Strategic Planning

Proposal:Accessibility for deaf and visually impaired communities

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Request for Discussion / Sign-Ups

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  1. Achieve continued growth in readership
  2. Focus on quality content
  3. Increase Participation
  4. Stabilize and improve the infrastructure
  5. Encourage Innovation


Summary

The Wikimedia projects should take the initiative to provide accessible educational materials to the Deaf and visually impaired communities.

Aside from the basic moral obligation to do so, such an initiative would support the Foundation's goal of being accepted as an educational charity. The Foundation could maximize the benefit for everyone by coordinating these initiatives (and their media coverage with organizations for blind and Deaf education, such as Gallaudet University.

Proposal

To make Wikimedia more accessible to the blind and visually impaired, we should introduce options for text resizing and speech synthesis, as well as ALT text and GS8 Braille systems for images and math-mode equations. We should develop more spoken versions of our best materials and make them easier to find and download, which sighted people may appreciate as well. An automated or semi-automated method for producing good spoken versions independent of screen readers should be considered.

In particular, a better default solution for ALT text is needed across all projects and all languages. The software option of ALT text in captioned images was added only in September 2008, thanks to the efforts of two contributors on the English Wikipedia. Several users at the Accessibility Wikiproject worked it intermittently in late 2008, and Eubulides has now taken the lead in developing it. However, it suffers from being optional, and is rarely used in math-mode formulae, where it is needed urgently . Methods for translating LaTeX into speech (such as ASTER) have been available since the 1990's, and should be incorporated into the MediaWiki software as the backup default.

A related idea deals with a current problem involving images on the projects. The practice of specifying image size (e.g., "250px") on Wikipedia is deprecated. The problem, however, is that many images are sized automatically too small, so that their text is illegible. It would help to be able to "clone" any image on Wikipedia and blow it up to make it legible without navigating away from the current page or changing its current layout. This could probably done easily with JavaScript.

For the Deaf community, we should launch the ASL Wikipedia, and develop tools for captioning and adding ASL translations to audio podcasts, screencasts and other video.

Sub-proposal
Proposal:Record and upload sound clips in web application

Motivation

A MASS RAPID DIAGNOSIS PROGRAM IN IDENTIFIED SCHOOLS IN INDIA, BRAZIL,  AND COMPARATIVE ANALYSIS IN US ISREQUIRED
BY DOCTORS. ROOT CAUSES IN STAMMERRING AND VISUALLY IMPAIRMENT REQUIRE DEEP ANALYSIS LIKE BULK TONGUES, SLACK CHEECKS
AND TEIR NON WORKING, ETC.

Key Questions

Potential Costs

References

Community Discussion

Do you have a thought about this proposal? A suggestion? Discuss this proposal by going to Proposal Talk:Accessibility for deaf and visually impaired communities.

Want to work on this proposal?

  1. Vibhijain 10:40, 6 May 2011 (UTC)
  2. .. Sign your name here!
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