Learning Accessibility » DigitalChalk

Distance Learning Here to Stay

admin — Mon, 11 May 2009 23:46:05 +0000

KITV had a great article on the top 10 aspects of distance learning. The two that struck me were:

Distance learning will be used by businesses to help market their products.
Distance learning is here to stay.

I agree with these trends. Businesses will use distance learning to help make their potential customers knowledgeable about their products and services. If a business has a quality product/service, knowledgeable customers will want to know more about what makes the product/service so valuable. Distance learning is a step up from static web pages. Distance learning helps the customer obtain knowledge, not just infromation. Accessible distance learning increases the potential market penetration. Accessibile distance learning is inclussive and should help grow market share. DigitalChalk is trying to be the most rich in content and accessible distance learning platfrom.

Cognitive & Learning Disabilities Need (CC)

admin — Sat, 25 Apr 2009 16:09:45 +0000

People with cognitive or learning disabilities, such as dyslexia and short-term memory deficit, need more general web accessibility solutions, which include providing a consistent design and using simplified language. For example, by using a template, a Web developer can reuse the same layout and design for each page, so a person with a cognitive disability can more easily navigate through a Web site. People with cognitive or learning disabilities can also benefit from redundant input, such as providing both an audio file and a transcript of a video. By simultaneously viewing the text and hearing it read aloud, they can take advantage of both auditory and visual skills to comprehend the material better.

DigitalChalk, Hunter College and IBM completed a Federal Government Department of Education, National Institute for Disabilities and Rehabilitation Research (NIDRR) grant to automate translation of audio/video speech to text for web based learning. This project used the speech to text software from IBM Research and the DigitalChalk learning platform to deliver closed captioning to the hard of hearing and cognitive learning disabled. This project was a technical success, according to Dr. David Vandergoot of Hunter College. Business issues remain a sticking point in bringing this technology to market. Hopefully, this solution will be brought to market soon.

Accessibility to Multimedia

admin — Wed, 01 Oct 2008 15:53:54 +0000

Originally posted August 10, 2008

508 STANDARD – Multimedia content on a page must also have accompanying alternative text or a description. For audio, this includes a text transcript or synchronized caption for the audio. The transcript is not a separate file, but part of the page. Captioning helps the deaf or hard of hearing to comprehend the content. The captioning can also help index the page for search engines. The W3C introduced SMIL (Synchronized Multimedia Integration Language). SMIL is a markup language for closed captioning. RealPlayer and others have used the standard to provide manual formation of text for audio captioning.

DigitalChalk, Hunter College and IBM Research have built an automated transcription engine that creates synchronized text for audio and video files. DigitalChalk displays the captioned text and provides a real time editor for adding text for blind viewers of video. This function will be available 4Q2008. This work was the result of a grant from the National Institute on Disability and Rehabilitation Research (NIDRR).

See DigitalChalk demo.