[laptop-accessibility] needs of blind users versus deaf users

[Mel Chua]

I'm severely hearing-impaired and grew up hacking devices so I could use
them (mostly involving the addition of blinky lights). If anyone here needs
to get in touch with specialists/accessibility folk experienced with working
with deaf kids, I can probably hook you up (and will try to pull a few into
the list).

Note that making transcriptions/translations of audio/video/pictorial stuff
available in plaintext format makes it easy for us to help both visually and
auditorily impaired students as well as students who speak/read a different
language.

Is anyone writing a section or companion to
[[OLPC_Human_Interface_Guidelines]] for accessibility? If not, it might be a
good thing to start.

Is there a class of engineering students somewhere that might be persuaded
to take on disability access for their capstone project, and/or some (older
- early teens or adults, for more useful verbal feedback) folks with
disabilities we might be able to recruit as testers and initial people to
design directly for? I'd be happy to serve as a guinea pig for any hacks
people come up with for the deaf.

-Mel

 by

On Jan 8, 2008 3:03 PM, Seth Woodworth <seth at isforinsects.com> wrote:

>
> All of the audiobooks from Librivox that are going to be included on the
> XO will have the corresponding text in the same package.  It's a trivial
> matter to connect those two with some html, as the current content archive
> standard calls for.
>
> I agree with your comments otherwise, and I think that if OLPC isn't
> meeting those requirements it's a matter of 'not yet' rather than 'not
> ever'.
>
> Accessibility is still pretty new and unfinished on the XO.
>
>
> On Jan 8, 2008 11:16 AM, <ashettle at patriot.net> wrote:
>
> > Albert Calahan said: "For a long time now, I've thought that
> > accessibility
> > adaptations are kind of the wrong approach. That means trying to use
> > audio
> > to describe video, when the video is trying to describe some abstract
> > internal state. Ideally one would skip the middle-man, going straight
> > from
> > the internal abstract state to the audio."
> >
> > When making adaptations or modifications to make the standard XO more
> > usable by students with one disability (in this case, blind children),
> > it
> > is important to make sure we don't then make it less usable for students
> > with another disability.  Deaf students would obviously be unable to
> > access material offered purely in audio format.
> >
> > It does make sense to have a way to turn off the screen for a student
> > who
> > will never be looking at the screen anyway (e.g., because they're
> > blind).
> > And maybe a way to shut off audio for students who will never be using
> > that.  And it also does make sense to look at more innovative, creative
> > ways of presenting information that is more inclusive of a wider number
> > of
> > students who have very different learning strengths and weaknesses from
> > each other: if audio genuinely works better for a particular content,
> > sure
> > go with that, then put in captions or a transcript or a video in
> > whatever
> > local signed language is used in a given country to make it accessible
> > to
> > deaf students.  I'm just raising this general point because sometimes
> > I've
> > seen people get so focused on making something accessible to one
> > disability group who happens to be more visible to them (maybe they're
> > the
> > group who spoke out more, for instance) that they end up introducing
> > features that exclude others.
> >
> > A somewhat separate point re, video versus audio etc.:  Do bear in mind
> > that even non-disabled children will have a wide diversity in how their
> > brains are wired to process new information and ideas.  Some students
> > just
> > naturally learn better when they HEAR new information: show it to them
> > visually and they just won't absorb it even if nothing's wrong with
> > their
> > vision.  But other students just naturally learn better if they SEE new
> > information: hearing it just isn't enough, even if they can hear
> > perfectly.  Still other students need to be physically moving and
> > learning
> > things through the motion of their body.  And so forth.  So it's never a
> >
> > good idea to assume that all educational material should be converted to
> > serve a single modality of learning because there would then be many
> > students who are left behind wheter or not they're disabled.
> >
> > Or if I've misinterpreted or misunderstood please elucidate.
> >
> > Do we have any educational/pedalogy specialists on this list?  This is
> > not
> > really my field--just stuff I've read a bit here and there.  Would be a
> > nice complement for this list I would think.
> >
> > Thanks,
> >
> > Andrea Shettle, MSW
> > ashettle at patriot.net
> > http://wecando.wordpress.com  (Blogging disability and international
> > development)
> >
> > _______________________________________________
> > accessibility mailing list
> > accessibility at lists.laptop.org
> > http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/accessibility
> >
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> accessibility mailing list
> accessibility at lists.laptop.org
> http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/accessibility
>
>
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