Category: Accessibility

A press release from the U.S. government talks about an updated and revamped one-stop shop for federal info on disabilities.     WASHINGTON — In conjunction with the 19th anniversary of the Americans with Disabilities Act, the U.S. Department of Labor has re-named and re-launched DisabilityInfo.gov as Disability.gov. Available at http://www.disability.gov, the site offers comprehensive information about programs and services to better serve more than 50 million Americans with disabilities, their family members, veterans, employers,…

I have loads of info and experience in most aspects of technology accessibility. This, however, is an area where I’m seeking to learn from others. An impending change by Comcast to eliminate most analog signals means that my current solution for video recording of a Media Center PC with an analog TV tuner card will no longer work. In researching my options, I thought I’d see what anyone knew related to the state of the…

A recent posting on the Google Blog announced that Google’s toolbar for Internet Explorer added accessibility enhancements. The gist of the posting is that keyboard access to the various toolbar buttons as well as better support for Microsoft Active Accessibility has been added.   This release adds support for Windows Accessibility APIs (used by screen readers, etc.) and enables keyboard navigation and access. From inside a browser with Toolbar installed, the global shortcut Alt+G places…

Colleagues at work frequently talk about del.icio.us and StumbleUpon. These are just two web sites and services in the category of social browsing. The theory behind these kinds of web sites is simple. You find web pages that are interesting and mark them in some fashion. Then others who are users of the services can see what you find interesting and correspondingly you find what others with similar interests as you are browsing. It all…

As anyone who starts using Office 2007 likely knows, one of the more dramatic changes is the elimination of traditional menus and toolbars. These have been replaced with what Office calls the Ribbon. The short explanation of this new user interface is that more commands are displayed at a time without having to hunt through various submenus, dialogs and toolbars.   While the Office team has done work to try and support Office 2003 hotkeys…

As I mentioned in an earlier blog post, at least one U.S. court has said that our currency needs to be made more accessible. Since that time things have heated up a bit.   The treasury department has appealed the court decision largely on what the treasury department sees as the cost of making currency accessible.   But in their petition to the appeals court, government lawyers argued that varying the size of denominations could…

NPR’s Weekend Edition featured accessible audio games today.

I’m sure the court fights and battles will go on for years but at least for the first time today a court has recognized that the U.S. Government does not comply with our own laws on accessibility when it comes to money. Maybe sometime I won’t have to ask others what the bills in my wallet are. Sure their are strategies (folding money) and gadgets to read bills but the fact is that U.S. money…