11 Matching Annotations
  1. Nov 2016
    1. The author says that type in all uppercase and non-uniform spacing between words decreases reading speed. That's interesting because most novels are justified to where the text aligns both left and right. I am assuming that this issue applies mainly to online sites.

  2. Oct 2016
    1. It is imperative that digital humanities work take into account the important insights of disability studies in the humanities, an interdisciplinary field that considers disability “not so much a property of bodies as a product of cultural rules about what bodies should be or do,” in the words of Rosemarie Garland-Thomson, a prominent figure in the field (6)

      I completely agree with this statement. Why do we insist that bodies should behave in a certain way, should do things a certain way? There are thousands of people with said "disabilities" and it's not even their fault that they aren't able to do everything an abled person can. Disabled person(s) should always be kept in mind when developing a new technology.

    2. “Crowdsourcing” is a term coined by Jeff Howe in 2006 to describe online projects that make use of free or extremely inexpensive labor provided by “enthusiasts” around the world who are interested in donating their time to a project that interests them.

      Crowdsourcing is such an amazing development. There should be more people who can find the time to help people without being paid. There are good people like this everywhere.

    3. develop our own guidelines and tools for authoring and evaluating accessible resources.

      To grow as a society we have to uplift each other and that should mean including our disabled people. We should be able to provide for those people without much difficulty. There are many programs to help with that. People have to realize that anyone can become disabled and they would not be happy if they couldn't access a form of digital communication because they weren't considered.

    4. However, not all designers are aware of how their choices affect accessibility. Universal design is design that involves conscious decisions about accessibility for all, and it is a philosophy that should be adopted more widely by digital humanities scholars.

      Sometimes it is hard to accommodate everyone. When developing or selling products, you should have a target audience to create the best possible product and campaign for the audience you feel would buy the product. When the audience is broad or large, it's hard to appeal to everyone. I would feel that developing a website would be similar. I am sure it is difficult to ensure everyone can easily access your site without much difficulty. Especially because some people are more tech-saavy than others and people have different needs.

    5. All technology is assistive, in the end.

      People don't always understand that technology is really just creating easier ways for us to function in society. When there is something that we don't want to do or something that is repetitive or non-engaging we may develop a software or technology to do it for us or make it easier for us. We would basically be doing the same thing for disabled people in developing technology that helps them, so why not include them in the process.

    6. To those of us who are more or less comfortable with the existing dominant model of using computers, anything different, like a fast screen reader, seems alien, and the potential shortcomings of our familiar model of some combination of keyboard, mouse, and visual display remain invisible to us.

      Humans are not open to change. It takes a long time to incorporate a new technology in society. There are thousands of new developments and products being created, but because people may see them as unnecessary or unintelligible. If something is different we reject it and technology companies aren't inclined to put out different or new things because it will usually fail so they usually just improve what we already have.

    7. This scenario caused me to reevaluate my understanding of what it means to be disabled, as she clearly was using abilities that I did not—and still do not—have: I had not trained myself to be able to process auditory information as efficiently as she could.

      This is honestly my biggest pet peeve with society. I understand that there is usually a standard that we naturally follow as human beings, but I don't feel it is fair that we deem one way as the right way. Everyone is not the same; everyone thinks differently; everyone is raised differently so everyone shouldn't be expected to do things a certain way. In WIlliams' experience with the woman who can understand speech spoken at a much faster rate, he states that can't understand and has to ask the woman to slow the speech's speed, yet he is not labeled disabled.

    8. Disability, Universal Design, and the Digital Humanities

      This article is about the neglect towards towards disabled people in regards to communication with digital information. The author hopes to influence people to incorporate digital information to where a disabled person can easily access the internet just as an abled person would. Universal design means that a product is usable to the greatest extent possible by everyone and the author hopes that the internet will one day have a universal design that doesn't leave disabled people neglected. The author comes up with a few websites like Wordpress, Drupal, Omeka, MediaWiki and Joomla that have easily accessible tools for disabled people to use (CMS). There are generous people who dedicate their time to help with software, products and such, known as crowdsourcers. The government has some laws that force companies to insure that their buildings, streets, etc. are accessible to disabled people, but there is not any regulation for websites.

    9. And the growth of touch screens, primarily but not exclusively available on mobile devices, bring the possibility of a mouse-less future ever closer

      There are so many different technologies these days that are beneficial to society that people do not know about. Even the talk-to-text feature is something just now becoming popular, but it has been out for a long time. You can easily speak your message and your phone, tablet, or computer will type it out for you. It seems people are just now getting used to it to where it is becoming a social norm. This reminds me of when I was about 13 years old when wi-fi wasn't popular in homes (well maybe not for my age group) and my peers wouldn't understand the concept of wireless internet. When I would ask about wi-fi they wouldn't know what I was talking about and weren't open to the change. I've had many experiences like that because I am fairly up to date with technology.

    10. First, professionals who are certified braille translators may be hired to create well-formatted braille. Second, a number of commercial braille translation software applications may be used; the most reliable applications cost several hundred dollars and are cost prohibitive to low-income users and nonspecialized content creators

      In the text, Williams mentioned most disabled people are older, low income individuals, which makes it harder to accommodate those users because for one, there won't be very many using the tools because they are older and not so tech-saavy. Of course, there are chances that they may come across the site, but it won't be as frequently as abled people. And also, the fact that it is expensive to create software or even hire translators will discourage people to try to gather this technology for the disabled. It would be nice if we could help everyone, but sometimes the resources aren't there. Unfortunately, if there is not a huge demand for such services, people won't be persuaded to create special products for the disabled.