likely to be workbooks and thinner modular sets of content rather than the large, thick and heavy books of my youth. Most social studies textbooks are probably out of date by the time the ink dries. Math and Reading textbooks probably have the longest shelf life.
• The movement to experiential learning and project-based learning, particularly in the middle and secondary classrooms has dramatically changed the types of instructional materials used.  The increased attention to students’ individual learning styles and the principles of universal design for learning have transformed the practice of teaching in many classrooms with teachers moving away from the use of traditional textbooks.
• The internet has changed the world, albeit somewhat more slowly in our American classrooms than in our homes and businesses.
• Contrary to the predictions made in a Forrester article from 2000, the e-book is not dead. That may have been true in 2000, but not 2011. Barnes & Noble and Amazon.com now sell more e-books than paper books. Check out this data on e-book sales.

In my opinion, many of the folks publishing K-12 educational textbook are scared because things are all changing so fast and they fear that what happened to the music industry will happen to them. They have probably been reading things like this which looks like it was published 2-3 years ago.

If K-12 textbook publishers continue with the same old business plan, they will be gone.

I personally think the future for educational publishing never looked brighter – if they do it right. Here’s someone who agrees:

Peter C. Davis, president of McGraw-Hill Education stated last summer, “We are making content more usable and parsable so it can be targeted to create an individualized and personalized learning experience for students and produce desired learning outcomes.  We need to stop thinking of e-books as transformative.  They are not. Adaptive and interactive learning tools are where education needs to go and where the real opportunity lies. Bring on this new world. The quicker it happens the more exciting it is for us.”  (Source citation)

Whether you call them 21^st Century Learners or Digital Natives, today’s students in K-12 classrooms have been and continue to be exposed to information sources and delivery systems radically different from the ones that existed even a decade ago. The idea of going to a shelf to get a dictionary or an encyclopedia to find information is archaic. The idea that a textbook can hold all of the information a student needs to know, even for a semester, is almost as obsolete.

Rather than asking about where to get a digital textbook, we should be asking: “What are, and how do we acquire, the instructional materials needed to help students learn and to help teachers facilitate learning?

Some things to look at…

• Educational Publishing blog from the Association of Educational Publishers (AEP)
• From xplana: “How” Is More Important that “What” in the Future of Educational Publishing — Services, Tablets, and Mobile Expectations

Have a thought on this…comment please!

Photo credit: Licensed by Creative Commons by Crystal

Fortunately, the use of the ALT description has gotten wide notice. I’d like to say that it has become well known (and well implemented), but sadly most digital documents are still prepared and published without the inclusion of any alternative descriptions for images.

You probably already know the definition and purpose of the ALT description: it is underlying code added to images that have been inserted into a digital document. The code is used by assistive technologies called screen readers to provide users who are blind or have visual impairments with a textual description of the inserted image.

For years, the debate of “when to use the ALT description” and “when to use the Null ALT” (i.e., ATL=”” in HTML) has been discussed within the accessibility community. My own personal – and completely unscientific – research revealed that there has been no universal agreement on this debate. My observations among screen reader users has been that those users who had become disabled later in life, or who still had some limited vision, preferred that every and all image have an extensive and detailed alternative description. On the other hand, those born blind seemed to me to care less about the “pretty pictures” – as one friend called them – except in situations where the image was a “text graphic” and contained information needed by the user.

For years, I have operated with the philosophy that states “less is best.” I have determined that nearly all of the images added to digital documents are in fact “pretty pictures” and that since they do not provide any important meaning to the document, it is best to use the Null ALT. It should be noted that an equivalent method for adding a Null ALT to digital documents, other than HTML/XHTML documents, does not exist. For word processed, PDFs and the like, you will still need to add some text to create any alternative description. See my series of articles about accessible documents.

My brevity philosophy apparently has some support. A new resource by Australian, Dey Alexander, which takes a similar position as mine, has recently gotten some attention in the accessibility world. Alexander suggests that for purely “decorative” images, and for those “informational” images that repeat information already in the body of the document, the Null ALT is perfectly acceptable. When I was a graduate student, my professors always preached that a well written research document describes everything the person needs to know in the text of the paper and that the charts, graphs and images are only there to support the written content – not the other way around.

At this point I am not ready to discuss the ALT descriptions for completely visual content like graphs and charts. You’ll have to stay tuned for my opinions on that. Suffice it to say that these purely visual elements present a great challenge for people concerned about accessibility and for screen reader users as well.

