Access to the What Sorts blog for Users of Screenreaders

As Spirit of The Times and others know, I have for some time been concerned about access to the blog for users of screenreaders. While there has been some discussion of the lack of captioning of YOUTube and other videos posted to the blog, there hasn’t been any discussion thus far about the exclusionary implications of posting images, pictures, graphs and other visual representations.  (This is not permitted on any of the disability research lists I subscribe to.)  One contributor to the blog recently commented that “images speak louder than words”.  That may be true for some, but it is not true for all.  If one is blind or has low vision, pictures and images probably don’t “speak” to her at all unless they are raised, tactile pictures of the sort philosopher of art Dominic Lopes has written about.  At present, some pictures/images are textually identified in this way: “Cover of So-and-so’s [book title]“.  What is on the cover?  What does it look like?  If there were textual description accompanying these book covers, pictures and images, access to the blog for users of screenreaders would be improved.

Peeling Bananas

An ex-student of mine pointed me to this blog on media, communication, the body, and drugs,The Banana Peel Project. I have enjoyed it the last few weeks and so may you.

Eugenics 2008? The deportation of Lucy Chapman

Anyone who reads the news has heard stories about killers, rapists, and suspected terrorists that have fought deportation from Canada and in many cases won or at least delayed being deported. So, who are the really BAD people that we need to keep out of this great country for fear that they will destroy the nation. Apparently 7-year-old Lucy Chapman is one of them.

Tropic Thunder Box Office Expectations

This weekend Tropic Thunder opens amidst some protest by people with disabilities. It is expected to have box office sales of $36 – $41,000,000 over its first weekend. The following chart shows public confidence in the film’s ability to hit this mark:

Face of a Nation

Yang Peiyi, who recorded the song that Lin Miaoke lip-synced at the Beijing opening ceremonies.

Today’s big Olympic story (see CBC coverage here and National Post coverage here) was not about athletic accomplishments, but rather another lip-syncing controversy. This time, it was something far more disturbing than learning that Luciano Pavarotti lip-synced his performance at the 2006 Torino Winter Olympics. Rather, today we learned that not only did nine-year-old Lin Miaoke lip-synch her performance of “Ode to the Motherland” at the Beijing opening ceremony, but the girl who actually sang the song, seven-year-old Yang Peiyi, was considered not beautiful enough to represent China because of her crooked teeth. According to Chen Qigang, the ceremony’s chief music director, “The reason was for the national interest. The child on camera should be flawless in image, internal feelings and expression.”

It is interesting to note that the Chinese quest for the perfect prototype is one that has deeper roots in terms of how they see themselves in scope of human evolution. Several studies have demonstrated that the concept of race has been rejected by about 75% of anthropologists globally in terms of understanding human biological variation. Interestingly, a recent study of the race concept in China showed that of 324 articles directly related to human variation printed in Acta Anthropologica Sinica, China’s only journal dedicated to physical anthropology, none questioned the validity of human racial classification. Rather, several articles were mainly concerned with the biological differences among or between ‘major races.’ The reason for this is that

African American Swimmer Wins Gold Medal

Cullen Jones, only the second African American to ever swim on the US Olympic swim team, won a gold medal in the 4×100 free relay that broke the world record and also upset the French team in an unbelievable comeback finish.

Cullen, who nearly drowned as a young boy, is also a spokesperson for USA Swimming’s Make a Splash program which is promoting swimming among minorities. It has been shown that among ethnically diverse groups, they are nearly three times more likely to drown than the national average.

You can see a range of other sports-related posts at What Sorts right here