Carl Brown, Dick Banks, and Allan Macurdy

The access technology community has suffered both a professional and a personal loss last week with the passing of Carl Brown, Director of the High Tech Center Training Unit of the California Community College System.

Carl’s wife, Martha Kanter, has arranged for a memorial service on the De Anza College campus in the Flint Center at 2:00 p.m. on Thursday, December 4. Martha has asked that, rather than flowers, individuals who wish to do so make a donation to a scholarship that will be set up in Carl’s name. Information on how to contribute should be available soon.

This marks the second time this year our professional community has lost a leader and champion for serving the educational and interpersonal technology related needs of students with disabilities. Earlier this year Dick Banks of EASI [Eqwual Access to Software and Information] passed away after a brief fight with cancer.

It has been said that a profession, like a country, comes into its own with the passing of its founding fathers. That may be true - or it may be bunk - but eiter way it speaks to the youth of our movement and the void that will be left by the passing of these founding fathers.

The passing of Carl and Dick begets a remembrance of another icon in the field of education and disability services, that of my former boss, friend and mentor Allan Macurdy of the Boston University Office of Disability Services. Though not an icon in the access technology field (he considered computers a necessary evil of our modern age), Allan was an importnt figure in my development as a professional in many aspects of serving the needs of postsecondary students both with and without disabilities. He is sorely missed.

As the poet Virgil (70 BC - 19 BC) wrote:
“Your profession is not what brings home your paycheck. Your profession is what you were put on earth to do. With such passion and such intensity that it becomes spiritual in calling.”
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Google Voice Search is wikked cool!

Google Voice Search -- pretty damn cool! Of course you need to have an iPhone for this one - but keep in mind all of the other Google apps that work on a wide variety of phones. I regularly use Gmail, Google Search, Google News, Google Maps and others on my Blackberry.

Google keeps hitting them out of the park. My favorite aspect of Google Apps is that end-users can pick and choose what they want to use. Gmail is only one of my addresses yet I use iGoogle as my customized homepage. I have documents saved on GoogleDocs and make use of some of the other apps as I see fit.

Description Key for Educational Media

From Mary Ann Siller, M.Ed.
Project Manager, Professional Development
American Foundation for the Blind

Hello Colleagues:

The Described and Captioned Media Program (DCMP) has partnered with the American Foundation for the Blind to forge "guidelines" to equal access for students with vision loss: the Description Key: Guidelines for the Description of Educational Media. The Description Key guidelines are complete and are posted online. The guidelines are intended for new and experienced describers, description agencies, media producers and distributors, and others who want to make educational media more accessible.

Go to www.afb.org/descriptionguidelines.asp at AFB for this valuable resource.

DCMP may be a new resource for you. To learn more about their extensive description resources available to teachers and parents , check out the DCMP Website for your free-loan educational accessible media needs.

EDUCAUSE IT Accessibility Constituent Group Meeting Notes

An agenda item at the ATHEN annual business meeting a regular topic of conversation among the ATHEN membership is the EDUCAUSE IT Accessibility Constituent Group. ATHEN and its members supports the efforts of this group and has many members in both organizations. For those of you unfamiliar with this group, here is information from their webpage:

Programs, services, and resources at universities and colleges continue to expand exponentially, and delivery methods have become increasingly technology-centric. Unless these technologies are designed and deployed to support the access needs of all users, including those with disabilities, universities and colleges risk excluding qualified students, faculty, staff, and other stakeholders.

The IT Accessibility Constituent Group will help the EDUCAUSE community to assess the scope of issues of IT accessibility, identify resources and initiatives, develop best practices on policy and assistive program and service development, and in general focus on how to approach campus-wide universal access to information available via technology by engaging in dialogue across boundaries within and beyond the campus environment.

The IT Accessibility Constituent Group meets regularly and most recently at EDUCAUSE annual meeting in October. The notes are posted on Terrill Thompsons blog.
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AHG Presentation - Alternate Format Production

I presented a 1 and 3/4 hour lecture on alternate format production at the Accessing Higher Ground conference on Friday, November 15th. We ran over by at least a half-hour, to the point that the wait staff were removing the chairs in our room so they could set up for lunch. Either my presentation wasn't giving the right information, or there were just a lot of really interested people.

I am inclined to believe the latter. I handed out 40+ CD's with my presentation and a copy of my production manual. Because I talked about the manual on a listserv I'm on, I also have about 40 emails here to respond to who also would like a copy of the manual. If you'd like a copy, simply comment to this post with your contact information (separate your name from the @ symbol and your domain with a blank space to keep from getting spammed by bots searching these comments).

