[Tn-talk] Benetech Releases Image Description Tool to Improve Accessibility of Graphical Content for Students with Print Disabilities

[Sheri Anderson]

Benetech Releases Image Description Tool to Improve Accessibility of
Graphical Content for Students with Print Disabilities
Poet Open Source Web Application Allows Crowdsourcing of Image
Descriptions in Accessible Books

For all Bookshare-related questions, please call:
650-352-0198
Bookshare Media Contact:
Betsy Burgess
408-348-5593
betsyh at benetech.org
May 10, 2012, Palo Alto, CA – The Benetech DIAGRAM Center has released
an open source web application for creating and editing crowdsourced
image descriptions in books used by students with print disabilities.
DIAGRAM, which stands for Digital Image and Graphics Resources for
Accessible Materials, is working to dramatically change the way image
and graphic content for accessible educational materials is produced
and accessed. Before this initiative, critical illustrations in math
and science books could only be studied by those reading traditional
texts. The Poet application developed by DIAGRAM can help level the
playing field by making otherwise inaccessible graphic content
available for students and other readers with disabilities. Poet
supports image descriptions for electronic books created in the
international DAISY standard for digital talking books and will also
be compatible with descriptions for ebooks in the EPUB3 format.
Poet allows users to upload a digital book, quickly review and
navigate to images in the text, and add image descriptions that assist
readers with print disabilities such as vision impairments. Poet
presents the images within the text, which allows the describer to
fully understand the context. The DIAGRAM Center has also created an
image data content model which will provide standards to define and
enhance the efficacy and interoperability of accessible images as the
project evolves. The DIAGRAM Center was launched in May 2010 by
Benetech with support from the US Department of Education, Office of
Special Education Programs (OSEP). The Center is managed by Benetech
in partnership with the WGBH National Center for Accessible Media
(NCAM) and US Fund for DAISY (USFDAISY).
Pamela Hoffard, who has volunteered to create image descriptions with
Poet for Bookshare, says the software is easy to navigate. "I feel
wonderful excitement when I think of children reading books that
include image descriptions created by Poet," says Hoffard. "Sighted
readers receive all the text and images in a printed book so the
subject comes across completely. Poet will give readers with vision
impairments access to fully described images which is especially
important for textbooks that contain lots of charts, graphs, and maps.
It has been my pleasure to help Benetech develop this new technology
and I enjoy the opportunity to help more kids read."
To add image descriptions to a DAISY book, a teacher or other user of
digital texts could visit a website that is hosting Poet, such as
poet.diagramcenter.org and upload a book from their school server or
select a book that has already been uploaded. The teacher could then
add alternate image descriptions and download the book again when they
are done. Any ebook in the DAISY 3 format can be submitted for image
descriptions and read by DAISY compatible software that supports image
description playback. Information about devices that support image
descriptions can be found at the DIAGRAM website.
Benetech's digital Bookshare library is currently using Poet to add
image descriptions for its accessible ebooks used by people with print
disabilities. The descriptions are inserted into the book’s digital
files and are read aloud by applications such as Go Read or Read2Go.
Bookshare is seeking volunteers who can apply their expertise in
specific subject matters to describe images. Once volunteer describers
sign up as Bookshare volunteers, they can log into the Poet tool,
select books, view the images, and enter descriptions for a variety of
texts. Books with image descriptions will go back into the Bookshare
library for students to use in their coursework. The texts include
Bookshare’s well-established digital rights management (DRM)
protections which use electronic fingerprints in addition to legal
agreements. This approach safeguards against illegal sharing of books,
yet allows assistive devices to access them.
Bookshare volunteers have already described thousands of images
primarily in science, technology and math textbooks at the junior high
and high school level. Groups such as high school or university clubs
are welcome to participate. A pilot image description project at
Brigham Young University is reaching out to students in the English,
engineering, and education departments asking them to help ensure that
every student has equal access to textbooks.