Deaf

WASHINGTON – The House last night gave final approval to legislation that significantly expands access for the blind and deaf to technology such as the
internet, smart phones, and video.

“Whether it’s a Braille reader or a broadband connection, access to technology is not a political issue - it’s a participation issue,” said Representative
Ed Markey, a Malden Democrat and author of the legislation. “Two decades ago, Americans with disabilities couldn’t get around if buildings weren’t wheelchair
accessible; today it’s about being Web accessible.”

The measure, which was previously approved by the Senate, is expected to be signed into law next week by President Obama.

ThinkContacts is a new mobile application being developed by Nokia which would allow a disabled person to select a contact from a list and place a phone
call to that person using only their mind. The app, which is designed for Nokia's N900 Maemo platform, works with an accompanying headset that reads the
user's brainwaves to measure attention levels. If the attention level is higher than 70%, the software scrolls to the next contact in the list. If the
attention level is higher than 80%, the software makes a phone call to the selected contact.

It's one of the latest developments in making accessible smartphone applications for the disabled, the blind and deaf.

Recently the US Senate held a congressional hearing on legislation to improve access to the Internet and other technologies for blind and deaf individuals. In the US House of Representatives, the Committee
on Energy and Commerce held a hearing on their version of this legislation called the 21st Century Communications and Video Accessibility Act, by updating
the statutory provisions found in the Rehabilitation Act of 1973, the Hearing Aid Compatibility Act of 1988, the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990,
the Television Decoder Circuitry Act of 1990 and the Telecommunications Act of 1996.

Committee Chairman, Henry Waxman, said that that this hearing was ‘the first step in a process to ensure that Americans with disabilities can more fully
participate in our evolving Internet-based society.” Chairman Waxman stated that he wanted the hearing “to outline and clarify where agreement exists …
and where some adjustment may be necessary.”

This is the second post in a series about the challenges of persons with disabilities in using the Internet. Previously, we talked about the challenges blind people are facing when trying to access web sites.

Here, we’ll focus on a disability group which most people think doesn’t have any problems surfing the Net. I’m talking about persons who are deaf and hard of hearing. Many people think that since deaf people can see the contents of a web page, they wouldn’t have problems accessing any site.

Let’s find out if that is true. Our friend Peter, who shared with us A Day of a Deaf Person, joins us in this post.

New guidelines have been published for street artists to help make events more accessible for deaf and disabled people.

The 76-page guide was commissioned by the Independent Street Arts Network following a symposium during which producers told the network there was no guidance
on accessibility for the sector.

In most electronic devices today, sound is included as a primary or secondary feature. This provides a good deal of convenience for users as it enables them to be aware of certain events without looking at the device.

However, sound may not be that useful for people who are deaf or hard of hearing. So to solve this issue, providers of electronic devices have thought of an ingenious feature that can be used when sound is not a good option. This feature incorporates vibration which is activated during specific events.

Imagine yourself without the ability to hear, not even the slightest sound. How would you carry out your daily tasks and activities? What would you do to complete them properly?

We’ll try to answer these questions and much more by following a person with a hearing disability for one day. We will focus on how he uses technology in his daily life.

All YouTube videos can now carry captions created by speech recognition software in a move that the Google-owned video sharing site said would improve the
videos' accessibility.

The move has been welcomed by groups representing deaf and hard-of-hearing users as an important step in ensuring that non-textual online content is accessible
to people with hearing problems.

On June 8, 2009 Apple has announced the new, iPhone 3G S it's newest iPhone. Instead of reviewing the features, I will discuss why is it a great advancement in the field of accessibility. Apple has implemented many accessibility features into it, which might become a large breakthrough for people to access mainstream, off the shelf products, without having to use extra assistive technologies.