SITE e-Newsletter April 2011 Issue 25 Welcome to the latest edition of your eNewsletter. Please feel free to forward the newsletter to anyone who you think might be interested and encourage them to subscribe. In this issue:01. News Round Up 02. Books, Games and Apps. 03. Technology 04. Events Diary ++01. News Round Up +Scottish Accessible Information Forum Two new publications are available from the Scottish Accessible Information Forum (SAIF), 'Making Services Accessible' and 'Making Websites Accessible'. You can download these publications from their website or view them online in HTML. http://www.saifscotland.org.uk +CONSULTATION The Protecting the Right of Disabled People to Independent Living Parliament's Joint Committee on Human Rights is seeking evidence about independent living for disabled people, as guaranteed by Article 19 of the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities. The committee particularly welcomes evidence from disabled people and their families about how Government policy and legislation and the activities of public authorities can implement this right in practice. The deadline for all written submissions is Friday 29th April 2011. More information can be found at: http://www.parliament.uk/business/committees/committees-a-z/joint-select/human-rights-committee/news/independent-living-inquiry-launch +Scottish Disabled Golf Partnership The SDGP will host its first PGA supervised golf training and tuition day of 2011, at the Wellsgreen Golf Academy on Saturday 9 April and anyone with a serious health issue, mobility problem or disability and their coaches may attend. Only fifty places are available for this event and slots for golfers and coaches, will be allocated strictly on a first-come, first-served basis. An entry form and further information is at: http://www.sdgp.co.uk/ +Empowering Potential of Technology Celebrated. A new awards event aims to recognise the ability of computers, the internet and assistive technology to improve the lives of people with disabilities and empower vulnerable sections of society. Organised by disability and ICT charity AbilityNet ( http://bit.ly/himPdh ) and supported by organisations including BT, Microsoft and Race Online 2012, the first Technology4Good awards ( http://bit.ly/gwQUvZ ) are looking for examples of charities, businesses, government organisations and individuals that have used digital technology to improve the work and home lives of others, including disabled people, the elderly and young children. Two Accessibility Awards are featured in the seven categories. Nominations for all the Technology4Good Awards are now open, and entrants may nominate themselves or others before the 9 May deadline. The results will be announced on 7 June. +The Trailer last in the News section we have a submission from a reader, which will become a monthly item which will feature reviews of films. A visual impairment hinders most activities in life, such as cooking, DIY, sport, and even something so simple as walking down the street. Enjoying film and television is thankfully not one of these thanks to audio description. the system works by narrating a kind of simplified screenplay in-between the character dialogue detailing the environment a character's actions and facial expressions etc. Granted the description suits drama and comedy movies better than action and adventure, a conversation between two people in an office is much easier to follow than a huge battle one would find in the lord of the rings trilogy. The availability of this service is hard to miss,relatively large films shown in cinemas have audio description to reach a wider audience, as a result of this the DVD will have it too. More and more televisions nowadays are AD compatible, although not enough programmes, unfortunately, come with any description at all. So, to someone like me with a visual impairment who still has a love of film, audio described movies and television is something not to be missed. Next month I will be reviewing some films for a new slot in the eNewsletter, So if you have any comments or suggestions drop me a line at info@sitescotland.org heading your e-mail 'The Trailer'. ++02. Books, Games and APPs +Children's Illustrated Books For young readers, pictures and words are equally important. Now, with the latest version of the iBooks app, you can enjoy your favourite children's picture books in gorgeous, full-colour, two-page display on your iPad, iPhone or iPod touch. Download iBooks 1.2 and browse the collection of picture books, from series such as Ian Falconer's Olivia and Herman Parish'sAmelia Bedelia to Rob Scotton's hilarious classic Splat the Cat and Jane O'Connor and Robin Preiss Glasser's Fancy Nancy. +oMoby App oMoby was originally developed to be a shopping tool, but it has become something quite different for blind and partially sighted people. It can find information, reviews and prices for almost any product. To search using oMoby, you just take a photo of whatever it is you want to search for, then oMoby identifies what that photo contains, and displays the result in text that's accessible to VoiceOver and Zoom. In other words, take a photo, and oMoby will tell you what you've taken a photo of. It's pretty neat! Platform: iOS (any