But getting back to the point of this commentary…I have not (yet) found the definitive explanation for how to write decent/good alternative descriptions.  I suspect that any offering in this regard would be something no one could agree upon and result in more cantankerous debate.

A few months ago, fellow accessibility guy, Cliff Tyllick from Texas offered this suggestion on what a good ALT would/should be. Cliff wrote that a good ALT description would be “…a succinct statement of the meaning you expect a sighted person to get from that image.”

Sounds reasonable to me, but I can see the hair-splitters fighting over the word “succinct.”

For a final thought, I’ll turn back to another article by Dey Alexander called “The 5Es of Content Usability” which speaks to the need for Effective, Efficient, Engaging, Error tolerant and Easy to learn writing. I know that “a picture is worth a thousand words,” but maybe it is safe to assume that you should use less than a thousand words in an ALT description for that picture.

Happy New Year.

Web sites come in many shapes and sizes and, given the magic of current technologies, can do many wondrous things. But to many, the inner workings of a website can be confusing. Having the responsibility of developing, or updating the web presence for your organization can be a major challenge. This article is designed to help.

Two Flavors

To begin this discussion, you should know that web sites still come in two major “flavors” – static and dynamic. To the knowledgeable purists reading this, I understand that there are no truly static websites, but please allow me some poetic license here.

The terms static and dynamic have little to do with the actual look of the website and refer more to the “backend” or inner workings of the site and to some extent the functionality of some or all of the features on the site. Either can be right solution for your organization, but how do you choose the right one for your organization? Let’s begin with some information about the flavors.

Static web sites are built using individual web page files written in HyperText Markup Language (HTML), along with some support files for styling (e.g., Cascading Style Sheets – CSS), images (e.g., JPGs, GIFs, etc.) and media elements (e.g., audio, video and Flash objects). Files are usually prepared off-line on a local computer using specialized web-authoring software like Adobe Dreamweaver or Microsoft Expression, and then “published” to a web server connected to the World Wide Web (WWW). Note, there are other programs that purport to be able to create web pages (like MS-Word or MS- Publisher), but be careful. Good web design requires the right tools and techniques. Using the wrong ones can make your site misbehave or worse, not work at all.

The web files are typically “published” to a web server using a piece of software called a File Transfer Protocol or FTP client. The FTP client may be built into your web-authoring program, or it may be a separate program. The “web server” is a special application that runs on a specialized computer (also called a server) that is connected to the Internet. This web server does just what its name implies; it “servers up” your web files when “called for” by someone on the Internet.

Most organizations do not own their own web server and will use a “host” like Maine Hosting Solutions to serve up their website. The cost of this hosting service ranges from a few dollars per month to many thousands of dollars depending on the size of the website and the amount of traffic is receives. There are many options and a web design firm like jebswebs can assist you in this decision.

In a Static web site, when you want to change the content, someone has to change the local file and re-publish it to the web server, thus overwriting the original file. If it is something like a link on a menu bar, this may require that every web file on your site be changed and re-published also. So, this quickly can become time consuming.

With the exception of some simple executable files, most of the content in static websites is fairly flat, meaning it allows little or no interaction with visitors/users. In other words, people viewing the site will typically only be able to read or view the content and not able to write or submit content to the site.

When the World Wide Web was first developed in the early 1990s, designers had very limited choices of things they could do. Designs in those days were almost exclusively static in nature and developers were constantly challenged to make the user experience more interactive and exciting.

Dynamic web site development came out of that need for interaction. These sites often provide the user with the ability to interact with the content and provide some kind of feedback. But the real reason for calling these sites dynamic has to do with how the sites are constructed and maintained. In the dynamic web site, all of the content, styling files and related web documents are contained within one or more databases located somewhere on the Web and “controlled” or administered by an application called a Content Management System (CMS). The content is “hung” on the website using various templates written in a dynamic markup language such as PHP, ASP, Cold Fusion or Java. These templates are similar to HTML, but are more complex and can do a lot more things. Think of your website was a Christmas tree. The template is the tree itself with trunk and branches. It has some color and texture. The content is like decorations and lights that are hung on the tree. Each of your “pages” (also called nodes) uses the same tree, but the decorations and lights vary from page to page, node to node. Some of the “decorations” are built-in to the tree and will appear on every page/node. For example, the heading/logo area, the main menus and the footer of the page. You can also add blocks of content that will appear on every page/node. The choice is up to you.

