ATMac

For users who have no useful hearing ability.

The Laboratory for Understanding Collaborative Technology at Northwestern University is working on a project to build and evaluate new original technologies for users with disabilities. They are currently recruiting subjects with a variety of impairments (cognitive, sensory or motor) from the Chicago area.

A round-up of bits and pieces we haven’t had time for, including Apple’s own accessibility website being updated, new guides for VoiceOver users mastering GarageBand, and some old Apple advertisements featuring American sign language.

Apple put on a September Special Event yesterday, announcing iTunes 8, the iPod Nano 4G and other smaller upgrades to software and to the iPod Touch. These announcements, especially that of iTunes version 8 now with full accessibility for Windows and OS X Mac, are fantastastic for users with a disability and reaffirm Apple’s commitment to accessibility.

There’s a new version of the Growl notification system available. What is Growl anyway, and why might you want to use it?

MovCaptioner keeps repeating a segment of the movie until you are done typing what you hear. Just hit the Return key and it will save your caption and automatically advance to the next few seconds of the movie, allowing you to zip through your captioning tasks in no time flat.
You don’t need to be a [...]

CapScribe is an open-source Mac OS X application to help you add captions and/or audio description to audio and video files.

AT&T and Apple introduce new iPhone text accessibility plan (TAP) for customers with disabilities. This is a great step forward, but do they ever reject application for the TAP and would that leave users saddled with a contract for a plan they can’t use?

If you’re in the USA, the iTunes Store now allows you to search for movies with Closed Captions available.

The deafmac.org blog has posted a list of captioned movies currently available in the iTunes Store, by which I assume they mean the USA iTunes Store. Only twenty one captioned movies so far, but hopefully the number will grow quickly.
Does anybody have news about iTunes stores in other countries and whether captioned movies are available?
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Mac OS X makes an alert “beep” sound if you try to press a key that’s not recognised or do various other things that confuse it. Here’s how to set it up so you will get a visual screen flash instead of the audio beep.