CSUN Conference Highlights AT Innovations
By Cook, Debbie; Knue, Alan; Washington Assistive Technology Alliance (WATA) Bulletin,Publication Date: Spring 2004
Article describes three innovations presented at the nineteenth annual International Conference on Technology and Persons with Disabilities, which was hosted by the California State University at Northridge (CSUN) Center on Disabilities: (1) GoodFeel, from Dancing Dots, (2) Daisy Players, and (3) Spoken Interface, from Apple. GoodFeel allows people who are blind or have low vision to create and print musical scores using a personal computer and a synthesizer. Prior to the invention of GoodFeel, people with visual impairments had to dictate each musical note individually to a sighted scribe who may or may not have been able to notate it accurately. Daisy is the book production standard that is used worldwide to produce both audio and text materials, and it is increasingly used by organizations who produce books for people with print disabilities. A new feature at the CSUN conference saw a competition between the various hardware Daisy players. All hardware manufacturers and software developers were asked to perform a similar set of tests, including navigation, dealing with a missing page, and finding a page that was not on the loaded CD. Many of the products performed all of the tests successfully. Spoken Interface is a built-in screen-reading accessory that will be included in the latest release of the Mac OS X operating system. Spoken Interface will provide a combination of speech, audible cues, and keyboard navigation to help users who are blind or have low vision to navigate the Mac OS X operating system. Spoken Interface will also read aloud the content of documents and files, including web pages, e-mail messages, and word processing files.
Assistive Products Discussed: MAC OS X VERSION 10.2 JAGUAR
GOODFEEL BRAILLE MUSIC TRANSLATOR & GOODFEEL LITE
Published by: Washington Assistive Technology Act Program (WATAP) (Website:http://watap.org)
Center for Technology and Disability Studies (Web Site: http://uwctds.washington.edu )
Link to text: http://wata.org/pubs/bulletins/spring2004.htm#CSUN