I'll be happy to share what I know.

My presentation covered our campus' process for producing alternate format, from triage through production to distribution and administrative follow-up. I included recommended software and hardware, storage, filing systems, and even the finding of campus funds to complete the work. Our process is our process, and won't work for everyone, but there may be things you can take away from this that will help you in setting up your own processes.

Accessing Higher Ground this year was the best by far that I've attended. I got some wonderful information, learned a lot of really great things, and was able to network with many of my colleagues. A good experience all around and I highly recommend this conference if you are an adaptive technologist.

ATHEN Annual Business Meeting Hi-Lites

This past week was the 11th annual Accessing Higher Ground conference in beautiful Boulder, Colorado. Ye Gads I love this conference and look forward to getting out there every year to reconnect with friends and colleagues and to simply soak up the air for a few days. An important activity during the conference is the annual business meeting of ATHEN and this year was especially important. The minutes of the meeting are being deciphered and will be available on the organization website soon, but in the meantime here are a some hi-lites:

1. The revised Bylaws were approved by a unanimous vote of the quorum present.
2. The Standing Rules were also presented and met approval by the membership - these will continue to grow as the need arises.
3. Our colleague Saroj Primlani (of North Carolina State University) was honored as the second recepient of the ATHEN Lifetime Honorary Membership.
4. Accessing Higher Ground conference attandance continues to grow as does the number and quality of presentations. Be sure to check out the new Accessing Higher Ground blog.
5. ATHEN will be present in force at the ATIA conference in January of next year.
6. The latest edition of the E-Journal is well on its way to publication.
7. Because the new Bylaws were approved, a call has gone out for nominations for Officers. Contact Dan Comden for nominations as he is heading up the Election Committee.
8. Speaking of which, several committees created through the Bylaws attracted interest and I just want to thank the following members for stepping up as Chairpersons:
   + Elections: Dan Comden
   + Membership: Joe Humbert
   + Bylaws: Gaeir Dietrich
   + Publications: Teresa Haven
   + Professional Development: Ron Stewart and Wink Harner
   
   Complete information about committees and other activities will be in the minutes. The Bylaws created additional Committees that are in need of leadership. If interested in heading a committee, or if you would like to join a committee and need to get in touch with the Chairperson, contact the ATHEN Secretary Dann Berkowitz (who also happens to run this blog).
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AMIS DAISY Reader - Beta 4 now available!

AMIS 3, the free and open source DAISY player for Windows, has just reached its fourth beta release, which is likely to be the last beta before a stable release. This means it's the last chance to stress-test it before widespread distribution.

What's new in beta 4? Improvements were made to internationalization, accessibility, and overall reading experience; and specific requests have been implemented. There are two new notable features:

(1) AMIS supports text-only books now, in addition to full-text, full-audio and audio-TOC books; and
(2) there is a new piece of documentation, in DAISY format: the Keyboard Shortcuts book (found in the help menu).

To get AMIS 3 beta 4 and start testing, go to: http://daisy-trac.cvsdude.com/amis/wiki/BetaTesting
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Accessing Higher Ground is Under Way!

I started this morning with a very informative JAWS 10 lecture and demonstration, and finished off the afternoon listening to the WebAIM folks talk about WAVE, the web-page accessibility checker.

This is my sixth year at Accessing Higher Ground, and I never fail to learn something new.

If you're here, look for me. I'm presenting a lecture on alternate format on Friday morning and would love to answer your questions. I haven't yet seen Dann, but have run into plenty of other well-known faces in the adaptive technology field.

Just a day late - but still interesting.

This video was brought to my attention a couple of days ago and I am only now getting around to posting it. The gist is that John McCain has stated that he does not use a computer and does not know how to use e-mail. This idea is defended by Karl Rove who says that because of McCain's physical injuries he is unable to type or use a computer. In the video this is followed by several video scenes of individuals with various disabilities effectively and effortlessly using computers.

Whether the claim about his war injuries and computer use is true or not, it is still rather concerning that this topic has even been discussed in regards to a presidential candidate. On the side of the Republicans, Washington is full of these guys, and it is quite depressing. Larry Craig once said "I've never used the internet". Ted Stevens thinks the internet is a series of tubes. Bush uses "the Google." How long until we have a computer-literate generation of leaders in our Capitol.