Access Collective
By Access Collective
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Podcast Description
Access technologies a review of the latest news from the world of access technology for people with a disability
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Access Collective Podcast December 2010 | Hi and welcome to the latest Access Colelctive Podcast. This months podcast is a christmas special filled with goodwell and best wishes, not only from our usual contributors, Steve Lee, Barrie Ellis, Oli Lewis and Neil Milikin but also from a selection of the most succulent mincepies of the accessibility world. This edition includes the access christmas present wishlist of WebAxe, EA Draffan, Special Effectand STGaccess not a bad bunch of stars for your xmas tree Shownotes to follow - Sorry | 12/20/10 | Free | View In iTunes |
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Access Collective Podcast November 2010 | So at last we finally launch another Podcast from the world famous AC Crew - thats Access Collective, not air conditioning ! This months podcast is likely to be remembered for many reasons, most of all because it was quite long, but also for its great content This month we have Craig Mill And Carol Walker explaining all about the new RSC initiative, Create and Convert On 1st October of this year, a powerful piece of legislation came into force: the Equality Act 2010. In a drive to advance equality of opportunity for all, schools, colleges and universities now face some important new obligations. Finally there is a round up of some of the latest news in teh world of accessibility - all of which can be found also on the Access collective website www.accesscollective.com The Creative Commons music this month is by Leslie Hunt, its called "I only care about you when your gone" and we dedicated it to our friends at Becta Special Needs team and other access NGO's who face the closure of their services as a result of government budget cuts Its distributed by the great www.jamendo.com as always One of these obligations concerns how information is made available to learners: the Act says that it must be accessible. So, for example, if a learner has a sight impairment, or dyslexia, the school, college or university MUST face up to its duty to make reasonable adjustments, and to provide that information in a format that the learner will find accessible. Create8Convert is a free tool that has been designed specifically to help institutions or organisations comply with the Act in the way that they publish information. It is easy to understand the legal consequences for institutions that do not comply with the Act, but for the learner it’s the social consequences that really matter. The aim of Create8Convert is to help organisations to help their learners to truly realise their potential. What does Create8Convert do? So what does Create8Convert do? Well, it brings together in one neat package a range of open source programs that can quickly and capably translate electronic documents into an accessible alternative format, such as audio or a talking book. All of the tools are the outputs of the Digital Accessible Information System (DAISY) Consortium, and are therefore completely free to use and distribute. Create8Convert will work with any new or existing document that is in editable form, such as the common Microsoft Word. In a nutshell, Create8Convert is a legislation-compliant, budget-friendly tool that can transform exclusion into participation for the learner. How much does it cost ? Create8Convert is devised by the JISC Regional Support Centre Scotland North 8 East, and consists of open source tools specially selected for education. There is no charge for using Create8Convert. Just use it, give it, share it – all for free. How do I get Create8Convert? There are two versions of Create8Convert - Microsoft Word 2003/2007 version and OpenWriter. Although both versions work portably from a USB pendrive it is recommended that the OpenWriter version is run from the USB only. The Word 2003/2007 version can also be run from the desktop. Download create and convert from http://www.rsc-ne-scotland.ac.uk/eduapps/createconvert.php Our second piece features and interview with Felip Miralles begin_of_the_skype_highlighting end_of_the_skype_highlighting of Barcelona Digital. Barcelona Digital co-ordinate the BrainAble project funded by the European commission. Felip tells us all about the organisation and the background and progress of the Brainable, BCI research team. The Brainable website (www.brainable.org) says BrainAble will produce a commercial product and a set of technologies intended to assist people with physical disabilities regardless of cause. The technology has the potentia | 11/12/10 | Free | View In iTunes |
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Access Collective Podcast 6 September 2010 | Access Collective podcast September 2010 This months podcast is feature packed and here are all of the notes and links you might need to follow up on any aspect Steve Lee Have you ever thought about how you will manage if the developers of your much relied on accessibility software tool decide that they will no longer develop or support it? Does that seem really unlikely? To be sure many developers have their users interests firmly in mind. But businesses realities can bite hard and a company may have to refocus or make tough decisions. A software project can find funding dries up after initial success. A developer of freeware software may find new priorities for spending their time. What then? What will you do? For a while there may be no real problem. You have the software, and can carry on using it or continue providing it to those you support. But what if a critical bug is found on one user's configuration? What if you need to get the answer to a question. What if you can't get a licence code to install it on a new machine? What if you upgrade your operating system and the program fails to work? These are all problems that can and do occur. If you are lucky there will be a clear migration path to an alternative tool, including a way to transfer any data you have created. What you really need is to know that the tool you use is sustainable and so can live on and still be usable in the future, even if the