Reading: From A to <A> Keywords of Markup

On the way to Colombia I started to read this book in order to review it - more on that to follow. I've only read four chapters so far and it is a fascinating read. A collection of essays each deals with a particular HTML tag and each so far provides new insights for me and resources.

When I came across the invitation for reviewers I read through the index. HTML 5 was not there so I thought the book might suffer from the rate of change in the interval from original conception to publication. Well HTML 5 is not in the index (just HTML), but it is in the text. Drupal and Ruby on Rails also get a mention.

Of particular interest is chapter 4 'alt' by Colleen A. Reilly which combines accessibility and definitions of disability.

I'll start writing the review soon for the Journal of Community Informatics trying to be more concise than previous efforts (I volunteered to learn too). As for W2tQ I've already found several interesting quotes too, such as the example below. This struck me because it's possible to describe h2cm as a keyword collage ...

<A> evokes collagist writings, "interesting networks that open up a conceptual map" McLuhan (258).
Indeed, collage often is the focus of this type of educational/digital education or writing that asks students to merge texts and ideas. <A>, as a social space, though, is not a collage. As a network, <A> builds relationships while also becoming relationships. To enact a pedagogy of <A>, I have to imagine a social software logic as opposed to connection or merging among things. That logic is not bound to a specific platform, such as the Web, but instead informs institutional practices through the generation of large-scale spaces.p.61.

Health Literacy: A Public Health concern? 1-day Conference, Manchester, UK

Venue: Chancellors Hotel and Conference Centre (Manchester)

Friday 10th June 2011

Join us for our first national Health Literacy Research Conference.

Health literacy is -

‘the cognitive and social skills which determine the motivation and ability of individuals to gain access to, understand, and use information in ways which promote and maintain good health’.

We welcome applications for oral presentation or posters on Health Literacy research and development. The abstract submission guidelines are available from the website http://www.healthliteracy.org.uk/

or Lucy McDonald: mcdonall AT lsbu.ac.uk

The conference will include 2 plenary sessions with international health literacy

keynote speakers and a panel discussion.

Cost: £60 per day

My source: Lucy McDonald

Call for Papers: Special issue on Community Informatics for Health - Journal of Community Informatics

Abstract submissions due 14 March 2011

A special issue of the international Journal of Community Informatics (http://ci-journal.net) is going to be devoted to Health. Community Informatics (CI) is the study and the practice of enabling communities with Information and Communications Technologies (ICTs). This special issue will focus on how the social application of ICTs can empower and enable communities towards improving health. The issue is expected to be published in late 2011. The Journal of Community Informatics is a focal point for the communication of research of interest to a global network of academics, community informatics practitioners and national and multi-lateral policy makers.

The field of community informatics seeks to explore the potential of information and communication technologies and their applications for social and economic development efforts at the community level. It particularly seeks to ensure that marginalized individuals and communities can benefit from the opportunities that ICTs can provide. In the area of health, this is all the more important since those with poorer health status and poorer health outcomes are usually those with less (or no) access to ICTs, or are those who have fewer skills to make use of and benefit from ICTs.

For this special issue of the Journal on Health, we are inviting submission of original, unpublished articles. We welcome research articles, along with case studies and notes from the field. All research articles will be double blind peer-reviewed. Insights and analytical perspectives from practitioners and policy makers in the form of notes from the field or case studies are also encouraged - these will not be peer-reviewed.

Please read the full Call for Papers and more specific information on the intended 'flavour' of the issue at: http://www.flinders.edu.au/medicine/sites/southgate/research/projects/digital-tech-health/

Guest editors:

*  Lareen Newman PhD, Southgate Institute for Health Society & Equity, Flinders University - Australia
*  Ali Al Sanousi MD, King Faisal Specialist Hospital & Research Centre, Riyadh - Saudi Arabia

Contact for queries and abstract submissions:  lareen.newman AT flinders.edu.au

IMPORTANT DATES
Deadline for abstracts: 14 March 2011
Notification of successful abstracts:  9 May 2011
Deadline for submission of full papers/articles: 31 August 2011
Estimated publication date: November 2011

----------------------------------------
Dr Lareen Newman, DipEurLangs (Hons), BA (Hons), PhD
Senior Research Fellow
Southgate Institute for Health Society & Equity
Flinders University - Adelaide, South Australia
Personal page: http://www.flinders.edu.au/people/lareen.newman
Program page: http://flinders.edu.au/medicine/sites/southgate/
CRICOS Provider Number: 00114A

Additional link: h2cm in community informatics ....
Jones, P. (2004) The Four Care Domains: Situations Worthy of Research. Conference: Building & Bridging Community Networks: Knowledge, Innovation & Diversity through Communication, Brighton, UK.

