Educause Webcast on "The Why and How of Web Accessibility"

EDUCAUSE Live!
April 4, 2008
1:00 p.m. ET (12:00 p.m. CT, 11:00 a.m. MT, 10:00 a.m. PT)
The Why and How of Web Accessibility

It's Time for Your Robot Overlord Update

One of my favorite books of recent is "How to Survive a Robot Uprising" [I have slipped this into previous posts...]. However, fact as fiction becoming fact again has led to present time which means the time has come for a little update on what is going on in the world of robots that may one day take over the world and make us their fodder for play!

Let's start with Dexter, the giant Space Robot being installed outside the International Space Station. Described as Monstrous by Wired magazine - Dexter is very likely atthis moment directly over your house! The Decepticons ain't looking too fictional and playful now - are they!

Next up is Boston Dynamics Big Dog! No longer the domain of cheap summer beachwear - this Big Dog is the "Most Advanced Quadruped Robot on Earth" and can haul more than 350 pounds of gear through some pretty harsh terrain. Check out the youtube video and be amazed. I especially like it when one of the technicians t-bones him (it) into an ice patch. The thing may stumble around like a drunken moose, but what if that moose were headless and made of wires and computer chips?

Finally we have another items from the ISS mixed with Star Wars. The Personal Satellite Assistant came out of an MIT Undergrad lab course - the story is that a few years ago, MIT engineering Professor David Miller showed the movie Star Wars to his students on their first day of class. There's a scene Miller is particularly fond of, the one where Luke Skywalker spars with a floating battle droid on the Millenium Falcon. Miller stood up and pointed: "I want you to build me some of those." and so ... they did.

Assistive Technology Western Style

From our friend and solid ATHEN member Wink Harner of Mesa Community College comes word of the ...

11th Annual Assistive Technology Summer Institute
Assistive Technology: Basics & Beyond

Conference Sponsors:

• The Arizona Technology Access Program
  (A program of Northern Arizona University's Institute for Human Development)
• The Arizona Department of Education
• Arizona Rehabilitation Services Administration

WHEN
Monday, June 2, 2008 and Tuesday, June 3, 2008
7:30 AM till 4:30 PM (Pacific Time)

WHERE
Wigwam Golf Resort and Spa
300 W Wigwam Boulevard
Litchfield Park, AZ 85340

Greetings from NERCOMP in Providence, RI

10:00 AM - Dann Berkowitz here - presenting at the NERCOMP (Educause) conference today before jetting off to CSUN tomorrow. I got here mid-morning and picked up my name badge and speaker gift (a laser pointer with the Nercomp logo on it - wikked cool!).

I arrived mid way through sessions and when I first logged on to the wireless it was incredible slow - but as soon as the session broke up it sped up rapidly. Hummm -- how many folks were surfing when they should have been listening? They're as bad as the students!

I'm off to the exhibit area and will post on the day as things of interest occur.

1:30 PM - had a nice lunch and rountable discussion with other folks (mostly librarian in nature) interested in 'copyright/digital content'. When I mentioned my Disability Services affiliation it was met with greater interest than I had anticipated. We got to talking about the digitization efforts fo various DSS offices and the AHEAD E-Text initiatives (a couple had heard of this) and I risked opening my mouth with the famous (infamous?) words of Ron Stewart that 'Civil Rights trump Copyrights'. Rather than being shooed away from the table this actually led to a rather lively discussion about how DSS offices CYA as regards fulfilling the needs of their students with print disabilities.

Picked up some OK stuff in the exhibit area -- mostly added to the pen and notepad collection - and dropped my business card into every bucket that was giving away something good.

5:30 PM - My session went very well - the crowd was small but interested as I knew they would be. Anyone wanting spend an hour hearing about the defining characteristics of the terms 'digital' and 'access' had better be interested in the topic or risks being picked on by me every time they yawn.

Just prior to this I was interviewed for a podcast that will be up on the Educause site in a few weeks. It will likely be edited down a bit but I tried to cram as much as I could regarding ATHEN, AHG, AHEAD, ATIA, CSUN, the Educause IT Accessibility group, and more. Fun fun fun!

