[gui-talk] Article: IBM helps blind 'see' web video

[slery]

I'm not thrilled with the having to use a separate browser but at least this
venture actually sounds like it could be useful and understands the needs of
screenreaders.

Cindy

-----Original Message-----
From: gui-talk-bounces at nfbnet.org [mailto:gui-talk-bounces at nfbnet.org]On
Behalf Of Steve Pattison
Sent: Saturday, March 31, 2007 9:56 PM
To: GUI Talk; Access-L; PC Audio
Subject: [gui-talk] Article: IBM helps blind 'see' web video


IBM helps blind 'see' web video
By Geoff Adams-Spink
Age & disability correspondent, BBC News website

Technology giant, IBM, is soon to launch a multimedia browser to make
audio and video
content accessible to people with vision impairments.

Codenamed the Accessibility Browser - or A-Browser - the software was
created by
a blind employee in Japan.

The A-Browser will give blind and partially-sighted people the same
control over
multimedia content that sighted people have using a mouse.

IBM says it will be available later this year and hopes it will be free.

The A-Browser is the creation of Dr Chieko Asakawa, a blind employee
at IBM's research
laboratory in Tokyo.

Dr Asakawa was becoming increasingly frustrated by the amount of web
content that
she was unable to access.

For the time being, she and her team are concentrating on content
that is compatible
with Real Player and Windows Media Player.

Cross-talk screen readers and self-talking browsers are not able to
deal with video and animation, some of which starts playing as soon
as a page is loaded.  This often interferes with the synthesised
speech output from the screen-reader software.

Using the A-Browser, a vision-impaired person can control media
content by using
predefined shortcut keys, rather than having to look for the control
buttons using
a mouse.

The browser also allows video to be slowed down, speeded up and can
accommodate an additional audio description or narration track that
is often included to make films and television programmes more
comprehensible to blind people.

The volume controls also allow the user to adjust the sound of
various sources independently - for example the main audio track, an
audio description track and output from a screen reader.

"We're beginning to look at accessibility as a very important
business area," said Frances West, director of IBM's Human Ability
and Accessibility Centre.  "This is not just from a social
responsibility standpoint, but with ageing baby-boomers we think that
such technology could really benefit the population in general because
all of us will be on this ageing journey."

The company plans to "open source" its new accessibility software in
order to make
it available to the largest possible number of people.

It is estimated that there are more than 160m blind and
partially-sighted people around the world who could benefit from such
a development.

IBM has not yet decided whether the A-Browser will have a worldwide
launch or whether it will be introduced in selected countries first.

Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/technology/6507189.stm
Published: 2007/03/30 13:42:41 GMT


Regards Steve
Email:  srp at internode.on.net
Skype:  steve1963
MSN Messenger:  internetuser383 at hotmail.com
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