Thirty Years Of Progress In Australian Disability Policy: now with captions
Posted: January 23, 2012 Filed under: 2010 Conference Leave a comment
At the 2010 Round Table conference in Auckland, New Zealand, Dr Mike Steer spoke about the history of Australian disability policy. Because he couldn’t attend the conference in person, his presentation was made by pre-recorded video.
Thanks to the support and assistance of our member organisation Media Access Australia, this video is now available to view with captions.
Dr Steer’s PowerPoint slides from this presentation, together with an accessible transcript, are also available on the Round Table blog.
Last of the 2010 Conference Proceedings
Posted: March 25, 2011 Filed under: 2010 Conference Leave a commentI’ve just uploaded the last of the 2020 conference audio: the DAISY Update by Neil Jarvis, from the RNZFB and the DAISY Consortium.
This will probably be the last post on this 2010 Conference blog. Round Table has started a Round Table blog for sharing news about future conferences and other Round Table activities, and we’ll look at merging the two in the near future.
We’ve also opened registrations for the 2011 Conference, themed Bridging the Information Access Gap: Past Successes & Future Challenges. The 2011 conference will be held in Melbourne, between Saturday 21st and Tuesday 24th May 2011. For more information, visit the Round Table blog.
Unified English Braille in the Pacific
Posted: December 1, 2010 Filed under: 2010 Conference | Tags: BLENNZ, braille, Department of Education New South Wales, Frances Gentle, Janet Reynolds, Josie Howse, Karen Stobbs, RIDBC, RNZFB, UEB, Unified English Braille, University of Newcastle Leave a commentTransition to Unified English Braille (UEB) in the ICEVI Pacific Region was jointly written by Josie Howse of the Department of Education New South Wales, Frances Gentle from RIDBC Renwick Centre & University of Newcastle, Karen Stobbs, Manager of Assessment and Teaching Services at BLENNZ and Janet Reynolds, Manager Braille and Electronic Text at RNZFB.
Karen and Janet presented the paper at this year’s conference, and gave an overview of the transition to Unified English Braille in Australia, New Zealand and the Pacific.
Braille music education in New Zealand
Posted: November 30, 2010 Filed under: 2010 Conference | Tags: BLENNZ, braille, braille music, Lisette Wesseling, music, RNZFB, Wendy Richards Leave a commentToday’s addition to the blog is a presentation from Wendy Richards, Braille Music Specialist at BLENNZ and Lisette Wesseling, Braille Awareness Consultant at Royal New Zealand Foundation of the Blind.
Their presentation, entitled Bringing Braille Music Back from the Brink, discusses the braille music education revival in New Zealand through innovative teaching, production and promotion tools.
Two more presentations: looking forwards and backwards
Posted: November 29, 2010 Filed under: 2010 Conference | Tags: Andrew Furlong, DAISY, disability, Dr Mike Steer, i-access, Karl Hughes, policy, RIDBC, Vision Australia Leave a commentI added two more presentations to the site this morning:
- Thirty Years Of Progress In Australian Disability Policy: A Parthian Shot by Dr Mike Steer – a look back at disability policy, attitudes and services in Australia over the last thirty years.
- i-access®-How Vision Australia is improving access to information by Andrew Furlong and Karl Hughes – a look at Vision Australia’s information access services for print-disabled Australians, and how these will develop in the future.
Accessible document guidelines workshops
Posted: November 26, 2010 Filed under: 2010 Conference, Guidelines Leave a comment
Besides organising the annual conference, one of the major activities of Round Table is development of guidelines for the production of accessible information.
This year’s conference marked the completion of five new or updated guidelines documents:
- UEB Rulebook
- Accessible E-text
- Clear Print
- DBT Reference Manual
- Examination Guidelines
The conference programme included workshops on the clear print and e-text guidelines, and an update from Executive on guidelines development. Along with launching the new guidelines, we announced that new Round Table guidelines will be available for free download in electronic format from the Round Table website, under a Creative Commons licence.
The workshops were not recorded due to a technical error, but the slides are available on the blog:
The audio and slides from the guidelines update are also available.
New Round Table blog
Posted: November 26, 2010 Filed under: 2010 Conference Leave a commentOver the last year, this conference blog has been a bit of an experiment for Round Table in using different web technologies to communicate with Round Table members. We’ve found it fairly successful and have had good feedback from some readers, so we will be continuing to look at whether blogging is useful for communicating more of the Round Table’s activities.
So… we’ve set up a Round Table blog to share news about Round Table’s work including next year’s conference, the new DAISY special interest group and our guidelines development. Check out the blog and let us know what you think. Like this conference blog, it offers options to subscribe by email or RSS, and you can add your own comments to each post.
Audio description access in Australia and New Zealand
Posted: November 24, 2010 Filed under: 2010 Conference | Tags: Alex Varley, audio description, John Simpson, Media Access Australia, Vision Australia Leave a comment
One of the sessions at this year’s conference was about audio description for cinema, video recordings and live events. I’ve just added the audio recordings of both presentations.
Alex Varley of Media Access Australia talked about cinema access and separating global from local issues.
John Simpson of Vision Australia talked about audio description services in Australia and potential for cross-Tasman collaboration.
Trade Exhibitors’ presentations
Posted: November 23, 2010 Filed under: 2010 Conference Leave a comment
The conference programme this year included a session for trade exhibitors to highlight their latest products and developments to delegates.
This session wasn’t recorded, but I’ve added the details of each exhibitor along with slides and photos to the blog site.
Round Table 