There are many CMS applications out there  and each works a little differently. The three big ones, Joomla!, Drupal, WordPress, have become the standard in the field. These are all “open source software” meaning that they are developed by volunteer code writers who are always trying to improve the code. They are also free and freely available to be modified and changed to meet your needs.

I should point out that there are commercial CMSs as well and they can cost many thousands of dollars to purchase and license each year.

The CMS is used to create and edit content and runs on the web server itself, requiring almost no additional software. Many of the CMSs have  built in image editors which can do some basic edits like resizing the image, however serious edits are usually done off-line with a local editing application. There are many modules, plug-ins and “widgets” that can be freely added to the dynamic site making the experience for the user very rich.

All CMSs allow for multiple users and the administrator can control how much access each user has to the website.

How to Choose

Generally the first consideration when trying to decide between a static vs. dynamic website is the basic size of the site. This can sometimes be decided by looking at the size of the organization. If the site is for a single person or small organization, you can probably get by just fine with a static site. If there are a large number of people going to be involved with this website, it’s probably best to go for a dynamic design. If you are looking at some kind of an e-commerce website – in other words you are looking to sell things on the Web – you are probably going to need a dynamic web site.

Next in your consideration is how often the content needs to be updated. Static sites by their very definition tend to have information with a relatively long shelf life. That is, if the information that you are putting on a website is relatively stable and will not be changing for months or years, you can get by just fine with a static site. If your content is changing more frequently than once per month, you should consider a dynamic website.

“Who will manage your content?” is your next question. If you have on your staff personnel that know how to design and update web pages, you are all set and can have either a static or dynamic site based upon your organization’s particular needs. However, if you have a small staff, or perhaps are a small nonprofit organization staffed with a handful of volunteers, you are going to need to either hire someone or find a volunteer with extra talents and time.

Finding staff or volunteers that know how to design and maintain a website is not as difficult as it once was, but sometimes keeping that staff is difficult. These people are usually in high demand and may get a better offer from one of your competitors.

Choosing a dynamic web site will be an advantage here in that adding, deleting and editing content is very easy. If you have ever ordered anything on line, written or commented to a blog, or added a comment to an online discussion group, you can easily learn how to work with a dynamic web site.

The last question you need to consider in selecting what type of web site you want is -how interactive do you want your site to be?

One of the big advantages of choosing a dynamic web site design is that they are designed for interaction. In some ways, that’s the goal of the dynamic design; it encourages lots of people to contribute and collaborate. However, you will be comforted in knowing that with a dynamic web design, you still have complete control of who can add, delete or edit content. You can also assign sections of your website to different parts of your organization so that only these groups can see and work with the content in that section. Or, you can open your site up to the whole world for input and discussion like many people do with blog sites. This is all entirely up to you.

Dynamic websites can also import content from multiple sources including automated ones so your website will be constantly updating and changing as these sources update content. And, as noted earlier, dynamic websites can be use to conduct commerce on the Web.

We can help

Whether you are considering your first website or updating one you’ve had for years, it can be very helpful to discuss your needs with a web design firm like jebswebs. We are here to help you with each stage of the design and development experience from concept development to implementation to staff training. Please feel free to contact jebswebs today to request a free initial consultation.

As more and more curriculum and school-related content is being provided to students, parents and the general public in digital form, it is essential that these documents be created in a form that everyone can access.

The articles will also appear in print form in the quarterly newsletter published by the Association of Computer Technology Educators of Maine (ACTEM).

The first in the series is called Making Text Documents Accessible and deals with word processor and Portable Document Format (PDF) documents .

Also featured on the new web resource will be quick tips and resources to help teachers and educational administrators communicate better with their constituents.

~j

“I am involved with an organization (business, governmental or nonprofit) and we have been publishing a printed newsletter for many years. But now because of ….and we want to save money….How do we go about publishing this on-line and saving money…?”

I’ve been down this road numerous times with different organizations. Each time the reasons for the conversion are different but usually, somewhere in the discussion, there comes the part about saving money.

After a number of these conversations, I’ve ended up with this thinking: If you are going to jettison the “paper” newsletter, you need to ask yourself several important questions, look at the various options available to you, and do the math.

Question 1: What is the best way to get your news content into the hands of your constituents in a way that will increase the likelihood that they will read it?

You have two major publication choices to consider: print/paper and digital/on-line.

