When you think of comics and graphic novels, one of the first assumptions is that they are a visual medium. Therefore, it only follows that they aren’t accessible to the blind, right? Well, Guy Hasson is trying to change that through his comic book company Comics Empower, that make comic books into audio format for blind and visually impaired people to read.
Have you ever tried googling what dyslexia is? Well, I have and the most useful result that comes up on the first page, is an NHS page that tells you about what symptoms in small children suggest they have dyslexia.
So I blogged last week about technology and how it changes people’s lives. I’ve now read an article on Wired.com which talks about the team of people that makes Facebook accessible to disabled people. I decided to write a blog about how I – and other disabled people – use Facebook, what I still struggle with, and whether I think the accessibility is getting any better.
Speech recognition was initially designed for people who felt they needed to do lots of typing but couldn’t touch-type, otherwise known as the one-finger typing brigade or ‘hen-peckers’. However, it soon became apparent that there were disabled people out there, who couldn’t type by hand or struggled with literacy, who were suddenly thrown a computer life-line.
In my 14 years of working with disabled people and the technology designed to help them, I have spent a lot of time with Augmentative and Alternative Communication (AAC). The type of AAC that I have been involved in is provided by computer technology, a branch of electronic assistive technology (eAT).
