Archives for September, 2008
Started in late 2001, GOK was created at the ATRC (University of Toronto) with funding from Sun Microsystems. GOK (an award winning software that provides text entry and graphical user interface interaction using only switches and/or mouse devices), is an on-screen keyboard that provides access to the GNOME desktop through dynamically generated keyboards, and text [...]
Orca is an open source scriptable screen reader. The development of Orca has been led by the Accessibility Program Office of Sun Microsystems, Inc. with contributions from many community members. For more information and to download Orca, see http://live.gnome.org/Orca. Using various combinations of speech, braille, and magnification, Orca is designed to work with applications and [...]
October is designated as an opportunity for the GSFC community to gain an awareness of various aspects of disability and accessibility needs. The Equal Opportunity Programs Office is sponsoring a number of events that would be of particular interest to management, supervisory staff, and others who will likely face issues relating to hidden disabilities, cognitive [...]
You might be able to help. Member Whitney Quesenbery brought us the latest news about the Plain Language bill that we wrote about back in April this year. It is stuck in the Senate. Senator Bennett (R. Utah) has blocked the bill on the grounds that it would be a problem for the Federal Election [...]
Turn Firefox into a screen reader with Fire Vox, suggests Roger Johansson of 456 Berea St. He talks about his experience with Fire Vox, the free open-source screen reader extension for Firefox. He has successfully used it on his Mac (after a few unsuccessful attempts), but Fire Vox can also run on Windows and Linux. [...]
The STC Washington, DC Chapter is offering a Webinar about DITA on 31 October. (Speaker: Tom Magliery, XML Technology Specialist, JustSystems; Location: Anywhere with a phone line and a Web connection). Time: 11:30 a.m. to 1 p.m. [Registration link to be provided.] Do you feel you’ve taken conditional text to the max – and maybe [...]
Avast, me hearties! Once again, we’ve arrived at 19 September, Talk Like a Pirate Day! On this day, all posts will be automatically converted to pirate talk. They will revert to normal after today (or after a few days as this is the weekend). Because this is automated, the wording will be a little different [...]
STC’s Technical Communication Summit 2009 will be held 3-6 May 2009 at the Hyatt Regency Atlanta, in the heart of downtown Atlanta, GA. See the Call for Proposals for STC’s 56th Annual Conference: Technical Summit 2009. You may submit more than one proposal, but each must be submitted separately. Proposals may be submitted and updated online until 10:00 a.m. (Eastern), [...]
We encourage members and friends of the AccessAbility SIG to consider submitting a paper for Include 2009. This call for papers in the Caring Technology Research Announcement List was brought to our attention by member Lisa Pappas. Include 2009, Royal College of Art, London 5-8 April 2009 Submission deadline: deadline October 1, 2008 The RCA [...]
“Think Positive” is the theme for World Arthritis Day 2008. This theme acknowledges that the challenges associated with arthritis/rheumatism can also get you down emotionally, but that there are a number of positive things you can do to help you feel better in yourself and get more from your life. Our campaign for this year [...]
Some attendees at the June 2008 STC conference may recall the session about “Communicating and Creating Training for Disasters and Emergencies” presented by members of the Environmental, Safety, and Health SIG. “How do you write emergency training that will engage people to become prepared when they are apprehensive about their safety?” At the other end [...]
As Opera puts it, “Learning Web Standards just got easier.” Indeed it has! Opera has released “a complete course to teach you standards-based web development, including HTML, CSS, design principles and background theory, and JavaScript basics”. It is called the Web Standards Curriculum. This curriculum was released in association with the Yahoo! Developer Network and [...]
I was asked to prepare a persona on what users over the age of 50 may need to maximize their use of the STC Body of Knowledge portal. The Society for Technical Communication (STC) is currently developing a Body of Knowledge (BoK) portal where Technical Communicators can share their areas of expertise with each other. [...]
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