Greetings:
I have been appointed as the Federation representative for a task
force dealing with electronic textbook accessibility. The task
force is organized by the Texas Education Agency as a result of a
legislative mandate. The mandate calls for the Texas Education
Agency to prepare a legislative report on how electronic
textbooks "may" be made accessible to learners who are blind or
visually impaired. Other luminaries on the task force include
Gregg Vanderheiden of the Trace Center, Gary Moulton of
Microsoft, Nolan Crabb of the American Council of the Blind,
Larry Goldberg from WGBH, representatives from the publishing
industry, and some "vision" teachers. Much of the work of this
task force will be conducted via email--using a public LISTSERV
to which others may subscribe.
Needless to say, this whole subject of electronic testbooks is
amazingly complex, and the question of how to make such material
truly "accessible" to the blind has no easy answer. This is more
apparent if you consider that an electronic textbook may be a
fully animated presentation on a computer, complete with moving
and static text, animated pictures, audio output, and complicated
control mechanisms that we may or may not be able to use.
In any event, for those of you who are interested, here are the
instructions for subscribing to the LISTSERV that we will be
using.
================================================================================
This message from the Texas Education Agency initiates use of the Listserve
to facilitate e-mail communication among the members of the Texas Task
Force on Electronic Textbook Accessibility, other interested individuals and
institutions nationwide, and the staff of the Texas Education Agency.
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================================================================================
Regards,
Curtis Chong
curtisc@winternet.com
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Sun Dec 02 2012 - 01:30:04 PST