NFL News: Steelers? James Harrison Won?t Take Pay Cut

The 2012 NFL season ended in disappointment for the Pittsburgh Steelers after the team failed to capitalize on an opportunity to get back into the race for the AFC North division title around midseason.

The Steelers dealt with multiple injury problems to some of the team?s best players on both sides of the football throughout the season. With Ben Roethlisberger, Heath Miller, Antonio Brown, Mike Wallace, James Harrison and Troy Polamalu all missing time, Pittsburgh simply couldn?t turn things around .

All the injuries turned out to be too much to recover from for the Steelers and ultimately ended the season for the AFC heavyweight with the Steelers missing the NFL playoffs.

Heading into the off-season, the Steelers have a few decisions to make a few of the team?s important players. Wide receiver Mike Wallace is set to hit free agency in March and linebacker James Harrison will not be willing to take a pay cut if asked according to John Harris of Triblive.com:

Steelers?linebacker James Harrison is willing to restructure his contract. Smart man.

Harrison won?t take a pay cut, however, and that stubborn streak could make him an ex-Steeler.

Harrison is scheduled to earn $6.57 million in 2013 and $7.57 million in ?14. That?s a big salary-cap number for a pass-rusher who turns 35 in May, is coming off knee surgery a year ago and is two years removed from two back surgeries.

The veteran linebacker had a breakout season in 2008 winning the Defensive Player of the Year award, recording a career-high 16.0 sacks and made history by picking off Kurt Warner of the Arizona Cardinals for a 100-yard interception return for a touchdown in the Super Bowl.

Since the win over the Cardinals in Super Bowl XLIII, Harrison hasn?t been able to put up comparable numbers for the Steelers. Harrison?s numbers have declined gradually over the past four seasons with the veteran riddled by back and knee injuries.

Despite the injuries, Harrison is still one of the best linebackers in the league and will be a loss for the Steelers if the two sides decide to part ways with Harrison?s reluctance to take a pay cut.

Source: http://www.sportscity.com/nfl-news-steelers-james-harrison-wont-take-pay-cut/2013/02/13/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=nfl-news-steelers-james-harrison-wont-take-pay-cut

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Facebook hires Pixar illustrator to re-invent the emoticon

iheartchaos:

The emoticon has been around in some form since the early days of the world wide web, and there?s no shortage of emoticons out there. For the web and for mobile phones, there are thousands of emoticon apps to use in your everyday chatting. But Facebook thinks they, along with Pixar illustrator Matt Jones and a little bit of Charles Darwin, think they can take emoticons to the next level.

Read More

(via popculturebrain)

Source: http://finalbossform.com/post/43050854526

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Obama travels to NC to rally support for jobs plan

WASHINGTON (AP) ? President Barack Obama is kicking off three days of travel to rally support for the job-creation and economic proposals he unveiled in his State of the Union address.

Obama will launch the effort Wednesday in Asheville, N.C., with a visit to Linamar Corp., a supplier of engine and transmission components that has expanded its manufacturing operations. He'll make stops in Atlanta on Thursday and Chicago on Friday.

In his speech before a joint session of Congress Tuesday night, Obama called job creation his "North Star." He asked Congress to focus on attracting jobs to the U.S., training American workers and boosting investments in infrastructure, manufacturing and clean energy.

Obama also says he wants to raise the minimum hourly wage from the current $7.25 to $9 by the end of 2015.

Associated Press

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/f70471f764144b2fab526d39972d37b3/Article_2013-02-13-Obama/id-7621b8c3de7240d68f874999a011ae5d

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Bullies At CAIR Try To Shut Down Feb 20 N. VA GOP Women's Group Talk On Sharia & Hijab

Fairfax County (Virginia)?School Superintendent Jack Dale deserves a round of applause for refusing to cave in to the bullying demands of the Hamas-linked Council of American Islamic Relations (CAIR).

