[Athen] Fwd: Call for Reading System Accessibility Testing Moderators

[Ron]

Some may be interested in this, or perhaps you have some folks you know who
may be.

Ron Stewart

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: *George Kerscher* <kerscher at montana.com>
Date: Wednesday, September 3, 2014
Subject: Call for Reading System Accessibility Testing Moderators
To: DAISY in Higher Education <daisy-in-higher-ed at daisy.org>, Transition to
Accessible EPUB <transition-to-accessible-epub at daisy.org>, diagram advisors
<diagramadvisors at benetech.org>, DAISY Technical Developments <
technical-developments at daisy.org>
Cc: DAISY Staff <daisy-staff-private at daisy.org>, DAISY Board <
daisy-board at daisy.org>


DearDAISY Community,



We are starting to roll out our crowd sourcing approach for the testing of
reading systems. Please forward the announcement below to those you feel
would be qualified and interested. We will be distributing this more
broadly   as time goes on.



Feel free to contact me with any questions or to volunteer.



Best

George

Email: Kerscher at montana.com
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***



Qualified, enthusiastic testers are needed to make sure all reading systems
used for presentation of digital publishing of books, journals, magazines,
coursework, and all other types of digital publications are fully
accessible to persons with disabilities.



Visit: http://www.epubtest.org to review the work being done by the
International Digital Publishing Forum (IDPF), the Book Industry Study
Group (BISG), and the DAISY Consortium. The column titled “accessibility”
is the focus of this call for moderators.



A moderator will be identified for each reading system on a specific
platform (OS) and that moderator will help other volunteer evaluators to
test and report findings using the Assistive Technology (AT) at their
disposal.



Individuals should be independent, have accessibility experience including
familiarity and knowledge of assistive technology and should understand the
Daisy Reading System standards
http://www.daisy.org/accessibility-screening-methodology-guidelines-and-checklist.html
This will be a demanding volunteer job that requires doing 1-2 tests first
and then supervising the completion of several tests per week.  Initial
responsibilities include recruiting evaluators, coordinating credentials
and evaluating the evaluators, monitoring progress and being willing to
verify results.



Example: Reading system HappyReader (fictional name) running on Windows 7
will have a moderator that manages volunteers to test Happy reader with the
wide range of AT used on Windows 7. The screen reader JFW using TTS as
output would be one evaluation performed; another volunteer evaluator would
test HappyReader with NVDA using braille output; another tester would use
screen magnification ZoomText and report the results, etc.  Because of the
wide range of AT used by persons with disabilities, a crowd source approach
is going to be used. We encourage organizations to sponsor the testing by
having people assigned to specific reading systems and technology, e.g. a
university using specific AT and specific reading systems should assign
people to work on the testing and share their findings with the world.



Qualifications of moderators

- Independent, self-motivated person

- Experience with testing of the accessibility of software, websites, or
reading systems.

- Good knowledge of assistive technology





Duties of Moderators



-Identify documentation for Reading Systems, e.g. user manual, getting
started, use with Assistive Technology (AT),

- Verify the qualification of evaluators

- Approve or assign the reading system configuration to the evaluators.

- Get the test forms completed by evaluators

- Facilitate the crowd sourcing for recruiting evaluators

- Coordinate with Reading system developer

- Review and approve the test results submitted by the evaluator

- Resolve the conflicts if the same reading system configuration yield
different results when tested by different evaluators.







George Kerscher Ph.D.

-In our Information Age, access to information is a fundamental human right.

Secretary General, DAISY Consortium

http://www.daisy.org

Senior Officer, Accessible Technology Learning Ally Together It’s Possible

http://www.LearningAlly.org

President, International Digital Publishing Forum (IDPF)

http://www.idpf.org

Member of the National Museum and Library Services  Board (IMLS)

http://www.imls.gov

Chair Steering Council Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI), a division of
the W3C

http://www.w3c.org/wai

Phone: +1 406/549-4687

Cell:+1 406/544-2466

Email: kerscher at montana.com
<javascript:_e(%7B%7D,'cvml','kerscher at montana.com');>



 ---
The BEST Way to Read and Publish: http://www.daisy.org/get-involved
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