On the paper side, you can stay with the current format or modify the current format to accomplish your goal. If cost is an issue, you can reduce your volume or the size or frequency of the issues. You could experiment with different paper/media and perhaps go from color to monochrome. All of this saves some money, but you will likely find some costs cannot be avoided.

In considering these two major options, you need to have a clear understanding about your readership. Personally – and I suspect that you will find this surprising – I have found that many people (especially people in my part of the world: Maine) are still “paper trained” and like to get local and special news in paper form. While many large urban newspapers around the country are going bankrupt, there seems to be no shortage of small local newspapers and free publications that are sent by mail or are available in various locations. And judging by the girth of some of these publications, I suspect that finding advertisers has not been that big an issue.

In my work I have generally advised clients to stay with the paper-printed news if they can afford it. By using the suggestions stated above (reducing size, volume or quality of paper, etc.) organizations may be able reduce costs sufficiently to keep their newsletters going, but results will vary. Organizations may also want to consider a relationship with the local newspaper (or one of these free newspaper vendors) to see if they can get their content out to the public free.

If you and your organization decide to go digital, expect that there will not be the incredible savings you anticipate. The printing and mailing cost may actually turn out be the least expensive part of the operation. As always, do the math.

Question 2: If we choose to go digital, how is this best accomplished?

Once again, you have several options: simple e-mail; e-mail with an attachment; and, web posting. There are other options, but for this article we’ll stick to these choices.

Simple e-mail is the process of sending out news content and topical information (in plain text or stylized Rich Text Format – RTF or HyperText Markup Language – HTML format) within the body of an e-mail sent to your constituents. These mailings may be simple plain text or also include images and styling (if using RTF or HTML).

E-mail with attachment involves putting the content into a separate formatted document (usually an Adobe Acrobat-PDF file), attaching it to an e-mail and sending it out to your constituents.

Web-posting involves actually publishing the content to a web page (usually using a form of HTML) and/or posting a link to a formatted  document (again usually a PDF) that is stored on a web server. In the linked form, the reader will have to download the formatted file from the web server. Often, web-posted news is associated with an e-mail alert (or through other means like Twitter) which “announces” the news and “drives” people to go and look/download.

E-mail solutions

Using any of the e-mail-based solutions assumes you have e-mail addresses for all of your constituents. In my experience, this is usually not the case. You will usually end up with the considerable task of getting the e-mail addresses and more importantly, maintaining them. If your newsletter goes to everyone within one organization (e.g. a company newsletter) and all of the domain names are the same, this might be an easy problem. But if your news is going to a diverse population, you will soon discover this is a monumental task because peoples’ e-mail addresses change very frequently.

Sending out large volumes of e-mail also requires special software and provisions to avoid spam blockers and filters so that your mail reaches your readership. In addition, unless you have your own mail server, you may discover that your ISP limits the amount of e-mails it will let you send in any one day (this is to try to prevent and discourage SPAM). There are server-based applications that you can use to work around this, and for an additional cost, you can hire a mailing service that will manage and maintain your list as well as send out the content. These companies are often paid by how much mail is delivered and have all kinds of clever ways of working around SPAM blockers and filters. All it takes is money…but wait a minute, wasn’t this something you were trying to save?

Web-posted solutions

For web-posted solutions you can either use a print-formatted document (e.g., Word file or PDF) posting on the web server or create an HTML-formatted version of the content. The amount of time to do either is about the same, so it may come down to the resources, skills and training of the people who you have on staff to create the newsletter. My experience has been that most staff talented enough to do layout and design in print form,  often have the expertise to do webpage design.

Portable Document Format – PDF

Adobe Acrobat PDF can be a great solution if you want your newsletter to look just like it did before and if you want to be able to print it out. This assumes that the original newsletter was formatted to fit on conventional size pieces of paper. If the newsletter was printed on larger paper, your constituents will still be able to view the content on their computer screen but will likely not be able to print it out in a way that will make it easy to read.

It needs to be noted that historically PDF files have caused many problems for people with disabilities. In the early evolution of Acrobat, PDF files were simply “images” of the printed version and if you relied on an assistive technology device called a screen reader (a device that translates text into speech), you simply could not access the content of the file. Modern PDF files can certainly be made accessible, but frequently problems are encountered when the content is formatted into columns and spread across multiple pages. Knowing how to correctly “tag” PDF file content to make it accessible requires some additional skills and training. The evidence shows that many PDF documents that are distributed around the web are not correctly formatted and remain inaccessible to people with disabilities. Read about how to make Accessible PDFs and other documents on the Maine CITE website.