Call for Maps: Mapping Science Exhibit, 7th Iteration on "Science Maps as Visual Interfaces to Digital Libraries" (2011)

Background and Goals

The Places & Spaces: Mapping Science exhibit was created to inspire cross-disciplinary discussion on how to best track and communicate human activity and scientific progress on a global scale. It has two components: (1) physical exhibits enable the close inspection of high quality reproductions of maps for display at conferences and education centers and (2) the online counterpart (http://scimaps.org) provides links to a selected series of maps and their makers along with detailed explanations of how these maps work.

Places & Spaces is a 10-year effort. Each year, 10 new maps are added, which will result in 100 maps total in 2014. Each iteration of the exhibit attempts to learn from the best examples of visualization design. To accomplish this goal, each iteration compares and contrasts four existing maps with six new maps of science. Themes for the different iterations/years are:

  * 1st Iteration (2005): The Power of Maps
  * 2nd Iteration (2006): The Power of Reference Systems
  * 3rd Iteration (2007): The Power of Forecasts
  * 4th Iteration (2008): Science Maps for Economic Decision Makers
  * 5th Iteration (2009): Science Maps for Science Policy Makers
  * 6th Iteration (2010): Science Maps for Scholars
  * 7th Iteration (2011): Science Maps as Visual Interfaces to Digital Libraries
  * 8th Iteration (2012): Science Maps for Kids
  * 9th Iteration (2013): Science Maps for Daily Science Forecasts
  * 10th Iteration (2014): Telling Lies With Science Maps

Places & Spaces was first shown at the Annual Meeting of the Association of American Geographers in April 2005. Since then, the physical exhibit has been displayed at more than 175 venues in over 15 countries, including eleven in Europe, plus Japan, China, Brazil, Canada, and the United States. A schedule of all display locations can be found at http://scimaps.org/exhibitions

Submission Details

The 7th iteration of the Mapping Science exhibit is devoted to science maps that serve as visual interfaces to digital libraries. These maps might communicate the

  * quality and coverage of data sets,
  * the structure (ontology, taxonomy, classification hierarchy) of data sets,
  * (semantic) linkages between data sets,
  * the evolution of a data set, or
  * access and usage patterns of data sets.

They are intended to support the navigation, management, and utilization of mankind’s scholarly knowledge and to make it more readily available to researchers, educators, industry, policy makers and/or the general public.

We invite maps that show a visual rendering of a dataset together with a legend, textual description, and acknowledgements as required to interpret the map. Science map dimensions can be abstract, geographical, or feature-based, but are typically richer than simple x, y plots. Scientific knowledge can be used to generate a reference system over which other data, e.g., funding opportunities or job openings, are overlaid or be projected onto another reference system, e.g., a map of the world, but must be prominently featured.
See http://scimaps.org/static/docs/all-maps-1-6.pdf for an overview of the 60 maps already featured in the exhibit.

Each initial entry must be submitted by Jan 30th, 2011 and needs to include:

  * Low resolution version of map
  * Title of work
  * Author(s) name, email address, affiliation, mailing address
  * Copyright holder (if different from authors)
  * Description of work: Scholarly needs addressed, data used, data analysis, visualization techniques applied, and main insights gained (100-300 words)
  * References to publications in which the map appeared
  * Links to related projects/works

Entries should be submitted via email to the curators of the exhibit: Katy Börne (katy at indiana.edu) and the exhibit designer Michael J. Stamper (mstamper at indiana.edu) using the email subject header “Mapping Science Entry”.

Please feel free to send any questions you might have regarding the judging process to Katy Börner (katy at indiana.edu). Please keep subject header (as used here).

This call - with additional details -  is also available at http://scimaps.org/call

Care origin(s) and open access #OAW2010

The most striking and ubiquitous presence in the health career model is its basic diagrammatic form. The image at left provides some mathematical additions and there at the center is the origin.

In this respect the model (literally) draws our attention to the identification of the care problems, constraints, strengths, solutions that affect the individual with whom we are engaged. We are immediately aware that there is inevitably more than one aspect to consider.

To save repetition I am only going to refer to problems. So, the model's form highlights that there is no single origin of problems, but many. At some time a problem, for example physical, may become the priority. Then the SCIENCES domain is critical. Deprivation of liberty concerns may split the priority creating tension across the INTER-intraPERSONAL and POLITICAL domains.

As priorities are dealt with there needs to be a return to the -

origin.

The question is asked: in which care domains do the problems lie? We call this re-assessment and evaluation.

In Open Access Week the health care model is also 'open access'. Not just in terms of being a free, accessible resource available to all, but being discipline agnostic, neutral and applicable across cultures and ethnic groups. The model is also open in terms of mindset. The users of h2cm provide that and as they do open* and origin-al care unique to the individual has a chance to follow.

*Open care? Mmm...


Image source: origin - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Coordinate_with_Origin.svg

Curriculum design and the value of whitespace

The best websites are often variously described as clean, slick, easy to navigate and access. They are considered 'best' often as a consequence of appreciating the need for whitespace. This means of course that they are also minimalist, uncluttered, easier to style consistently and they often have plenty of free space. The Google site and resulting interface is a prime example, to the extent it has become a recognised brand characteristic.

The pressures on curricula almost preempts the phenomena of student cramming. Without careful planning and discipline curricula can be jammed so full that there is no slack, no whitespace.

As a result there is also no space to reflect (Clouder, 2009).

Reference:
Lynn Clouder (2009) Promotion of Reflective Learning, Teaching and Assessment through Curriculum Design, Occasional Paper 10, Connecting Reflective Learning, Teaching and Assessment, Edited by Helen Bulpitt and Mary Deane, Higher Education Academy. p.11.

Additional links:
Whitespace programming language

63rd World Health Assembly unanimously adopts the WHO global Code of practice on the international recruitment of health personnel

Dear HIFA2015 colleagues,

Please find below a press release from the Global Health Workforce Alliance. In the words of Dr Mubashar Sheikh, GHWA Executive Director: "The world is now a significant step closer to ensuring health workers are available and accessible to all".

PRESS RELEASE: 'Sixty-third World Health Assembly unanimously adopts the WHO global Code of practice on the international recruitment of health personnel. Alliance members and partners applaud Member States. The Alliance 21/05/2010.

[Photo: WHO/Jess Hoffman. Dr Pierre François Unger, State Councillor of the Canton of Geneva, addresses delegates at the opening of the Sixty-third World Health Assembly.]

'Geneva, 21 May 2010 - In a historic move today, the Sixty-third World Health Assembly unanimously passed a resolution to adopt the voluntary WHO global Code of practice on the international recruitment of health personnel. With this step, the world's nations acknowledge the global dimension and complexities of the health workforce crisis and the interconnected nature of both the problems and the solutions.

'With this resolution, Member States commit themselves to the voluntary principles and practices for the ethical international recruitment of health personnel taking into account the responsibilities and rights of source and destination countries, other stakeholders, and those of the migrant health personnel themselves. The Code provides ethical principles applicable to the international recruitment of health personnel in a manner that strengthen the health systems of developing countries.

'A drafting committee was established on the first day of the Assembly and after three days of negotiations, stayed up till 4:30 am on Thursday, 20 May 2010 to seek consensus on a draft resolution that retained the principles and spirit of the Code while also representing a way forward for all countries.

'The draft was unanimously accepted at the tenth session of Committee A late evening on 20 May 2010 and brought long awaited joy and celebration to the many organizations and individuals, campaigners and professionals, institutions and Member States who had been working tirelessly since the last three years to see a meaningful and equitable resolution on the Code be adopted at the World Health Assembly.

'"The process was not always easy, but there was commitment from all Member States to see a resolution adopted. This helped to keep the process moving and the results are there to see" says Alliance Board member, Bjarne Garden, Assistant Director, Global Health and AIDS Department, NORAD, a member of the Norwegian delegation.

