Web 2.0 is about harnessing the potential of the Internet in a more collaborative and peer-to-peer manner with emphasis on social interaction.

June 05, 2009

National Workshop on Web Accessibility

A National Workshop on Web Accessibility is being organised by the Centre for Internet and Society (www.cis-india.org) from June 5 to 7, 2009 in Bangalore. The workshop is meant for web developers and aims at highlighting the importance of creating accessible web sites.

The workshop intends to educate web developers, from public as well as of private sector organisations, on how to incorporate accessibility features into existing web sites as well as those being newly developed.

The workshop will comprise of conceptual as well as hands-on sessions. The trainers are specialists in various aspects of web accessibility. The main focus will be on WCAG 2.0 guidelines. The participants are expected to have good knowledge of HTML, XML, CSS, etc.

More information on program schedule, speakers and registration details are available at http://www.cis-india.org/events/national-workshop-on-web-accessibility-june-2009

Posted by Dr. Ajay Kolhatkar at 10:02 AM | | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

June 04, 2009

Infosys iProwe: Product for Web Accessibility Assessment and Remediation

A few months back, we launched Infosys iProwe, which is a product in the domain of Web Accessibility Assessment & Remediation. Infosys iProwe is a patent pending Web Accessibility Assessment and Remediation Product from the Web 2.0 Research Lab. About 20% of the global population suffers from some form of disability and a large part of the World Wide Web (about 97%) is not accessible to this disabled population.  Disabilities include visually challenges users of screen readers, hearing impaired users, low-vision users, color-blind users, users with a motor disability, and users with cognitive disabilities. iProwe leverages built-in intelligence to automatically analyse the accessibility issues of Websites and recommends remedial measures to make Websites accessible. iProwe provides comprehensive assessment and recommendation at the same time drastically reducing the time, cost, effort as well as errors involved in assessing and fixing Web accessibility issues. iProwe is targeted at enterprises with an online presence and it enables enterprises to achieve enhanced Web accessibility for differently-abled users better, faster and cheaper. iProwe is an enabler for enterprises planning their Web Accessibility strategy from dimensions including legal, economic as well as corporate social responsibility. Accessibility is a requirement from a legal perspective (legal regulations enforcing accessibility requirements), economic perspective (large potential customer base) as well as a corporate social responsibility perspective.

Posted by Dr. Jai Ganesh at 03:14 PM | | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

May 12, 2009

Assistive technology- What’s that?

 

“I am 100% blind and I really love programming in c++”, “Internet browsing and reading online books is my favorite pastime; doesn’t matter whether I can move my hands”, “’BLACK’ is the best movie I have ever seen; and you are reading it right; I am visually challenged”.
People get astonished and sometimes they find it hard to believe when they hear/read such statements. The credit goes to the technologies which make all this possible for differently able individuals popularly known as Assistive Technologies (ATs). These technologies comprise hardware, software or combination of both. They assist user to accomplish the tasks which otherwise the user can not perform. They augment the gap between required abilities and abilities which user have. They adapt the system to the constrained operating environment user is living with.
As a concept Assistive technology was always known to us, the most ancient assistive technology Mankind uses is magnification glass. But focus of this note is ATs relevant to human machine interaction.
Here are some examples:
·        screen readers, programs those transform the GUI into stream of audio
·        screen magnifiers, programs to enlarge the information on the screen
·        sip and puff devices to control the mouse movement using breath
·        Voice recognition software to accept spoken input
·        On screen keyboards
·        Touch screens
Usually these products are highly sophisticated and technology intensive.
Author: Shrirang_s@infosys.com

 

 

Posted by Guest Author at 10:50 AM | | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)