As sent in by Pete Rainger (and yes, sorry for not posting this earlier as originally promised…it slipped my mind):

As part of the Adult Dyslexia Organisations (ADO) forthcoming launch of their new “Dyslexia Friendly : User Friendly” Campaign, we are putting out a call for participation in a new research initiative.

The ADO has teamed up with Key2Access Ltd. to try to create a ‘community of research and collaboration’ for those involved in accessibility and Dyslexia (or other SpLDs). To do this we are calling for all those involved in research (both academic and practitioner based), whether in the past, present or aim to in the future, to join our online register (going online next month). Please download our brief questionnaire (in RTF format) and return it to research@adult-dyslexia.org.

If you are just interested in the initiative, or the area of research then you can join our low volume email list to keep you posted on the latest developments. Just send an email to us with your name and contact details and we will add you to the list.

Details of the Research Initiative

The research initiative will cover four main topic area (other suggestions welcome):

Topics:

• Web Accessibility for Dyslexia,
• E-learning Accessibility for Dyslexia,
• Interface Design (inc. Software) for Dyslexia,
• Print Accessibility for Dyslexia.

The initiatives aims will include:

• The development of an Accessibility & Dyslexia Research Community,
• An online Research Register of Researchers and Practitioners,
• An Interactive online Research Literature Review / Bibliography,
• The development of workshops, conferences and events to brings the community together to share experience, expertise and best practice.

Our long term aim will be the development of guidelines and best practice advice for each of the topic areas.

I spotted an article that suggested the RNID’s web site had been redesigned, so over I went to take a look and then realised that it had not yet got the treatment. Re-reading the article I noticed that the site is not due for re-launch until the 17th March, but what they do have is a rather nice teaser. Now, there’s a set of ready-made presentation slides for the purposes of getting the accessibility message across to people with short attention spans!

Science fiction writer, Boing-Boing contributor and general gadget-freak Cory Doctorow has set his sights on Citibank for their new method of signing in to their Internet banking service. The new system avoids the use of a physical keyboard, instead opting for a virtual keyboard (described by Cory as a ‘toy’) that floats above the page content, forcing the use of a mouse to activate the virtual keys. You all know where this is going - how can this possibly work for blind users? How can it work for people with motor problems (and by that I don’t mean the car won’t start)?

Finally, this thing can’t possibly be usable by blind people or people with physical disabilities that make fine mouse-movements difficult. The fact that you need to use their toy keyboard every time you complete a transaction makes this doubly/triply obnoxious.

Read Cory’s full post here and use the comments facility below to have your say. Are you a Citibank Customer? Can you use the sign on tool with whatever assistive tools you normally rely on?

NILS has just released a tool for checking foreground and background colour combinations to determine if they provide good colour visibility. Determining “colour visibility” is based on algorithms suggested by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C)