'"This brings to fruition the pioneering work seeded by the Alliance three years ago with the creation of the Health Worker Migration Initiative bringing together the Health Worker Migration Global Policy Advisory Council and WHO led team of technical experts. It is the result of the work of multiple stakeholders who have effectively rallied around together. The world is now a significant step closer to ensuring health workers are available and accessible to all", says Dr Mubashar Sheikh, Executive Director, Global Health Workforce Alliance.

'World Health Organization (WHO) has played a key role in coordinating the process. "The Code sets out a roadmap for implementation. Within 2 years WHO will provide guidance to countries on monitoring implementation of the Code, and then report to the Assembly on the progress against implementation. The Code is voluntary, but progress on implementation will be monitored and reviewed" explained Dr Manuel Dayrit, Director, WHO department of Human Resources for Health.

'Health personnel migration has been a clearly identified priority for the Alliance since its inception. During the First Global Forum on Human Resources for Health in March 2008, the Alliance endorsed the Kampala Declaration and Agenda for Global Action, which sparked broad interest in the creation of the Code.

'Progress on the code has been achieved as a result of consultations and discussions, particularly at all six WHO Regional Committees and national consultations, involving participation by a wide range of stakeholder groups. The UN ECOSOC meeting and the G8 Summit in July 2009, and the UN General Assembly in December 2009 had strongly supported and encouraged WHO to move forward in finalizing the draft code of practice. The 126th Session of the WHO Executive Board, January 2010, had discussed a revised draft of the Code and recommended that it be submitted to the 63rd World Health Assembly.

'At this momentous milestone, the Alliance and WHO call upon Member States and all its partners to reinforce its spirit of working together as they now gear up to implementing the code. The Alliance remains committed to facilitating the process and supporting sharing of information among Member States and all stakeholders.'

The Draft Resolution, dated 20 May 2010, is available here:
http://www.who.int/workforcealliance/knowledge/themes/migration/wha_A63_A_Confpaper_11.pdf

Key elements of the draft code (as described in The Lancet, 15 May) are:

• Establishment of voluntary global standards for ethical international recruitment of health personnel, balancing rights and obligations of source states, destination states, and health personnel.
• Promotion of coordination of national policies and international cooperation among states and their partners in health professions and civil society.
• Recommendation that states strive to meet their domestic needs for health services with their own human resources through planning, education, and training for health workforce.
• Recommendation that states ensure that international migration should have net positive effect on developing countries through technical assistance, support for health personnel training and retention, twinning of health facilities, and specialised technology and skills transfers.
• Recommendation that states establish voluntary financial mechanisms to support efforts of developing countries to strengthen health systems.
• Recommendation that states protect rights of migrant health workers through fair labour practices. In all terms of employment and conditions of work, migrant health personnel should enjoy same legal rights and responsibilities as domestically trained health workforce, without discrimination.
• Recognition that health personnel have ethical responsibilities to cooperate with local authorities in interests of patients, health systems, and society.
• Recommendation for national data collection and information exchange on health personnel migration, including establishment of national centre for information exchange, expansion and coordination of national research, and periodic reporting to WHO.
• Promotion of compliance through periodic state reporting to WHA of measures taken to implement the code; and recommendation that WHA periodically reviews the code's implementation with input from non-governmental sources.

Allyn L Taylor & Lawrence O Gostin. International recruitment of health personnel. The Lancet, 375(9727)1673-1675, 15 May 2010
http://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736%2810%2960596-X/fulltext?_eventId=login&&version=printerFriendly
(free access after free registration)

My source: HIFA2015 with photo addition

Call for papers: IFLA Health and Biosciences Libraries Section open session

Colleagues from around the world are invited to submit an abstract for consideration for the HBS Open Session:

Health and Biosciences Libraries Section


Aim and Scope of the Session

It is hoped that papers will cover a wide range of areas - for example:

• Partnerships and collaborations that support free access to health information.
• Health libraries/health information professionals role in promoting open and / or equitable access.
• How health information is disseminated to the general public?
• How useful is free health information? Is it evidence based?
• How evidence based information is incorporated into freely available health information?
• Is there a decline in the use of health information that is not freely available e.g. library subscriptions?
• How do consumers prefer to access health information e.g. mobile devices, magazines, newspapers?
• What role health information literacy may have in health information?

