Among the presenters at this year’s conference is yours truly, John Brandt representing Maine CITE and the Maine AIM Program. Also there will be my colleague Cynthia Curry, Consultant and MLTI Integration Mentor. Both of these presentations will take place on Friday and require full conference registration.

My presentation, AT & AIM – Tablets and Pods in the Classroom will demonstrate and evaluate several devices and apps used for instruction and as assistive technology (AT). Used with Accessible Instructional Materials (AIM) these devices can be very helpful to students with disabilities. This presentation takes place at 11:00 am (session 2) in the Arnold Room.

Cynthia’s presentation, Text to Speech, Speech to Text, and Screen Readers will discuss “computer programs that talk.” In the presentation she will demonstrate and discuss how these unique applications can be used to enhance student learning. This presentation takes place at 1:20 pm (session 3) in the Washington Room.

Back by popular demand this year is Sarah Herrlinger, Senior Marketing Manager in Apple’s education division. Last year, Sarah presented on the accessibility features built into Apple’s Mac OS X and iOS and gave us a first-hand look at some of the features of the new iPad. This year, Sarah will again talk on this topic and demonstrate some of the new and improve accessibility features of Mac OS X and iOS in her presentation entitled Accessibility Features of Mac OS X and Apple Mobile.

Sarah’s presentation is co-sponsored by Maine CITE and Apple, Inc. and is offered free of charge to ACTEM members. It will take place from 1:30 to 4:30 in the Sagadahoc Room. If you are not an ACTEM member and would like to attend, please contact Maine CITE.

For more information about the conference and to register, please visit the ACTEM Conference website.

In checking out the Live Demo of the product, I noticed that it was using the tags <i> for italic and <b> for bold. Before I started to spout off about how this new app was producing “old deprecated code” I decided to see if I was wrong (it would not be the first time) and if things in HTML5 had changed the standards for these two presentational tags. I opened up a bit of a tempest in a teapot.

In my “research” I discovered that in fact there is a proposal in the HTML5 to re-institute the old <i> and <b> codes with a new spin while still retaining the <em> and <strong>. For background, I  used a W3C article about the use of the <i> and <b> and an article from HTML5 Doctor that provides a better explanation.

For those of you completely confused at this point let me attempt to explain the history (at least from my perspective).

When HTML was first developed there were relatively few “tags” – technically called HTML Elements – for marking up alphanumeric content.  The initial thrust at the time was to help content developers re-create in webpages what currently existed in the printed form.  People were used to seeing words in italics and bold so it was logical to include the ability to create this in HTML. However, as the HTML language evolved, there was a recognition that coding needed to respond to the needs of users/readers and provide more than just presentational information.

In the first iteration of HTML, the <i> element, used for italics, and the <b> element, used for bold, were originally thought of as “presentation only” elements – meaning, they would “catch the readers eye” and show the so-highlighted words as being distinct within the written context. By the time HTML v 4.0 came around, there was a recognition that the use of italics and bold in printed form was more than simply presentation, these elements also provide semantic emphasis of the highlighted text. As a result, web designers were encouraged to use the new tag of <em> for “emphasis” to replace the <i> for italics and <strong> for, er, “strong” to replace the <b> for bold. In the 1998 publication HTML: The Definitive Guide, 3rd Ed, the authors note “Like the <em> tag, the <strong> tag is for emphasizing text, except with more gusto…<em> text is like shouting, <strong> text is nothing short of a scream.”

As time went on, arguments regarding the use of these elements increased. One of the more provocative commentaries centered around the needs of users of assistive technology – specifically screen readers – and how HTML needs to be be advanced to provide more to people with disabilities. I can even remember a time when there was serious talk that these tags would eventually be used by screen reader software (and all text to speech applications) in a way that would actually “express” the emphasis in the aural output. But that technological advancement has not happened (yet).

In the latest arguments, it is noted that the use of italic and bold in the printed, as well as web form are not always used for emphasis. Sometimes the font is changed to denote a word written in a different language or to imply some alternative “voice” such as the narrative of “dream sequence” in a literary work.

I have read the two articles mentioned above and I must admit that I am still confused. But the gist of these changes are as follows (note this is my understanding – you may have to make you own interpretations):

In the new HTML5, situations where the web designer needs to ensure that the highlighted words are emphasized with a specific semantic intent, the <i> and the <b> would now be used. However, with <i> and <b> tags there is an expectation that the designer will also add a class attribute, as in <i class=”voiceover”> or <i lang=”fr”>. On the other hand, if the web designer simply needs to create a presentational element – the proverbial “eye grabber” – then the <em> and <bold> are used. Seems like it is backwards, no?

If you are not confused yet, this next part will surely put you over the top.

As the Wc3 notes in this article about the changes:

They continue:

The HTML5 specification redefines the intended use of these elements as follows.

So there you have it – clear as mud.

To be continued…(italic mine!)

References:

Musciano, C. and Kennedy, B. (1998). HTML: The definitive guide, 3rd ed. Sebastopol, CA: O’Reilly.

Ishida, R. (2010). Using <b> and <i> elements. W3C. (on-line)

Studholme, O. (2010) The i, b, em, & strong elements. HTML5 Doctor (on-line)

That said, the e-reader, and specifically the Kindle by Amazon, has been having a rough time of it. First introduced in November of 2007, the Kindle was a big hit, selling out in the first five hours and on backorder for months after that. The Kindle 2, released two years later was equally well received and the DX version released a couple of months later was also very popular.

Then the fun began. A controversy with The Author’s Guild forced Amazon to hobble the Kindle 2 by shutting off the text-to-speech feature. Disability groups stormed the Manhattan offices of The Author’s Guild to protest and claim discrimination, but the device, it seems, was already inherently inaccessible to people with disabilities.

In May of 2009, Amazon announced a bold move of a offering the Kindles to several large US universities with the goal of taking over the college textbook industry and making paper college textbooks a thing of the past. More fun followed when the inherent inaccessibility of the device became widely known. A number of the  universities that piloted the program with the Kindle backtracked and dropped out when they started to see the accessibility problems. “Syracuse University and the University of Wisconsin at Madison, also examined the utility of the Kindle DX as a teaching device and decided that they would not use the Kindle DX until it is accessible to blind individuals” – this according to the US Department of Justice (USDOJ).

The latest news on Kindle is a settlement with the USDOJ announced this week. It states:

Under the agreements reached today, the universities (Case Western Reserve University, Pace University, Reed College, and Arizona State University) generally will not purchase, recommend or promote use of the Kindle DX, or any other dedicated electronic book reader, unless the devices are fully accessible to students who are blind and have low vision. The universities agree that if they use dedicated electronic book readers, they will ensure that students with vision disabilities are able to access and acquire the same materials and information, engage in the same interactions, and enjoy the same services as sighted students with substantially equivalent ease of use. The agreements that the Justice Department reached with these universities extend beyond the Kindle DX to any dedicated electronic reading device.

This sounds pretty bad for Amazon and the Kindle.

And given Mr. Jobs recent efforts at making Apple products fully accessible, one can only imagine that the rumored “Apple Table device” WILL be fully accessible and perfectly timed to kick butt.

Stay tuned.

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