The Addis Ababa University’s Department of Linguistics yesterday graduated 150 students trained in sign language and deaf culture in non-formal education program for one semester.
Linguistics department deputy head, Dr Binyam Sisay, on the occasion said the department has launched bachelors of art degree in sign language and deaf culture for the first time this academic year by enrolling 26 students.
THE Eastern Cape Development Corporation has joined hands with the Chinese government to build a prosthetics factory in the province.
The move follows the Department of Health dropping out of initial plans to establish the plant.
An American Prosthetics, (limb fabrication organisation), has chosen Ghana as its centre in the West African sub-region to provide free care to thousands of patients in dire need of artificial limb fitting services
The Insurance Sector Education and Training Authority (Inseta) has exceeded the targets set by the Department of Labour for training people with disabilities by 299% during the past financial year, according to Inseta performance information released this week.
Inseta also far exceeded targets in several other areas during 2008/09, with a total of 7464 workers entering learning programmes, and 22 364 workers completing learning programmes.
"Blade Runner" Oscar Pistorius uses about the same amount of energy, and gets as tired as comparable able-bodied athletes, but the mechanics of his sprinting are markedly different, according to the results of a comprehensive laboratory test just published.
British teenage swimmer Ellie Simmonds sets a new world record at the BT Paralympic World Cup in Manchester, where David Roberts clinches the 100m S7 title.
There are two definitions of "rights" in this discussion. The first is copyright, the control of intellectual property. That's the author rights. The other is the right to equal access to information. That's the disability rights part of the issue.
This is the first in a series of Market Updates on the creation of accessible documents. It concentrates on the creation of accessible PDF files from word processing and desktop publishing systems. Document creation is one of the major parts of personal productivity. An accessible electronic document is one that can be read easily by a person with a disability. The possible disabilities include various degrees of vision impairment, muscular-skeletal disorders (that limit the ability to use traditional controls such as a mouse), dyslexia, and learning difficulties. Documents in a language other than the native language of the speaker can be difficult to access, and with the internationalisation of the web this is becoming a more common problem. Some of the issues and solution to this problem are shared with access for the disabled so it will be considered in this report.
From WebAIM - Web Accessibility in Mind : This article is designed to help users who are new to NonVisual Desktop Access (NVDA) - external link learn the basic controls for testing web content, and to serve as a reference for the occasional NVDA user. NonVisual Desktop Access (NVDA) is a free and open source screen reader for the Microsoft Windows operating system. It supports over 20 languages and can run on any computer entirely from a USB drive with no installation. It is important to evaluate the accessibility of web content with a screen reader, but screen readers can be very complicated programs for the occasional user, so many people avoid them. This doesn't need to be the case. While screen readers are complicated, it is possible to test web content for accessibility without being a "power user."
We issued the following statement in response to the protest led by the National Federation of the Blind this afternoon: Authors want everyone to read their books. That's why the Authors Guild, and authors generally, are strong advocates for making all books, including e-books, accessible to everyone. This is not a new position for us. For decades, we've informed new authors that the expected and proper thing to do is to donate rights so that their works can be accessible to the blind and others. In October, we were praised by the National Federation of the Blind for the settlement of our lawsuit against Google, which promises "to revolutionize blind people's access to books," according to the Federation's press release. E-books do not come bundled with audio rights. So we proposed to the Federation several weeks ago the only lawful and speedy path to make e-books accessible to the print disabled on Amazon's Kindle:
