AOL and closed caption video online

Yes, I know, they are the demon of the UK internet service provider, yes I know they're expensive and yes I know that traditionally their software wasn't particularly useful but AOL really are making an effort in the accessibility world.

AOL has recently announced a partnership with CNN to produce closed caption video streaming of news content to enhance it's online media experience for people who are deaf or hard of hearing.

The captioned CNN content will be available exclusively through the AOL network including the free AOL.com web portal.

Although AOL has provided synchronized text transcripts of news reports in the past these were generally an exact copy of the newsreader autocue and not "user-friendly"... The new captioned video streams will be manually captioned to ensure the stream is completely accessible.

Nice one AOL!

WATC Releases Toolbar Plug-in for Opera Browser

WATC released a new version of it's web accessibility toolbar for the Opera web browser. The toolbar includes a several built-in tools to aid developers and quality assurance testers design web sites that meet international accessibility requirements.

The IE version has been available for sometime and is also available as a free download.

Inclusive Web Design For All at the RNIB

I recently completed a course at the Royal National Institute for the Blind and have to say that if the vast array of courses that are appearing on the net at the moment are leaving you somewhat perplexed as to which to choose then go for this one!

Although most of the courses available will cover the same principles the RNIB course really has it cracked.

Inclusive Web Design For All isn't so much coding and technically orientated but based strongly on the principles of why the way you develop a page influences the end result.

At no point do they attempt to constrain design in anyway which is also incredibly refreshing but the key to why this course was so amazing?

Bim, the instructor wrote the course herself, is registered blind so it really hits home how important the issues are - this is from someone who really experiences the issues and not some techy geek who thinks they know it all!