The superintendent came under fire for renting space at Fairview Elementary School in the Clifton, VA area to the Republican Women of Clifton, who will have a speaker at their meeting next week discussing Sharia law and the hijab.

The Washington ComPost posted a very biased article on Feb. 8 that reads more like a CAIR press release instead of a straight news article in a national newspaper.

The notice in the Fairfax Station Patch on Tuesday was brief, but to Laurie Jaghlit it felt like a punch in the gut.

At the next meeting of Republican Women of Clifton, a guest speaker would discuss ?the treatment of women in Islamic society and how she believes the Hijab is a catalyst for Islamic terrorism.? The Feb. 20 meeting would take place at Fairview Elementary School, five miles from Jaghlit?s house.

Jaghlit, a 52-year-old grandmother who raised nine children in Fairfax Station and Herndon, wears the hijab, or Islamic head covering. She had heard about talks like this in other parts of the country but had never confronted the issue so close to home.

?If that?s not hateful and inciteful speech, I don?t know what is,? she said. ?This is a diverse area. You?d think that hopefully we?d be beyond this."

The ComPost followed up with CAIR spokesmouth Ibrihim Hooper throwing out the usual Islamphobia and bigotry card that is used to bully anyone who dares question radical Islamists and Sharia law.?As a typical?example of CAIR/Hooper's bullying, the Roman Catholic Diocese of Worcester MA cancelled a talk by Robert Spencer, director of JihadWatch.? It is only near the end of the article that Jaghlit, mentioned in the lede of the ComPost piece,?"works part-time for CAIR" and "she and half a dozen other Muslim women who wear the hijab plan to attend the meeting to 'have our non-terrorist voices heard.'"

The only response the ComPost allowed for the GOP Women's club was an e-mail response from Club President Alice Butler-Short, of which they took only a very?brief excerpt.

Of course, no where does the ComPost note how the FBI has linked CAIR to Hamas as well as elements of the Muslim Brotherhood, noted in 2007 by Counterterrorism Blog.? CAIR's co-founders Omar Ahmed and Nihad Awad were placed at a 1993 meeting in Philadelphia where Hamas members and supporters strategized ways to kill the Oslo Accords. Hooper has been quoted as saying in 1993, ?I wouldn't want to create the impression that I wouldn't like the government of the United States to be Islamic sometime in the future...But I'm not going to do anything violent to promote that. I'm going to do it through education.?

James Lafferty, who leads the Virginia Anti-Sharia Task Force, is asking that interested citizens come attend the event next Wednesday night, as a way to counter possible interruption from the CAIR activists.?It is important to note that CAIR has had a history showing up in large numbers in an effort to intimidate, as they did with the Fairfax County Planning Commission in 2009.

Source: http://maroonedinmarin.blogspot.com/2013/02/bullies-at-cair-try-to-shut-down-feb-20.html

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Official says Afghanistan ready to take over

KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) ? A Kabul official has welcomed President Barack Obama's decision to bring home half of the 66,000 American troops in Afghanistan with the next year, saying Afghan forces are ready to take responsibility for the country's security.

Defense Ministry spokesman Mohammad Zahir Azimi said on Wednesday that Afghan troops will fill the "vacuum" caused by the withdrawal of 34,000 U.S. troops over the next 12 months.

Obama told Americans about his decision in his State of the Union speech. He had earlier briefed Afghan President Hamid Karzai.

Karzai's office said the two leaders discussed strengthening and equipping the Afghan forces and a pending security agreement that will determine whether the U.S. will retain soldiers here after most foreign troops leave at the end of 2014.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/official-says-afghanistan-ready-over-053532320.html

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Shapiro: The true state of the union -- stymied

By Walter Shapiro

For Barack Obama, Tuesday?s State of the Union address is the last in a five-month sequence of formal political speeches, delivered in star-spangled settings and broadcast on prime-time television, dating back to the Democratic convention. After the partisan applause in the House chamber dies down Tuesday night, the next time Obama will speak to the nation during the evening will be, in all likelihood, a time of crisis or national grieving.

Obama?s 2012 convention speech was about polls and swing states. His inaugural address was a moment for eloquent symbolism, which he achieved with his unequivocal endorsement of gay rights. A second-term State of the Union address is different: What matters are not the words but the policy.

Obama should answer three questions: Now that the election is over, what do I truly believe? What is the order of my priorities? And what will I not accept from Congress under any circumstance?

Like every White House since the news was delivered by telegraph, the Obama team has been leaking the themes of the speech to the press in order to create the right mood of frenzied anticipation. Over the weekend, the Washington Post (?In State of the Union, Obama to return to jobs and the economy?) and the New York Times (?In Address, President Will Focus on Middle Class?) ran similar? stories based on conversations with purportedly press-shy Obama aides ?who discussed the speech on condition of anonymity.?

Few Americans would fault the president?s intent to build his speech around the financial woes of the middle class. (By the way, does anyone in Washington still possess an old-fashioned dictionary in which the word ?poverty? is listed in the P?s along with ?politics? and ?polls??). Previewing the State of the Union in a speech to House Democrats last week, Obama declared that America needs ?an economy in which we?re growing a vibrant middle class?that it grows from the middle out and the bottom up, not from the top down.?

Who could argue with that dream? With 12.3 million Americans unemployed (roughly the population of Pennsylvania), the anemic recovery has created lost generations. Students who left school in 2008?whether with a Ph.D. or a high-school diploma?may never make up the loss in lifetime earnings from the economic collapse. Mature workers who had anticipated maintaining their standard of living until retirement have faced the rude realities of downward mobility: Family incomes for those between 50 and 65 have declined by 10 percent in the past three years.

The challenge for Obama in the State of the Union is the mismatch between the magnitude of the current economic malaise and the resources that he can summon to deal with it.

A $25 billion or even a $50 billion program (these numbers are guesses, not leaks) to rebuild American?s infrastructure or to encourage lifelong learning may sound impressive in the context of Tuesday night?s rhetoric. But a stimulus like that represents chump change in a $15 trillion economy.

Obama would need the persuasive skills of a Bill Clinton and the legislative mastery of a Lyndon Johnson to maneuver even a modest agenda of new federal spending through the Republican-controlled House. Even though not-quoted-by-name Obama aides insist that any new spending would be balanced by corresponding budget cuts, a large segment of Congress (not confined to Republicans) would argue that such savings should be directly applied to the deficit.

President Obama is, in effect, hamstrung by the politics of austerity that he successfully championed as Candidate Obama. It made sense in 2012 electoral terms to talk about a ?balanced approach? to deficit reduction and to downplay any need for further economic stimulus. Even last week, in his speech to House Democrats, Obama stressed his desire for ?a balanced package that will reduce our long-term deficit and debt.?

The problem is that, without tax reform to raise revenue, it is impossible to simultaneously pay down the deficit and jumpstart the economy through federal programs. Talking about (yes, I do hate the phrase) ?a balanced package? obviously polls well for Obama. But to govern is to make choices, and Obama?s roadmap appears to be the route of symbolic gestures and micro-initiatives rather than robust recovery.

The Scrooge McDuck obsession with premature budget cutting compounds the problem for both Obama and the economy. By any rational standard of economic decision-making, it is ludicrous that $85 billion in automatic across-the-board budget cuts are slated to take effect on March 1, slicing everything from FEMA disaster relief to the Navy Seals. Largely because of obstreperous Republicans, Washington is also facing another government shutdown at the end of March when current funding runs out.

A stagnant economy and a dysfunctional Congress are dreary and depressing topics that have been dominating the news since the economic meltdown began on Wall Street in mid-September 2008. No matter how intense the individual suffering from job loss and dashed hopes, there is little that Obama can say on Tuesday night that will spark a visceral response. We have simply been down this road for too long for any presidential utterance on the economy to seem fresh.

