Category Archives: Accessibility

LDSC 2023 Word Styles Files

Slide Deck Assignment 6 Zip Syllabus Template Files (Sharepoint) Word Accessibility Tips (Featuring Styles)

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A Future Date: Translating Maps and Geographic Data to Non-Visual Formats

This session reviews different uses of map images and different strategies to make them accessible including tables, ALT text, long description and tactile/3D graphics. Presented at the 2020 A Future Date Virtual a11y Event. Thanks to Matt May of Adobe,… More On: A Future Date: Translating Maps and Geographic Data to Non-Visual Formats

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A Visit to Maker Commons

This post documents the experience of getting a print from the Penn State Maker Commons service. The good thing about Maker Commons is that you don’t need direct access to a 3D printer nor do you need to learn how… More On: A Visit to Maker Commons

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Accessibility: Should We Kill the Carousel?

The more I work with accessibility, the more I see the connection that accessibility and usability are strongly tied together. If a type of interface element is difficulty to make “accessible”, chances are that there may be a problem with… More On: Accessibility: Should We Kill the Carousel?

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Actors Replacing Instructors?

Campus Technology has an article in a recent issue about Purdue using actors instead of instructors to present video content. At first I had a knee jerk “The Apcolypse is here” reaction, but the article raised some interesting points worth… More On: Actors Replacing Instructors?

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3D Print Test Run

This week, I commissioned a 3D model of a trigonometric curve from the ETS 3D Print shop and was able to do a quick usability test with some volunteers from the TLT accessibility team on what kinds of information could… More On: 3D Print Test Run

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Descriptive vs Prescriptive Standards

Descriptive and Prescriptive Grammars A useful distinction linguists make in describing grammars is “prescriptive” vs. “descriptive” grammars. Simply put, the difference is the prescriptive grammar is what your teacher tells you to do, but descriptive grammar is what actually happens.… More On: Descriptive vs Prescriptive Standards

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Accessibility Workflow in Higher Ed vs Federal Agencies

We’ve been trying out a few products to accessify documents, particularly PDF documents. We have to admit the products work and the vendors are very supportive, but I have been struck at how vendors are assuming a particular model for… More On: Accessibility Workflow in Higher Ed vs Federal Agencies

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Random Word Accessibility Tips

There are lots of standard strategies for making more accessible Word files, but even so I have learned some new tricks this week. Tip 1: Right Click to Modify Heading Styles Using heading styles in Word such as Heading 1… More On: Random Word Accessibility Tips

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Possible Improvement in Speech Recognition?

One of the challenges of video captioning is that it does rely human intervention to achieve the most accurate results. That’s because speech recognition is only reliable in certain circumstances, usually when the speaker has set up a profile on… More On: Possible Improvement in Speech Recognition?

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