It is anticipated that presentations be 15 minutes with time for questions at the end of the session.

Important dates:

February 1st 2010: Deadline for submission of abstract
March 1st 2010: Notification of acceptance/rejection
May 1st 2010: Deadline for submission of text

Submission Guidelines:

The proposals must be submitted in an electronic format and must contain:

Title of paper
Summary of paper (250 - 350 words maximum)
Speaker's name, address, telephone and fax numbers, professional affiliation, email address and biographical note (40 words)

Submissions are to be submitted before February 1st 2010 by email to:

Paivi Pekkarinen
National Library of Health Sciences
Haartmaninkatu 4
FI-00290 Helsinki, Finland
paivi.pekkarinen@helsinki.fi
www: http://www.terkko.helsinki.fi

Regrettably IFLA's Sections do not have funds available to pay for speakers expenses, including registration for the conference, travel, accommodation.

http://www.ifla.org/en/calls-for-papers/1930

Paivi Pekkarinen
IFLA Health and Biosciences Libraries Section / Secretary
National Library of Health Sciences
Haartmaninkatu 4
FI-00290 Helsinki
email: paivi.pekkarinen at helsinki.fi

HIFA2015 profile: Paivi Pekkarinen is Head of the WHO Information Service Centre, National Library of Health Sciences, Finland. Professional interests include:

• To enhance equal access to health information, in particular in the WHO European Region;
• To enhance collaboration and networking of the Public Health Special Interest Group of EAHIL http://www.eahil.net/PHISIG-page.html;
• and knowledge management issues.

Click here to read online.

HIFA2015: Healthcare Information For All by 2015 www.hifa2015.org
With thanks to our 2009 Sponsors: *British Medical Association, ePORTUGUESe, Network for Information and Digital Access, Royal College of Midwives, Royal College of Nursing*

To join or unsubscribe from HIFA2015, email:
hifa2015-admin at dgroups.org
To join our sister group CHILD2015 (child health), go to:
www.hifa2015.org/child2015-forum
To join our sister group HIFA2015-Portuguese, go to:
www.hifa2015.org/hifa-pt

My source:

HIPNet Listserv hjohnson at jhuccp.org

5th Cambridge Workshop on Universal Access and Assistive Technology 2010

DESIGNING INCLUSIVE INTERACTIONS
Inclusive interactions between people and products in their contexts of use

The 5th Cambridge Workshop on Universal Access (UA) and Assistive Technology (AT)


CWUAAT 2010


Fitzwilliam College, University of Cambridge, 22 - 25 March 2010

WORKSHOP THEME

The workshop theme "Designing Inclusive Interactions" reflects the need to explore the issues and practicalities of design that is intended to extend our active future lives. This encompasses design for inclusion: for the individual at home; in the workplace; for businesses and of products in these contexts. It reflects the development of theory, tools and techniques as research moves on, and also the need to draw in wider psychological, social, and economic considerations in order to gain a more accurate understanding of users' interactions with products and technology.

CWUAAT '10 is the fifth of a series of workshops that are held every two years and follows on from the highly successful CWUAAT '02, CWUAAT '04, CWUAAT '06, and CWUAAT '08.
The workshop aims to encourage wide-ranging discussion, co-operation and collaboration within and between the universal access and assistive technology research communities in the context of inclusive design. We hope this will lead to new solutions to reduce exclusion and difficulty arising from impairment with special application to our future lives, in the workplace, at home and at leisure.
The call for participation in CWUAAT is international. Contributions are welcomed from all leading researchers in the fields of Universal Access and Assistive Technology. Likely participants include computer scientists, designers, engineers, industrial representatives, therapists and practitioners, ergonomists and architects.

The workshop will focus on, but will not be limited to, the following principal topics:

1. DESIGNING ASSISTIVE AND REHABILITATION TECHNOLOGY FOR WORKING AND LIVING
2. MEASURING INCLUSION FOR THE DESIGN OF PRODUCTS FOR WORK AND DAILY LIVING
3. INCLUSIVE INTERACTION DESIGN AND NEW TECHNOLOGIES FOR INCLUSIVE DESIGN
4. ASSEMBLING NEW USER DATA FOR INCLUSIVE DESIGN
5. THE DESIGN OF ACCESSIBLE AND INCLUSIVE CONTEXTS: WORK AND LIVING
6. BUSINESS ADVANTAGES AND APPLICATIONS OF INCLUSIVE DESIGN
7. LEGISLATION, STANDARDS AND GOVERNMENT AWARENESS OF INCLUSIVE DESIGN

INVITED CONTRIBUTIONS
Long papers (6-10 pages), reporting original work relevant to the workshop themes;
Short papers/Poster presentations/ Demonstrations (1-2 pages abstract, 3-4 pages for
camera-ready copy).