Now it is off to have a brew at the conference post and then off to home for about 4 hours of sleep before heading to the airport for a westbound flight!

ATHEN Meeting at CSUN 2008

The Access Technologist Higher Education Network (ATHEN) will be hold its semi-annual business meeting at CSUN:

• Thursday evening (March 13th)
• Starting at 6:30 PM

Conference Room 1
Courtyard by Marriott @ LAX
6161 W Century Boulevard
(right around the corner from the main conference hotels)

This is the same location where Dolphin Computer Access is holding their demonstrations and trainings. Dolphin has been kind enough to offer ATHEN this space AND Dolphin is providing light refeshments (munchies) for the meeting to hold us all over until we can go out to dinner afterwards.

Here are the meeting agenda items we have thus far:

• Membership
  Dues and Payment
  Membership Year
  Membership Categories
• Elections
  2007 Elections
  Election Committee
  Online Elections
• Bylaws Issues
  Proposed Changes and modifications
• E-Journal
  Issue #4
  Issue #5
• Survey Update
• Wiki Update
• Student Scholarship Program (draft)
• Old Business
• New Business

If any member has additional items please send them to Ron Stewart, President privately and he will add them to the agenda.

CSUN Is Next Week!

The CSUN Conference on Technology & Persons with Disabilities is happening next week at the Los Angeles Airport Marriott and the Renaissance Montura Hotel. Even if you are not attending conference sessions, you might want to go see the vendor halls. Particularly for those of you in Southern California, it's worth taking aday to visit the exhibits. You will get a chance to see the latest inassistive technology and get all your questions answered directly from the developers and vendors.

The exhibit halls are open Thursday-Saturday (March 13-15), and I would really encourage as many of your disability services staff as possible to visit the exhibits. If you work half day on Friday, you could even carpool over and take a look. After all, it's free!

To print yourself a "hall pass," click on the following URL
http://www.csun.edu/cod/conf/2008/forms/hallpass.pdf

Damn ... it really could happen to you!!

Press Release: This is a direct transcript of the press release.

AAP APPLAUDS MEMBERS’ SUCCESS IN SUIT

TO STOP SALES OF PIRATED AND UNAUTHORZED TEXTBOOKS

Washington, DC, February 29, 2008: The Association of American Publishers (AAP) welcomed the February 28 announcement by four of its member publishers that they have successfully settled a trademark and copyright infringement action against the owners and operators of ValoreBooks.com, an online textbook marketplace. The four AAP publishers, Mc-Graw-Hill Education, Pearson Education, John Wiley & Sons, and Cengage Learning, brought suit against Valore for repeatedly permitting and assisting sales by third-party sellers of pirated educational materials and of foreign manufactured editions of textbooks not authorized for sale in North America, including editions bearing the publishers’ trademarks that are materially different from their authorized U.S. counterparts.

Under the terms of the settlement, Valore is prohibited from importing, purchasing, packaging, altering, marketing, or offering for distribution or sale any of the plaintiff publishers’ copyrighted textbooks and other foreign manufactured materials authorized for sale only in international regions or specific countries outside North America or that bear the publishers’ trademarks and are materially different from their authorized U.S. counterparts, and from selling and distributing pirated electronic copies of the publishers’ works.

Allan Adler, AAP’s Vice President for Legal and Government Affairs, lauded the publishers’ tenacity in pursuing blatant infringements of their intellectual property rights. “Individual publishers are in the best position to track and assess violations of their intellectual property rights and AAP is proud of its members’ determination to pursue infringers and bring them to court. AAP and the industry are ready to support these efforts in any way we can,” Adler said.

The Association of American Publishers is the national trade association of the U.S. book publishing industry. AAP’s more than 300 members include most of the major commercial publishers in the United States, as well as smaller and non-profit publishers, university presses and scholarly societies. AAP members publish hardcover and paperback books in every field, educational materials for the elementary, secondary, postsecondary, and professional markets, scholarly journals, computer software, and electronic products and services. The protection of intellectual property rights in all media is among the Association’s highest priorities.