HyperText Markup Language – HTML

For the same amount of time and effort (and often a lot less), a trained staff person can usually put your newsletter content into HTML and publish it on a web server. With advancements in web design and software, much of the complex design elements have been eliminated making the job of posting content on the web easier and more efficient.

There are many advantages in using HTML to publish news content. If you use a content management system (CMS), the news content can be scripted to allow for comments, creating opportunities for dialog with readers (either through a simple comments section or via a blogging or wiki protocols). HTML content also allows for the use of linkage or “feed” services and “sharing” applications and protocols which promote and encourage readers to share the content with a wider audience through various social networks like Twitter and Facebook.

Once your content is in correctly coded HTML format (see Accessible Web Design resources on Maine CITE), it is usually accessible by all devices including assistive technology devices and handheld devices such as PDAs and “smart” cell phones. Furthermore, you can embed links, objects and rich media into your content making it more dynamic.

Final Things to Consider

Audience: When considering the move from paper to digital newsletters, it is most important to know you audience. Plan ahead, do your research, find out what your constituents would prefer. You may even want to take a poll to determine preferences.

You will need to know if your readers have access to the internet and will they be able to access the content as an attachment? If you choose to use an attachment to an e-mail, do your constituents have sufficient throughput and capacity to handle large attached files. Knowing something about the preferences and experience of your readership is crucial.

Lastly, you should consider if your audience will want to, and know how to, interact with the content and share it? Within certain segments, social networking still involves chit-chat at the church social and not via the internet. But you might be surprised if you ask your readers about this.

Staff: You also have to consider whether your staff have the resources and skills to converted content into accessible digital formats. If traditionally you have been preparing your content in a simply word processor and sending it off to the printer for design and layout, you may need to hire someone else (or provide additional staff training) to be able to do this kind of work.

Lastly, if considering an e-mail solution, you need to determine if your organization has the resources to create and maintain an up-to-date e-mail database, as well as the bandwidth and resources needed to send the digital content?

Summary

In summary, there is no easy or simple answer to the question posted at the beginning of this article. Thoughtful consideration and planning is needed in determining the path you take. As noted earlier, the conversion from paper to digital newsletters may not produce the savings you initially imagined.

Yesterday, Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos unveiled the latest entry in the Kindle family – the DX. The new larger e-book is being marketed to colleges and universities as the first e-text for higher ed. The announcement was made at one of my Alma maters, Pace University in NYC. Apparently Amazon has several colleges lined up to pilot the new device in their classrooms and lecture halls. The new Kindle comes in at nearly $500 so the colleges have indicated some interest in subsidizing the cost of the device. Read the NY Times article about the announcement.

The second big e-text news came yesterday as well as California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger announced a plan to “make California the first state in the nation to offer schools free, open-source digital textbooks for high school students.”

According to the news release on the governor’s blog:

“At the Governor’s request, Secretary Thomas will work with State Superintendent of Public Instruction Jack O’Connell and State Board of Education President Ted Mitchell to develop a state approved list of standards-aligned, open-source digital textbooks for high school math and science. This list will be compiled after content developers across the country are asked to and have submitted digital material for review. “

It is clear the the e-book is the future of education. The exact shape, size and format remains to be seen. But whatever the outcome, the actions of the last two day will no doubt push accessibility issues forward as both the higher education and public schools entities will require that all of these devices and materials will be accessible.

Very exciting.

~j

I know things are tough financially all over, but this seems pretty mercenary to me. Personally, I see a big difference between a mechanized text-to-speech reading application and audiobooks where the content is usually read by a compentent actor or perhaps by the author themselves. The richness of that experience is very different from the “computer voice. ”

It also seems to me that the publishing industry is running scared in light of what has happened to the recording industry and the Napster fiasco. They really need to put their heads together and come up with a plan to get into the game or they will simply dematerialize. Challenging every new innovation is not a solution and will only leave a bitter taste in the mouths of many consumers.

The text-to-speech features of Kindle 2 are a wonderful and universally designed element making printed materials much more available to persons with print disabilities. They should be rewarded and not punished.

Read the whole blog entry from E-Access Bulletin

UPDATE: Just read this additional blog entry from TechFlash about this controversy. Note the comments from the Authors’ Guild disputing some of the commentary.

National Federation of the Blind is into this – see press release. And see “KindleBoards.”

Some twittering about a protest in NYC on 4/7/09. Will post more when I know.

~j