PROCEEDINGS
Accepted long papers will be published as a book by Springer-Verlag, UK.
Short papers will be published separately in an official conference proceedings.
Selected long papers will appear in a special edition of the Universal Access in the Information Society (UAIS) journal published by Springer-Verlag.

IMPORTANT DATES
Deadline for submission of long and short papers, poster abstracts: 17 August, 2009
Notification of paper acceptance: 21 September, 2009
Deadline for camera-ready version of submitted papers: 26 October, 2009
Advance registration (ends): 15 January, 2010
Late registration (ends): 22 February, 2010
CWUAAT Workshop: 22 - 25 March, 2010

Paper format details will be available on the conference web-site. All papers will be reviewed by three reviewers and the accepted papers will be presented during the workshop.

Electronic submission of papers will be available via the conference web-site in due course.
http://www-edc.eng.cam.ac.uk/cwuaat/index.html

USER FORUM
Following feedback from the 2008 workshop, CWUAAT 2010 will contain a single paper session allocated as a user forum. This is intended to give users of assistive technology and beneficiaries of improved accessibility an opportunity for an oral presentation of 25 minutes. Both short and long papers will be accepted in this category and topics and themes are not restricted. We welcome academic position papers; social and research agendas, critiques of provision of technology or poor accessibility; engineering or technical papers regarding product design and usage in work and daily living.

DOCTORAL CONSORTIUM
As one of the most praised aspects of CWUAAT 08, the event will this time include an extended Doctoral Consortium. This will take place on Monday 25th and will share the day with registration only. The main conference sessions will start on the Tuesday 26th.
Candidates who submit to the doctoral consortium will be able to attend the workshop at a greatly reduced registration and 10 places have been allocated for this purpose. The two presentations judged to be the best by the consortium panel will win a podium presentation in the main workshop.

DEMONSTRATIONS
It is hoped that participants will be able to gain hands-on experience with working systems. Space and time will be available for demonstrations of software and hardware.

CONTACT INFORMATION AND EXPRESSIONS OF INTEREST TO

pat.langdon at eng.cam.ac.uk
cwuaat-enquiries at eng.cam.ac.uk

Ms Suzanne Williams,
Department of Engineering,
University of Cambridge,
Trumpington Street,
Cambridge,CB21PZ
United Kingdom
E-mail: sw439 at eng.cam.ac.uk

ORGANISING COMMITTEE
Dr Patrick Langdon, Engineering Design Centre, University of Cambridge
Prof John Clarkson, Engineering Design Centre, University of Cambridge
Prof Peter Robinson, Computer Laboratory, University of Cambridge

My source:
The Caring Technology Research Announcement List:
http://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/caring-tec-research

Announcement archives:
http://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/lists/Caring-Tec-Research.html

Independence and Quality of Later Life: A decade of research to support older people 14th May

The next KT-EQUAL event for all-comers is on 14th May in Bath.

It will showcase the outcomes of a decade of research to support older people and disabled people, especially:


- improving accessibility to the world outside of the home:
streets, neighbourhoods, parks, transport systems
the very spaces and places that many older people look forward to visiting.

- the better design of everyday products and packaging:
products which are not stigmatised as being for older or disabled people but are mainstream products, which are enjoyed by everyone.

- using new technology to support individuals in the self-management of chronic conditions such as diabetes, heart conditions, and the effects of stroke:
Can these technologies be easy to use and unobtrusive? Do they really they boost health, activity, confidence and well-being?

As well as presenting some of latest findings and developments, the workshop will also be looking to the future, especially at how researchers are coming together to make certain that older people benefit from the best of British Science by getting their findings into policy and practice.