device with a camera) Simply put, oMoby's ability to identify objects without the need to capture labels or barcodes makes it one of the most useful apps we've come across yet. The accuracy of its image recognition is a technological triumph. The developers at IQ engines are aware of oMoby's value to blind and partially sighted people, and they have provided accessibility fixes in the two most recent updates. Thanks to those updates, VoiceOver automatically announces progress while the photo you've just taken is being analysed, then speaks the result. Here's the coolest part - oMoby is a totally free download. ++03. Technology +iPad 2 Although the iPad 2 effectively sells itself, it still has a lot of positive points that set it apart from its competition. Ten reasons for considering the new iPad 2include: 1. the iPad 2 is still the thinnest next-gen tablet out there. 2. Apple's iPad 2 is the price leader. 3. the dual-core processor with faster operation, faster and better graphics, and twice the RAM. 4. Apple has impressively maintained its 10 hour battery life. 5. iPad 2 exclusive software. 6. Cool new Smart Cover. 7. New cameras in the iPad. 8. Apple reported over 65,000 iPad apps when it launched the iPad 2, and now that number will grow even faster. 9. iPad 2 and virtually all of the iDevices are still jail breakable. 10. Very wide selection of legal digital music, movies, TV shows, audiobooks and books available to download via iTunes, alongside the thriving third-party accessories market. 11. The iPad 2, with an optional HDMI adapter (and also reportedly a VGA adaptor) is able to mirror everything on the iPad 2's screen onto an external monitor or TV. Lastly, as we are all aware the iPad is totally accessible to blind and partially sighted people! +GW MicroAnnouncesHD Magnifiers The Orabis and the Vocatex are the first HD video magnifiers (also known as CCTVs) that recognise text and read it back to you - all without a computer. You can now put printed text under the CCTV, press a button, sit back and let the machine read to you. In addition to speaking the text, a focus rectangle follows each word as it is spoken making it simple for a person with low vision to see exactly where they are in the document. The Orabis provides HD video, and comes with a large 22-inch widescreen monitor with a minimum magnification of 2x and includes 22 different languages and has 32 high-quality human-sounding voices from Nuance. the Vocatex comes with a 26, 32, or 37-inch monitor.  There are two models: the Vocatex and Vocatex Plus. Both Vocatex models are HD, and the Vocatex Plus comes with multiple languages. Check out GW Micro on the web at www.gwmicro.com. +Council Web Access ÔShould Be Built Into ProcurementÕ. Website accessibility should be built into local authority software and IT systems procurement criteria, the leading annual review of all UK council websites has found. More local authorities should also carry out user-testing on their websites using groups of people with disabilities, according to Better Connected 2011 ( http://bit.ly/hBOGUw ), conducted by the public sector Society of IT Management (Socitm). A direct accessibility test was carried out for the survey of all 433 UK council websites, based on the World Wide Web ConsortiumÕs international Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG). Using these guidelines, just 30 councils (7%) achieved the basic ÔLevel AÕ standard, compared with a similar number Ð 32 Ð in 2010. As in previous years, no council achieved ÔLevel AAÕ Ð the standard which the previous government encouraged all councils to reach. +CSUN 2011 Papers from the 26th Annual International Technology & Persons with Disabilities Conference, which took place last month in San Diego, California, are now available to be read online. Hosted by the Centre on Disabilities at California State University, Northridge (CSUN - the acronym by which the conference itself is usually known) Ð this yearÕs event featured presentations on hundreds of topics including accessibility developments in social media, and how assistive technology can benefit students with disabilities: ++04. Events Diary 5 April QAC Sight Village, Hilton Hotel, Edinburgh 6 April QAC Sight Village, Hampden Park Stadium, Glasgow 16 June 2011 - VISION UK 2011: featuring Techshare Queen Elizabeth II Conference Centre, Westminster, London Contact: ukvisionstrategy@rnib.org.uk 19-25 June DeafBlindness Awareness Week 25 June RP Fighting Blindness Annual Conference and AGM Euston, London. The event programme is at http://brps.org.uk/newsevent.php?tln=newsevents&newseventid=55 You can also download the newsletter, including back issues, from our website. SITE is a charity registered in Scotland. Charity No. SC 0366056. Registered address: SITE, Centre for Sensory Impaired people, 17 Gullane Street, Partick, Glasgow G11 6AH.SubscribeIf you wish to subscribe to the SITE newsletter please send an e-mail to info@sitescotland.org with the word 'Subscribe' in the subject header.UnsubscribeIf you wish to unsubscribe to this newsletter please send an e-mail to info@sitescotland.org and include the word 'Unsubscribe' in the subject header.Working together to develop opportunities for the visually impaired community++Newsletter ends