The future is near: Universally usable mainstream on-line publishing

Abstract

John Gardner is blind and he is the founder of ViewPlus Technologies, a company whose mission is dedicated to information accessibility. He is also professor emeritus of physics. It was a very natural thing for him to collaborate with the American Physical Society. Physicist lead! “We will show something that’s very exciting in this presentation”. It’s particularly exciting for people who are blind and have print disabilities in particular. 25% or more of the world population have print disabilities – i.e. they have difficulty grasping regular print information. They are helped if they can see the print and also hear it and feel it. These people are largely being eliminated from sciences. This disability is not correlated with intelligence or ability to learn. It is simply that they have visual processing difficulties. So by making something accessible to blind people and people with print disabilities, we are actually increasing the number of potential scientist by a significant fraction. A video shows what we could demonstrate in real time in a longer session. The video transcript follows, and the video itself is included with the proceedings archives: “ViewPlus Technologies is working together with the American Physical Society, APS, to publish journals that include fully accessible text, math equations and graphics allowing all readers to have access to the same information. Creating these materials is a two step process: The first step is to convert the text and math equations into an accessible format that can be read using most DAISY-players and screen readers. ViewPlus works together with Design Science on this part of the project. The second step involved is to convert graphics into a scalable vector graphic, SVG format for use with the IVEO Hands-on learning system, developed by ViewPlus. This second step gives users access to all of the graphical information to touch, sound and sight with the availability to zoom in or out for more or less detail. Here is how it works: You can open an APS journal with any modern DAISY-player or within a standard web browser and navigate using a screen reader. With the file open you can explore the document as you normally would. As you come across complex math-equations they are read with perfect pronunciations. [. . .] Each graphic within the document includes a link to the SVG file and a caption describing the image. As you come to a graphic, the link is read first followed by the caption. [. . .] To explore in greater detail, select the specified link. The graphic will then open in IVEO Hands-on learning system. To utilize the full power of IVEO, first print the document to your Tiger Embosser for a high resolution tactile printout. Then place the printout on the IVEO touch-sensitive tablet. You can then touch different areas of the graphic and have a description spoken back to you. [. . .] This gives users access to an unlimited demand of information for more complete explanation of the image. Once you have finished exploring the graphic you can then easily navigate back to the journal and continue reading