The event is free and is open to anyone with an interest in improving the quality of later life - professionals from all sectors, policy makers, representatives of charities and voluntary bodies, older people and their carers, as well as researchers. It is being held in the centre of Bath so is easy to reach from the railway station. Bath in May can be idyllic!

Full details can be found on the SPARC website. Please be sure to register soon via the registration page.

Best wishes

Peter Lansley

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Professor Peter Lansley, BSc, MSc, PhD, MCIOB, FCOT
Director, KT-EQUAL – Knowledge Transfer for Extending Quality Life
School of Construction Management and Engineering, URS Building,
University of Reading, Whiteknights, PO Box 219, Reading, RG6 6AW, UK
p.r.lansley at reading.ac.uk www.sparc.ac.uk
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
My source SPARC mailing list

"Digitize This Book!" book review: follow-up

Following the post from last Tuesday January 27 of a review of Gary Hall's Digitize This Book! the dialogue below took place and focuses upon accessibility.

(I have picked up Bill Fitzgerald's, Drupal for Education and E-Learning and will post the review here once completed.)


From: Claude Almansi
To: Peter Jones

Hi Peter,

Thanks for the link (on xmca list) to your very detailed review of Gary Hall's book. As you are also an advocate of computer accessibility, may I ask if Hall's text mentions the accessibility of digitized works?

For instance the works offered by Google Books and The European Digital Library texts, with the exception of public domain ones, are presented as images of text that are mute to the screen readers used by blind people. So are all newspapers archives using Olive ActivePaper software.

This use of text images - apparently motivated by a "wish to protect copyright - is not only a barrier to blind people: it makes such "digitized" works very clumsy to use for research, and for reading on a portable device with a small screen. It also means that they are difficult to find with a search engine*. And the paradox is that these applications do use a plain text version, but hide it, only offering these images of text.

I wrote about this problem in:

http://innovateblog.wordpress.com/2009/01/22/unhide-that-hidden-text-please/

where I quote Gabriele Ghirlanda's description of how he did get his screen reader to read the content of such a "text image" article in an ActivePaper powered archive:

"With a screenshot, the image definition was too low for ABBYY FineReader 8.0 Professional Edition [optical character recognition software] to extract a meaningful text. But by chance, I noticed that the article presented is made of several blocs of images, for the title and for each column. Right-click, copy image, paste in OpenOffice; export as PDF; then I put the PDF through Abbyy Fine Reader.
[...]
For a sighted person, it is no problem to create a document of good quality for each article, keeping it in image format, without having to go through OpenOffice and/or pdf."

Rather frustrating to think that this archive is powered by a hidden plain text...

Best

Claude Almansi

On 1/29/09, peter jones <h2cmng @ yahoo.co.uk> wrote:

> Hi Claude,

>Thanks very much for these points. I've checked and 'accessibility' does not feature in the index.

(Claude Almansi) Interesting. When the archives of the Journal de Genève were announced last december, I first objected on the mailing list of the Swiss Internet User Group (SIUG) to the claim that they were "in free access" , in spite of their "text image" presentation made worse by scripts preventing full download (etc: see my post on the Innovate blog). Now SIUG is very committed to accessibility. During the revision of the Swiss copyright law, we lobbied for maintaining the exceptions to the interdiction of circumventing DRM, stressing that these exceptions were fundamental for blind people using screen readers [1].

Nevertheless, the first reactions were on the line of don't rock the boat: no other Swiss paper offers non-paying access to their archives yet, and if we are too critical, even this might be withdrawn. So I first submitted the post for the Innovate blog to Norbert Bollow, SIUG's chairman, and he OK'd it, as I had put the issue in a wider context.

Sure, a digitized text image is better than no digitized text at all. Yet real text is so much better for everybody [2].

> (Peter Jones) As you may have noticed I have HCI accessibility resources on links I.

(Claude Almansi) Yes, I did: that's why I sent you the question about accessibility in Gary Hall's book.