That is why?no matter how Obama?s speech is structured?the crusade against gun violence is almost certain to become its emotional heart. Already, congressional Democrats are making certain that grieving relatives and survivors of the Newtown shootings will have VIP seats in the House gallery for the State of the Union. Images of the 20 small children who died at Sandy Hook Elementary School have seared the soul of Obama, a president who rarely shows emotion. And undoubtedly Tuesday night?s speech will reflect those tearful memories.

Yet gun control represents another issue where the president?s stirring words are at odds with the timidity of what is legislatively possible. Already, leading Democrats like Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid have expressed skepticism that an assault weapons ban could make it through Congress.

In a violent nation with more than 300 million guns in circulation, it is difficult to assess how many lives would be saved by preventing the future sales of the most lethal weaponry. As the nonpartisan Congressional Research Service pointed out in a November 2012 report, ?Existing data do not show whether the number of people shot and killed with semiautomatic assault weapons declined during the 10-year period (1994-2004) that those firearms were banned from further proliferation in the United States.?

Probably the only gun legislation with a realistic chance of making it through Congress would expand federal background checks to cover private gun shows and other unregulated sales. While any political victory over the zealots of the NRA has merit, it is illusionary to believe that better background checks alone would prevent most future massacres in elementary schools and movie theaters.

From 1998 to 2009 (the data is from the invaluable Congressional Research Service report), fewer than 2 percent of all would-be gun buyers flunked their federal background checks. Most of those banned under federal law were either felons or convicted of domestic abuse. Almost every other adult American ? including some who are deranged ? can currently buy guns legally and would continue to do so under any legislation that might pass Congress during Obama?s presidency.

As Obama stands before the Congress and the nation Tuesday night?a re-elected leader at the height of his recent popularity?it is worth remembering the limits on presidential power in an era of divided government.

The 44th president may harbor bold dreams and express them in lilting language. But when it comes to legislating, he lives, alas, in an era of incremental gestures and truncated ambitions. The true state of the union in 2013 is stymied.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/obama%E2%80%99s-state-of-the-union-address--joblessness--gun-violence-and-budgetary-gridlock-will-still-be-here-when-it%E2%80%99s-over-163041242.html

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Mobile Accessibility Landscape Update | SSB BART Group

This post represents an update to the mobile accessibility landscape post from June 2012.

Cell phone and other mobile device usage is growing at a fast pace. The way we use mobile devices continues to evolve and increase. Use of mobile retail, financial and other apps continues to increase and open more opportunities to how we use mobile devices in everyday life. The benefits to people with disabilities are potentially more dramatic than those for the general population. Accessible mobile devices increase the ability of people with disabilities to communicate, shop, learn, integrate, and interact with society. Common mobile devices can replace expensive specialized devices that many people with disabilities rely on such as augmentative and alternative communication devices, way finding, and reading. The trend toward mobile use can be seen among the disability community via the most recent WebAim Screen Reader Survey 4 reported that 71.8 percent of respondents indicated that they use a screen reader on a mobile device, a 600 percent increase in mobile screen reader usage since the first survey was conducted just 17 months ago. This also suggests a large shift away from ?feature phones? to ?smart phones?.

Feature phones are closed devices which run software written by the manufacturer and embedded into the firmware of the phone. They generally do not allow for the development, installation or launching of third-party applications. As with all closed devices, any existing accessibility support is built into the device by the manufacturer or provided by attaching a peripheral device. The number of feature phones on the market which include accessibility features is very small, and none of the feature phones on the market today provide access to all functions of the device for all users. In contrast, smartphones run operating systems which may or may not be developed by the phone manufacturer and allow for the development, installation and launching of third-party applications. This approach has created numerous new opportunities for people with disabilities by allowing them to gain access to a greater number of the device?s features (all features in some instances) and also to a large number of third-party applications. The availability and demand for included and third-party assistive technologies on many smartphones today has allowed users with disabilities to make the shift to smartphone devices along with their peers. As the trend is clearly moving in the direction of smartphones, this post will focus on the accessibility of the major smartphone and mobile platforms.

