IBM Seeks to Make Streaming Media Accessible to Visually Impaired From: Computerworld - 03/26/2007 By: Todd R. Weiss IBM researcher Chieko Asakawa, who is blind herself, recently discussed IBM's work in making multimedia content accessible for the blind. She explains that if accessibility is not maintained as the Internet grows and changes, a "digital gap" will form between the sighted and the blind. The tool her team has developed recognizes multimedia buttons that would normally require a mouse click, and imposes them onto a unified shortcut key used to run video and animation. External metadata is adapted "on the fly" to make pages accessible, explains Asakawa. "Once a user opens a Web page, the browser automatically analyzes multimedia objects inside the page, then the browser [establishes] a connection to each multimedia object." The tool, which currently has adaptors for Flash and Windows Media Player, also creates a text-based interface from manually created XML, which can be read aloud to a blind user. Content owners or authors would have to create these audio descriptions, although they could be added after the content is posted. Users can control the volume and speed of the description of what is happening in a video and the video's soundtrack. Asakawa says the tool allows her to use multimedia content that was previously inaccessible to her. The team eventually plans to make the tool compatible with other media players, and it will soon undergo usability tests before being open sourced. Read the entire article at: http://www.computerworld.com/action/article.do?command=viewArticleBasic&taxonomyName=software&articleId=9014186&taxonomyId=18&intsrc=kc_feat Links: IBM Scientists Develop Streaming Video for Visually Impaired http://www.informationweek.com/news/showArticle.jhtml;jsessionid=VB21TD42IPMMCQSNDLRSKH0CJUNN2JVN?articleID=198000619 Links: New tech clears up online picture for the blind http://www.ibm.com/news/us/en/2007/03/2007_03_14.html Helping the Blind "See" Internet Multimedia http://www-03.ibm.com/press/us/en/pressrelease/21230.wss Frances West http://www-03.ibm.com/able/news/senate_support.html Chieko Asakawa http://www.witi.com/center/witimuseum/halloffame/2003/casawaka.php http://domino.research.ibm.com/comm/research_people.nsf/pages/chie.index.html aDesigner http://www.alphaworks.ibm.com/tech/adesigner