[1] For instance, I recorded an interview on DRM and assistive tech with Luca Mascaro, a computer accessibility specialist, posted it in:

http://noimedia.podspot.de/post/luca-mascaro-drm-e-tecnologie-assistive/

added the transcript in

http://noimedia.wikispaces.com/tecnologia_assistiva_e_DRM

and the English translation in

http://noimedia.wikispaces.com/assistive_tech_and_DRM

- then Norbert Bollow, SIUG's chairman, translated in German (see

http://siug.ch/URG/interview-mascaro-2007-05-09.html

and sent it to the members of the Judicial Commission, all within a few hours: because the content producers (IFPI, etc) had announced that they would exert the utmost pressures to have these exceptions to the interdiction of circumventing DRM removed from the law. Other groups lobbied for the exceptions from different view points (consumers' rights, open standards, culture) and in the end the exceptions were maintained.

[2] An interesting example of good digitizing:

"e-codices - Virtual Maniscript Library of Switzerland <http://www.e-codices.unifr.ch/en>.

They too give text images, but then how many sighted people can decipher a medieval or Renaissance MS, apart from scholars? So this is compensated by the fact you can switch at any time from the image view of a MS to its text description, written in simple language, with interesting details linked to the images various pages of the MS. Only issue: the descriptions are not translated in all 4 languages of the site - but then that's Switzerland :D

Entirely done with Open Source software: see
http://www.e-codices.unifr.ch/en/info/webapplication

Hi Peter,

About digitizing books: the forward is the second message of a discussion, with the first one under it, on the A2K [=Access to Knowledge] mailing list. The article amply quoted in the first message is "Google & the Future of Books" by Robert Darnton, New York Review of Books, dated Feb 12, 2009 but already on line at - <http://www.nybooks.com/articles/22281>. Archived at -
<http://www.webcitation.org/5e6Qtv7Xs> in case the NYRB removes stuff from their site after a while.

BTW, the A2K list members send very good info about copyright, copyleft and culture. Pity the list archive doesn't have an RSS feed or a search engine of its own, but as the archive is public, you can find relevant messages in a search engine by adding A2K to the search words.

Best,
Claude

To: Peter Jones, Claude Almansi
From: Gary Hall
Subject: Re: Review of Digitize This Book!
Date: 29 January 2009 20:39:39

Dear Claude, and Peter,

Actually, this is an area that Steve Green, who set up the CSeARCH archive with me, and who is also one of the co-founders of the Culture Machine journal I co-edit, is very interested in. One of his issues with the new design of Culture Machine - we recently moved over to Open Journal Systems as part of Open Humanites Press (http://www.openhumanitiespress.org), which is something else I'm also involved in - is that the text size, even at the highest option, is actually quick small, which might make it difficult to read for some people with poor vision. Also the fonts and colours can't be selected. Steve and a colleague are currently giving the new version of Culture Machine an accessibility audit for us. I'll let you know the results when I have them.

In the meantime, I've also raised the issue with my colleagues at Open Humanities Press, just to make certain we address it there, especially with regard to the open access book publishing strand we are in the process of establishing.

As far as Digitize This Book! is concerned, I'm afraid I don't mention accessibility in terms of the screen readers used by blind people there, no. I did have plans to include a chapter critiquing the notion, frequently heard within open access debates, that making academic research available online OA means they are available for everywhere, for everyone, for ever. My intention was to do so partly in terms of political economy (not every can afford access); partly in terms of language (what happens about translation issues and costs); and partly in terms of the geopolitics of academic publishing (whereby there are a few nations at the centre of this world who are exporting, and in effect universalising, their knowledge, a whole host of other nations outside the centre of the academic and publishing networks who may be able to import ‘universal’ theory, but who don’t have enough opportunities to publish, export or even develop their own ‘universal’ theory to rival those of Foucault, Derrida, Deleuze, Mouffe, Agamben, Badiou, Butler, Latour, Negri, Rancière et al). However, I must confess that in the little work I'd done on this chapter, I hadn't addressed the issue you raise regarding the use of text images.

(I'm aware that Google Books and The European Digital Library use images of texts, but I hadn't made the connection to the screen readers you mention.)

In the end the chapter I had planned didn't make it into Digitize This Book!, for reasons of time and space. But I may include it in the book I'm working on at the moment. If I do I'll certainly endeavour to address the issue there.

Thanks for bringing it to my attention. I'm very grateful.

My best to you both,
Gary

13 Feb (update) Additional links (c/o Deborah Elizabeth Finn - Information Systems Forum):

http://onlineadvocacy.tacticaltech.org - developed by Tactical Tech -
http://www.tacticaltech.org