New OpenOffice.org Writer Extension Produces BrailleLeuven, Belgium, 4 August 2010 - The Katholieke Universiteit Leuven (K.U.Leuven) today released an extension for OpenOffice.org Writer that enables users to save documents as Braille or to send them directly to a Braille embosser. “odt2braille” (http://odt2braille.sourceforge.net/) is a freeware extension for OpenOffice.org, a office suite that is freely available for Microsoft Windows, Mac OS X, Linux/Unix and Solaris. More information can be found in the press release. Registration 1st ÆGIS International Conference now open!Seville, Spain, 6-8 October 2010
We would like to kindly invite you to the 2nd Pan-European Workshop/User Forum and the 1st International ÆGIS Conference entitled “Access for All in the desktop, web and mobile field: an end-user and developer perspective” which will take place in Seville, Spain on 6 and 7-8 October 2010 respectively. All events are organised by the ÆGIS IP initiative (Open Accessibility Everywhere: Groundwork, Infrastructure, Standards - www.aegis-project.eu), partially funded under FP7 (Theme: ICT‐2007.7.1; ICT & Ageing). Download here the accessible PDF version of the Conference invitation Download here the guidelines for the papers (pdf) The Workshop/User Forum aims to bring together end-users and experts in the field of assistive technologies, from both the OSS community as well as the proprietary one, that focus on the accessibility of desktop, web and mobile applications. During the workshop the project will present the tools developed so far, and will stimulate discussions between both end-users and application developers vis-à-vis the project’s outcomes so far. The outcomes will be taken into account by the Consortium during the further course of the project. Participation to the workshop will be free of charge. We kindly invite you and your colleagues to submit papers in the following categories:
Conference topics (non-exhaustive list):
Important dates:
More information can be found here. ÆGIS @ ICT 2010ÆGIS will participate in the ICT 2010 networking session "Built-in accessibility assessment and interoperability architectures in products of the future", which will take place on 28/09/2010 (16:00-17:30). ÆGIS launches its own Twitter pageÆGIS now also has its own Twitter page at twitter.com/aegisproj. An accessible variant can be accessed via www.accessibletwitter.com. About ÆGIS
All developments will be iteratively tested with a significant number of end users, developers and experts in 3 phases and 4 Pilot sites Europe wide (in Belgium, Spain, Sweden and the UK). |
The ÆGIS project seeks to determine whether 3rd generation access techniques will provide a more accessible, more exploitable and deeply embeddable approach in mainstream ICT (desktop, rich Internet and mobile applications). This approach is developed and explored with the Open Accessibility Framework (OAF) through which aspects of the design, development and deployment of accessible mainstream ICT are addressed. The OAF provides embedded and built-in accessibility solutions, as well as toolkits for developers, for “engraving” accessibility in existing and emerging mass-market ICT-based products, thus making accessibility open, plug and play, personalised and configurable, realistic and applicable in various contexts; ÆGIS is placing users and their needs at the centre of all ICT developments. Based on a holistic UCD, ÆGIS identifies user needs and interaction models for several user groups, (users with visual, hearing, motion, speech and cognitive impairments as well as application developers) and develops open source-based generalised accessibility support into mainstream ICT devices/applications:
