EASI and Talking Communities Brings Webinars for Accessibility in March

West Bend, WI, March 06, 2008 --(PR.com)-- Brought to you by Talking Communities Web Conferencing and Webcast services (http://talkingcommunities.com).

There are 3 different Webinar formats: Snapshots are short and focused, Webinars are hour-long public presentations and Webinar series are 4-part, fee-based detailed training running for 4 sequential weeks. You can read more and register online at: http://easi.cc/clinic.htm

Webinar Snapshot: What is an Accessible Vodcast? (March 5)
Webinar Snapshot: FireFox Browser Extensions (March 19)
Webinar: Tips and Tricks for Scanning Text (March 6 hour-long)
Webinar: Updating NLS Library of Congress Uses of Digital Book Formats (March 20 hour long)
Webinar 4-part Series: Creating Accessible and Usable PDF Documents (starting March 11)

Snapshot: What is an Accessible Vodcast?
Wed. March 5 - 2PM Eastern (New York) Time
Presenter: Dick Banks
Dick Banks explains what Vodcasts are and what devices will display them. He will also explain how to add streaming captions to them that will display on small hand-held players.
http://easi.cc/clinic.htm

Hour-long Webinar: Tips and Tricks for Scanning Text
Thursday, March 6 - 2PM Eastern (New York) Time
Presenter: Doug Powles
The idea of converting printed materials to text is certainly not new. The technology that makes that possible has certainly changed.

This hour long presentation will discuss tips and tricks of scanning materials and getting more accurate results. Things like paper quality, type quality and methods to improve results will be discussed.
http://easi.cc/clinic.htm

Snapshot: FireFox Browser Extensions
Wed. March 19 - 2PM Eastern (New York) Time
Presenter: Dick Banks
Firefox is the browser of choice for more and more people because it is not as vulnerable to hacking. Like Internet Explorer, it has many extensions that enhance its uses including helping developers evaluate and test Web pages for Accessibility.
http://easi.cc/clinic.htm

Open Webinar: Updating NLS Library of Congress Uses of Digital Book Formats
Thursday, March 20 - 2PM Eastern (New York) Time
Presenters will include:
Lloyd Rasmussen, Acting Head, Engineering Section National Library Service for the Blind and Physically Handicapped and 3 consumers who have been part of the pilot digital book test group will discuss their experiences with the new audio DAISY format The Library of Congress National Library Service has been providing books in special formats such as Braille and talking books for well over half a century. NLS is currently starting to produce new books in a digital audio format with DAISY type navigation. During 2007 it has been conducting a pilot trial with a number of users who were provided a special player and who have been downloading books from the Web. NLS will be issuing new players to its regular customers this year and opening the new digital books for general use.
http://easi.cc/clinic.htm

Webinar Series: Creating Accessible and Usable PDF Documents
Tuesday March 11, 18, 25 and April 1 (2PM Eastern)
(This fee-based series is free to all EASI annual Webinar members)
PDF or portable document format is a very popular document type. It was conceived as an electronic way to produce documents with the look and feel of a highly designed print document. It gave the page designer almost total control over how the page would look on anyone's computer monitor. It also began as actually being a picture of the page rather than containing actual text. This was totally inaccessible for someone using a screen reader as there was no text as such just a picture of the text. Adobe has continually worked to make the product richer and more flexible. Screen readers can handle it for the most part and screen magnification software can also enlarge the text without distorting it. Because the various creation software are so many and so rich, the page creator needs to know a bit about PDF formatting and about the accessibility issues and their solutions. For anyone wanting to create quality and more complex PDF documents, there is a need to learn the features provided in Acrobat. Karen McCall has published on PDF accessibility and is a beta tester for Adobe.

March 11: Week One: Getting Our Bearings
March 18: Week Two: Tagging and Repair Tools
March 25: Week three: Intermediate Techniques
April 1 : Week Four: The Next Step

Full description of these lessons is at: http://easi.cc/clinic.htm

You can also read about EASI annual Webinar membership at: http://easi.cc/sub.htm

Norman Coombs
CEO EASI
http://easi.cc

Check out EASI's New Synchronous Clinics: http://easi.cc/clinic.htm

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