<br>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.
<br><br>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'.<br><br>Accessibility is still pretty new and unfinished on the XO.
<br><br><div class="gmail_quote">On Jan 8, 2008 11:16 AM, <<a href="mailto:ashettle@patriot.net">ashettle@patriot.net</a>> wrote:<br><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; padding-left: 1ex;">
Albert Calahan said: "For a long time now, I've thought that accessibility<br>adaptations are kind of the wrong approach. That means trying to use audio<br>to describe video, when the video is trying to describe some abstract
<br>internal state. Ideally one would skip the middle-man, going straight from<br>the internal abstract state to the audio."<br><br>When making adaptations or modifications to make the standard XO more<br>usable by students with one disability (in this case, blind children), it
<br>is important to make sure we don't then make it less usable for students<br>with another disability. Deaf students would obviously be unable to<br>access material offered purely in audio format.<br><br>It does make sense to have a way to turn off the screen for a student who
<br>will never be looking at the screen anyway (e.g., because they're blind).<br>And maybe a way to shut off audio for students who will never be using<br>that. And it also does make sense to look at more innovative, creative
<br>ways of presenting information that is more inclusive of a wider number of<br>students who have very different learning strengths and weaknesses from<br>each other: if audio genuinely works better for a particular content, sure
<br>go with that, then put in captions or a transcript or a video in whatever<br>local signed language is used in a given country to make it accessible to<br>deaf students. I'm just raising this general point because sometimes I've
<br>seen people get so focused on making something accessible to one<br>disability group who happens to be more visible to them (maybe they're the<br>group who spoke out more, for instance) that they end up introducing
<br>features that exclude others.<br><br>A somewhat separate point re, video versus audio etc.: Do bear in mind<br>that even non-disabled children will have a wide diversity in how their<br>brains are wired to process new information and ideas. Some students just
<br>naturally learn better when they HEAR new information: show it to them<br>visually and they just won't absorb it even if nothing's wrong with their<br>vision. But other students just naturally learn better if they SEE new
<br>information: hearing it just isn't enough, even if they can hear<br>perfectly. Still other students need to be physically moving and learning<br>things through the motion of their body. And so forth. So it's never a
<br>good idea to assume that all educational material should be converted to<br>serve a single modality of learning because there would then be many<br>students who are left behind wheter or not they're disabled.<br><br>
Or if I've misinterpreted or misunderstood please elucidate.<br><br>Do we have any educational/pedalogy specialists on this list? This is not<br>really my field--just stuff I've read a bit here and there. Would be a
<br>nice complement for this list I would think.<br><br>Thanks,<br><br>Andrea Shettle, MSW<br><a href="mailto:ashettle@patriot.net">ashettle@patriot.net</a><br><a href="http://wecando.wordpress.com" target="_blank">http://wecando.wordpress.com
</a> (Blogging disability and international<br>development)<br><br>_______________________________________________<br>accessibility mailing list<br><a href="mailto:accessibility@lists.laptop.org">accessibility@lists.laptop.org
</a><br><a href="http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/accessibility" target="_blank">http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/accessibility</a><br></blockquote></div><br>