The iPhone from Apple revolutionized the cell phone industry and continues to be a market leader today. The iPhone was one of the first to exclusively use a touch screen interface as its sole method of input and control. As such, initial iPhone models posed accessibility challenges for many constituents with disabilities. Apple has listened to the demand from the disability community and, with the release of the iPhone 3GS in 2009, the Voiceover screen reader which is built into the Mac desktop platform was introduced into the iPhone. Apple devised a unique set of gestures to allow a user to nonvisually control the iPhone using Voiceover. As a user?s finger moves over or taps an element, the name of the element is spoken. Double tapping on the screen activates the element which has focus. A user can flick their finger from the left side of the screen to the right side to navigate through the elements in sequence without having to know the element?s onscreen location, and a right-to-left flick gesture sequentially navigates in reverse order. Over the past four years Apple has introduced a number of features to better improve the accessibility of the iPhone. Some of the other available features on the iPhone, iPod Touch, and iPad include:

• Alternative input and output modalities available through the support of a number of Bluetooth keyboards and refreshable Braille Displays
• The assistive technology Zoom, which enlarges the entire screen up to 500 percent. This feature works across all apps and is similar but different from the pinch zoom features that can be found in some apps such as browsers.
• AssistiveTouch, which allows for gesture creation and support for adaptive input devices. This feature allows one touch point access to gestures that might normally require multiple touch points. This feature allows users who may be using a head pointer or mouth stick to operate iOS devices and apps. iOS devices have capacitance based screens ? thus, special styli available for a nominal price are needed for alternative touch input.
• Invert colors, which inverts the colors on the screen ? dark colors become light and light colors become dark. This feature is often used by people with low vision to create a high contrast type view with colors that may be less harsh.
• Siri introduced with the iPhone 4s which allows the user to control many features of the device and retrieve information using speech recognition
• Hearing aid and TTY compatibility, support for open and closed captioning within iTunes and customizable vibratory alerts for users who are deaf or hard of hearing

For a review of the Apple iPad tablet which runs on the same platform that powers the iPhone, see iPad Accessibility ? My Perspective. The introduction of these features and improved accessibility over time demonstrates Apple?s continued commitment to universal access for all. This commitment is further demonstrated by a Siri promotional video which includes a blind iPhone user and a video shown at Apple?s developer conference featuring several iPhone users with disabilities. Apple?s commitment to universal design and the level of accessibility built directly into the iPhone has made it increasingly popular among users with disabilities. As an example, WebAim reported in its Screen Reader Survey 4 results that Apple accounts for 58.5 percent of primary mobile screen reader users, up from 32.6 percent in just 17 months and notably higher than usage for the standard population. Another reason that the iPhone has gained popularity is that many iPhone apps are highly accessible using the Voiceover screen reader without extra effort on the part of the developer as demonstrated by this iPhone app directory.

Apple continues to improve the accessibility of the iPhone and further demonstrate its commitment to all users. New accessibility features in version 6 of iOS include:

• Guided access, which allows the user to focus on the task at hand by restricting touch input to one app or area of the screen (for more on Guided Access watch this video demonstration of Guided Access
• Voiceover support for the redesigned Maps app that will be included with the new iOS release
• The ability to run Voiceover concurrently with Zoom and AssistiveTouch (not possible with versions before 6)
• Support for upcoming third-party Bluetooth 4.0 hearing aids designed for the iPhone 4s

iOS related accessibility best practices for app development can be found at webaccessibility.com.

