Tonight Jim Fruchterman, Benetech CEO and Founder of Bookshare.org, is the
Guest of Friends of Bookshare Tuesday, November 27, 2007

Topic: The Future of Bookshare.org

We are especially pleased to announce that next Tuesday the Friends of
Bookshare will be privileged to have Jim Fruchterman, the founder of
Bookshare.org, as its honored guest. During his presentation, he will
explore his vision for the future, will discuss the challenges of
delivering high quality textbooks while maintaining the user-created spirit
of Bookshare.org, and will talk about the expansion to serve all students
with print disabilities in the U.S., while starting to support International
Bookshare.org, as well.

In the blindness community, Jim Fruchterman is truly a legend. Not only did
he create a massive, not for profit, web-based library of downloadable
accessible eBooks, made legally available to blind , visually impaired and
print handicapped people but he invented the well-known Open Book reading
access machines, using technology originally meant for the military. Much of
his time is devoted to his responsibilities as CEO of Benetech, but also in
assisting numerous human rights organizations throughout the world. In all
of his endeavors, Jim's explicit goal has been to use the power of
technology to serve humanity.

Date: Tuesday, November 27, 2007
Time: 6:00 p.m. Pacific, 7:00 p.m. Mountain, 8:00 p.m. Central and
9:00 p.m. Eastern

Where: Friends of Bookshare Community Room at:
http://conference321.com/masteradmin/room.asp?id=rs7867a2369e0e

There are no membership requirements, no direct costs, no need to
pre-register, and no passwords required. All you need is a PC running
Windows 2000 or later, an Internet connection, a sound card, and speakers.
Since this is an audio conference, a microphone will be needed to allow you
to interact audibly with the presenter and each other. However, text chat is
also available.

If you are a first-time user of the Accessible World online conferencing
software, there is a small, safe software program that you need to download
and then run. A link to the software is available on the entry screen of
each room.

Note: Archives of events are available for download at:
http://www.friendsofbookshare.org

Media Contact:
Pat (Patricia) Price, Planning Committee Chair
Friends of Bookshare
http://www.friendsofbookshare.org
317-254-1185
pat@patprice.org

I have just one critical question, my friends. Why haven't the "leading"
screen reader makers incorporated any of this technology into their
products?

Wired.com News
Thursday, November 15, 2007

AxsJAX Brings Accessibility Features to Web 2.0

By Scott Gilbertson

Google Reader's recent makeover wasn't just skin deep. Most people probably
didn't notice it, but the revamped Google Reader also added an accessibility
layer which makes the app screen reader friendly.

LINK:
http://firevox.clcworld.net/

Web 2.0 sites may be slick and easy to use for most people, but such sites
often lack accessibility support, making them difficult, if not impossible,
to use with screen readers and other assistive technologies.

In an effort to improve accessibility on AJAX-heavy websites, Google
recently released the framework behind the new Google Reader tools as an
open source project dubbed AxsJAX. The code has been reworked and most of
the Google-specific features removed, which means it should work for just
about any site that chooses to use it.

LINK:
http://code.google.com/p/google-axsjax/

AxsJAX is designed to enhance the accessibility of AJAX applications.
Charles Chen, who added the accessibility features to Google Reader and
develops Fire Vox, an assistive device friendly add-on for Firefox, writes
on the Google Code Blog:

Based on the experience of access-enabling Reader, we have now refactored
the code to come up with a common JavaScript framework for enhancing the
accessibility of AJAX applications. This framework is called AxsJAX, and it
was refined in the process of access-enabling Web Search.

We're now excited to open-source this framework since we believe that there
is nothing Google-specific in the techniques we have implemented. We invite
the Web developer community to help us collectively define a robust
framework for rapid prototyping of accessibility enhancements to Web 2.0
applications.

LINK:
http://google-code-updates.blogspot.com/2007/11/introducing-axsjax-access-enabling-ajax.html

AxsJAX features can be accessed by users in several ways: as a bookmarklets,
using Greasemonkey or through Fire Vox. The underlying code implements the
W3C's WAI-ARIA spec (Web Accessibility Initiative – Accessible Rich Internet
Applications). Rather than simply providing assistive device users with a
non-AJAX page as is the standard practice, ARIA makes the results of AJAX
calls accessible to screen readers. Check out the ARIA roadmap for more
details.

LINK:
http://www.w3.org/TR/aria-roadmap/

If you'd like to know more about the AxsJAX framework, have a read through
the documentation on the Google Code project page.

LINK:
http://code.google.com/p/google-axsjax/

SOURCE
http://blog.wired.com/monkeybites/2007/11/axsjax-brings-a.html