developers decide to pull out. OSS Watch, the UK academic open source advisory service, describe open development of open source software as a proven means of reaching such sustainability. This is something that successful open source project have been doing for years and accessibility users are in a position to benefit from the added security provided by projects that operate in this way. In fact OSS Watch have just published an article about using a maturity model to evaluate how sustainable an open source project is and it's definitely worth a read. But what is open development? In a nutshell performing open development means software and related materials are developed by a community in ways that allow anyone to not only use and modify them, but also to readily understand the history and decision making that has gone on. Thus if any member of the community pulls out, others can continue keeping the project moving forward. A very recent example of how practicing open development can allow an accessibility project to survive the withdrawal of funding, is the JISC TechDis Toolbar. The toolbar gives access to various web accessibility tools and runs in most browsers. TechDis paid Southampton University to develop the initial version for their website, and agreed that it would be an open source project run by Southampton who wanted sustainability and to encourage collaboration and innovation. OSS Watch guided Southampton in best practice and so even when TechDis recently decide they no longer wanted to support further development, the project can continue, following the trajectory set by Southampton and other contributors who want to share the value it provides. Interestingly openness also allows users to themselves become more directly engaged, and allows other parties to build new tools and otherwise base business ventures on the software. At this stage you may be wondering how you can make money if you openly share the code? We'll in fact it can be done, and is, in many different ways. In fact businesses and corporations are currently getting very excited about Open Innovation, which is a way to gain business advantage through sharing and collaboration. Open development is open innovation in software and I'm pleased to be involved in a fledgling project that will explore open innovation for accessibility. I'll will be sure to talk about in detail once it is ready for launch. In the meantime you might like to think about the sustainability of the tools you use or develop. http://www.oss-watch.ac.uk/resources/s | 9/14/10 | Free | View In iTunes |
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Access Collective Podcast July 2010 | Welcome to the latest access collective podcast, full of the tastiest bits of Assistive Technology And Accessibility, non fattening and good for your heart. Trust us on this. This Months podcast includes Mike Williams from Expert AT services updates us on the Home Access Initiative and pupils with SEN. Mike explains the process and the opportunity that Home Access offers users in the UK Steve Lee brings us further thoughts on the world of Open source and Accessible Technology. In particular this month he talks about the creation of www.oatsoft.org the webiste that brings together users and developers to develop new open source applications in Accessible Technologies Barrie Ellis and Dark from Audiogames.net continue their forays into the world of audiogames for the blind. These games are being used around the world and www.audiogames.net is a great source of games both free and commercial David Banes of davebanesaccess introduces us to the updated website that is maintained personally and on behlaf of teh collective, including free training materials, AT newsletter and AT of the week - all of these can be found at www.accesscollective.com Finally we round of the podcast with a summary of the best items from the Access technology today and Tomorrow newsletter. Details of all the news items can be found on the Access Collective website newsletter archive at the same address as above For thos that make it all the way through the Podcast - there is a free piece of music to brighten your day, Julandrew shares "crazy as" available under creative commons licence from www.jamendo.com Until next month Enjo | 7/15/10 | Free | View In iTunes |
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Access Collective Podcast Special Edition 2 | Welcome to another special edition of the Access Collective Podcast Once again we are delighted to host another insight into the world of AudioGames courtesy of Dark from audiogames.net and Barrie Ellis of oneswitch.org.uk This special edition covers a further round up of audiogames if you wnat to know more go to www.audiogames.net and www.gamebase.info where you will find a host of links to games to try for yourself An editted versions of Darks musings will be part of the next collective podcast for those intereste | 7/2/10 | Free | View In iTunes |
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Access Collective Podcast 4 June 2010 | Access Collective Podcast 4 - New musings on Open source, free software, Look Tell and audiogames for the blind + a great song and genral chat | 6/10/10 | Free | View In iTunes |
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Access Collective Podcast 3 Special Edition May 2010 | This is a special edition podcast with an in depth look at AudioGames from Barrie Ellis. The main podcast is by Dark of AudioGames.net and credit also has to go to www.gamebase.info There is a a little bonus bit of music on the end, which is the earliest ever recording of a computer singing (1961) | 5/28/10 | Free | View In iTunes |
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Access Collective Podcast Episode 2 | This month we have, 10 years with access tech, accessible gaming for the blind, open source iPad alternatives, Access Tech for mobile and portable technology and creating accessible online Video | 5/7/10 | Free | View In iTunes |
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Access Collective Podcast Issue 1 | This Podcast takes a roving eye across the world of access technology and accessibility for people with a disability | 4/4/10 | Free | View In iTunes |
| Total: 9 Episodes |
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