Android is an open-source operating system for mobile phones created by Google. Android phones currently dominate the standard cell phone market but receive significantly lower usage among some disability user groups. For example, the WebAIM Screen Reader Survey 4 results indicated that only 7.9 percent of respondents use Android as their primary mobile platform. While Google makes phones which run the Android OS such as the Galaxy Nexus, phones which run Android are available from other manufacturers, giving the consumer choice over which Android-powered phone they wish to use. One down side to this approach is that many of the Android-powered phones cannot run the latest version of the Android OS, Android 4.2.1 (also called Ice Jelly bean). One benefit to using the Galaxy Nexus line of phones and tablets such as the Nexus 7 is that they are updated directly by Google whenever new versions of the operating system (OS) are available and accessibility is included by default.

The open source philosophy behind Android has led to the adoption of a more ?wild west? model of accessibility where developers are expected to create accessibility solutions rather than having them provided centrally. Still, Google did introduce some accessibility features into previous version starting with Android 1.6, including:

• TalkBack ? an included service which speaks the results of actions, events and notifications
• KickBack ? a service which provides haptic (vibratory) feedback for different actions
• SoundBack ? a service which plays sounds for different actions

Since phone manufacturers have complete control over how Android is provided with their phone, some of these accessibility services have been removed from their Android distribution. If this occurs, users can still often download TalkBack, KickBack and SoundBack from the Android Play market. Manufacturers have also been known to replace default Android apps such as the home screen with their own customized versions. Even within Google?s core Android distribution, Android accessibility solutions often had to be pieced together. For example, the home screen which shipped with Android 2.1 was not compatible with TalkBack, requiring users to replace it with an alternate interface called the eyes-free shell.

Google has continued to improve the accessibility of Android with subsequent versions. For example, in earlier versions of the platform TalkBack only announced components which gained focus via a keyboard or four-way directional pad, limiting its use to phones possessing these functions. Google solved this problem by introducing a ?virtual keyboard? into a subsequent version which emulated keyboard entry on phones which only possessed a touch screen. The latest version of the Android platform 4.2.1 contains accessibility improvements such as Explore by Touch which allows a user to touch their screen and hear the name of an object under their finger, and additional accessibility options to modify the font size and sound settings of the phone. The current version also provides a gesture to nonvisually activate TalkBack and Explore by Touch during initial phone setup which previously could only be enabled via the Accessibility Settings menu. Increased support for the default browser including its accessibility when embedded in app?s were also included via an accessibility option. In addition, additional gestures were introduced including a gesture to read the entire screen, move back a screen, and activate the home screen. However, the Android platform still does not include an invert colors accessibility option. While version 4.0 of the Android platform did include the Explore by Touch feature it was not truly usable by a person who is blind until version Android 4.1. With the combined features for default and embedded browser support in Android 4.2 the Android platform finally contains the required elements for independent use by people who are blind or visually impaired.

The open architecture design of the Android platform allows for the easy development of third-party assistive technologies and accessibility solutions. As an example, alternatives to the TalkBack screen reader are available. One such alternative is an open-source screen reader called Spiel which provides a JavaScript-compatible scripting interface to control or limit the presentation of poorly-behaving widgets. Code Factory, manufacturers of screen reading software for several mobile platforms, makes a commercial screen access package for the Android platform called Mobile Accessibility. It consists of a screen reader which offers output through speech synthesis and supported refreshable Braille displays, and input via a keyboard and trackball, touch screen gestures, and speech recognition. The full product also comes with a suite of 12 apps to provide alternate access to the Android-included apps for features of the phone and the operating system, including an alternate web browser and music player. (The web browser and music player are also available as separate purchases independent of the screen reader and apps suite.) Several carriers make branded versions of Mobile Accessibility available to their customers with disabilities free of charge. In the United States, AT&T makes the suite of accessible apps available free to customers under the name Mobile Accessibility Lite. Sprint, Boost Mobile and Virgin Mobile USA make the apps available free to their customers under the name Wireless Accessibility.

In spite of the limitations and fragmentation of Android accessibility, the Android platform has a loyal user base with disabilities. This Android app directory as of this writing contains submissions for 253 apps which were reviewed for compatibility with Android screen access software.

Like Apple, Google continues to make accessibility improvements in Android as new versions of the platform are released. In 2012 Google released Android Jellybean (4.2) Additional enhancements included:

• Speech recognition is now local to the device, no longer requiring the device to be connected to the Internet in order to use it
• Gesture support allowing for greater nonvisual control of the device using the touch screen
• Native support for refreshable Bluetooth Braille displays

For more on accessibility developments and implementing accessibility in Android apps, check out this Android accessibility video presentation from Google I/O 2012. Android related app development best practices are also provided on webaccessibility.com.

The Blackberry is a device manufactured by Blackberry (formerly Research in Motion (RIM)). Like the iPhone, Blackberry exclusively makes the hardware which is powered by the Blackberry operating system (Blackberry OS). The Blackberry was one of the first convergent devices on the market to offer a phone with access to corporate E-mail, web browsing functionality and connectivity to corporate networks. Blackberry devices receive wide popularity among the government and corporate industries because of their ability to meet organizational security requirements and interface with internal networks.

Many Blackberry devices provide features to support users with disabilities. The accessibility support however has not consistently been brought to new versions of the phone and to the Playbook tablet. Some available features include

In addition, Blackberry recently released the Blackberry screen reader that formerly was Oratio as a free, downloadable assistive technology for the Blackberry Curve 9350, 9360 and 9370 smartphones. It provides nonvisual access to core applications such as the phone, E-mail, calendar and text messaging.

Recently Blackberry announce version 10 of its operating system and included mention of several accessibility features that will be provided. These features include a magnification option, font size adjustment, and TTY support, however, no screen reader support for Blackberry OS version 10 is provided. Little information was also provided on accessibility applications programming interface (API) information for version 10 of the OS.

Windows Phone 8 introduces some new accessibility features. Previously Windows Phone 7 did not provide accessibility support for third party assistive technology. This was a step back from the prior version of Windows Mobile which allowed third party assistive technologies such as the Mobile Speak products from Code Factory. Windows 8 phone includes support for screen magnification, high contrast, and large fonts. Currently, there is no support for screen readers and no screen reader API available to attract third party screen reader creation.

Windows 8 Surface RT tablets provide accessibility features that are also found in Windows 8. Surface RT is a touchscreen tablet that work exclusively with apps from the Windows store ? but otherwise functions just like Windows 8. These features include the Narrator screen reader in addition to the magnification, high contrast, and similar large font features found in Windows Phone 8. Touch support is provided in addition to keyboard based support for the Narrator screen reader. Additionally, support for the web browser and many included apps is provided with Narrator ? this is a great improvement from the support Narrator provided on older versions of desktop operating systems such as Windows 7.

Additionally, Windows 8 Surface RT provides many of the other accessibility features found in Windows 8 such as Speech Recognition, various forms of input found on other mobile tablets like on-screen keyboards, blue tooth support, however, braille support is not provided by Narrator. Because the Surface RT only works with apps from the Windows store it is not possible to install third party assistive technologies on it ? unless they meet the requirements for the Windows Store. The Windows Surface Pro however allows for the installation of third party applications like assistive technologies that were designed for Windows 7 and higher.

Many fundamental accessibility best practices will apply to mobile interfaces and content. Text and images must meet relevant requirements for sufficient color contrast, screens must be laid out in an order that permits intuitive sequential navigation, controls must respond to multiple modalities of input, and components must communicate correct information about the name, state, role and value of each component. Visit the best practices library at webaccessibility.com for iOS and Android development best practices.

This entry was posted by Jonathan Avila on February 11th, 2013 and is filed under SSB BART Group. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

Source: https://www.ssbbartgroup.com/blog/2013/02/11/mobile-accessibility-landscape-update/

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