DIAGRAM CenterOverview[revised Feb 11, 2013]

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Table of Contents

● The Big Idea: slides 3 - 7

● Who We Are: slides 8 - 10

● Target Audiences: slides 11 – 12

● What We Do– Outreach & Training: slide 13

– Research: slide 14 - 15

– Software Tools: slides 16 - 24

– Standards: slides 25 - 28

● Future Plans: slides 29 - 34

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The Big Idea

●DIAGRAM Center = Digital Image And Graphic Resources for Accessible Materials ●Research and development center

●Goal: to dramatically change the way image and graphic content for Accessible Electronic Media (AEM) is produced and accessed, so that students with print disabilities are provided equal access to the general education curriculum.

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Project Impact

The DIAGRAM Center has successfully begun the revolution in the accessibility of digital image content ●Why is this critical? 

– Images not widely available in accessible formats, particularly an issue in STEM

– Math equations often represented as images in digital content

– Cost of accessibility is high

●Why now?– Text fairly well solved

– This is an era of unprecedented change in technology that is impacting education, publishing, and consumer electronics 

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The Big Idea: Images are Challenging (especially STEM)

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What is an Accessible Image?

● Provides different mode of access to visual information contained in an image, e.g.:– Text/audio description

– Tactile graphic

– Sonification

– Smart image

– Multi-modal access

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DIAGRAM Goals

● Make it easier for content producers to create accessible images

● Make it easier for consumers to use accessible images via technology

● Make it easier for both producers and consumers to discover accessible images and tools

● Make it easier for both to interact with content that need not be stored as traditional images in the first place (e.g., mathematical equations)

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Who We Are: DIAGRAM Center Management

CENTER LEADERS

Lead Principal Investigator: Betsy Beaumon (Benetech) Co-Principal Investigators: Jim Fruchterman (Benetech), Larry Goldberg (NCAM), George

Kerscher (USFDAISY) Project Director: Betsy Beaumon (Benetech)

Project Management

Center Manager: Anh Bui (Benetech)

Engineering: Gerardo Capiel (Benetech)

Community Management: Julie Noblitt (Benetech) Technical Research and Training: Larry Goldberg, Geoff Freed, Bryan Gould, Madeleine

Rothberg (NCAM staff) Standards: George Kerscher (USFDAISY)

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Who We Are: Advisory Board and Working Groups

● Advisory Board– Technologists

– Educators

– Publishers

– Accessibility experts

– Student/Parent reps

● Working Groups– Math

– Tactile Graphics

– Outreach

– Content

– Tools

– Standards

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Together, we are the DIAGRAM Center

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DIAGRAM: Target Audiences

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Evidence of Target Audience Satisfaction

● I'm using it TODAY to get math instructors excited about accessibility resources and creating lab manuals as accessible eBooks!

● One giant leap for accessibility on my campus thanks to the resources that were shared in the DIAGRAM webinar. Thank You!!!

● Timely and significant information.

● Information all parents of kids with special needs should hear.

● DIAGRAM's webinars are filled with excellent, relevant information!

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What We Do: Outreach and Training

● Training Webinars (e.g., 6-week course on Mozilla’s Peer 2 Peer University, EASI)

● Conference Presentations (e.g., CSUN, ATIA, EdTech, TOC)

● One-on-one meetings with constituents of stakeholder groups (e.g., publishers, learning platform providers, assistive technology makers)

● Web site: http://diagramcenter.org ● DIAGRAM Center blog and monthly newsletter at

http://blog.diagramcenter.org● Twitter @DIAGRAMC, YouTube channel

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What We Do: Research

● DIAGRAM has published:– Product evaluation matrices

– User survey on reading technologies

– Report on image metadata tools

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Research: DIAGRAM Subcontracts

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What We Do: Software Tools

● Poet: A Tool for Crowdsourcing Descriptions● Image Accessibility Coverage Checker for DAISY

Books● Tobi integration: DAISY tool for multi-media

production● DIAGRAM Subcontracts

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Poet: A Tool for Crowdsourcing Descriptions

● Web-based and open source tool for adding image descriptions to e-books (DAISY 3)

● For use by authors, publishers, accessibility providers

● Designed to:– Quickly identify all images in an e-book

– Tag images needing descriptions

– Author and edit rich descriptions

– Provide guidance to describers (guidelines)

– Moderate and approve descriptions

– Integrate with content production tools

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Poet: Navigate, Contextualize, Describe

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Poet: Math Helper

Converts ascii math input into MathML and MathJax

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Poet: Field Testing

● Bookshare actively using Poet to add image descriptions to textbooks● 30,000+ images described by

– Volunteers

– Vendors

● Provides user feedback to influence new development

● Also field testing with high school teachers

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Accessible Image Coverage Checker for DAISY Books

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Tobi: Integrating DIAGRAM Standards

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DIAGRAM Tool Development Subcontracts

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Promoting Image Accessibility in Other Tools

● Goal is to provide best practices and advocacy for image accessibility among other tool developers

● Have held exploratory discussions with toolmakers (including publishers, LMS providers, publishing software developers)

● Providing open source reference implementations for the DIAGRAM Content Model

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What We Do: Standards

● Advocacy for image description-related mark up in web and e-book standards– Helped keep @longdesc discussion alive in HTML5

– Proposed @describedAt as more robust alternative

– Working with EPUB 3, ARIA, HTML5, and others

● DIAGRAM Content Model: – Framework for accessible image metadata

– Standard means that we can share metadata about images across systems

– Groundwork for giving individuals different ways of getting information from the same image

– Framework approved by NISO in August 2012

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Standards: DIAGRAM Content Model

● XML data model for image metadata● For any given image you can have:

– multiple types of descriptions (e.g., short, long, simplified etc.)

– alternative image links (e.g., SVG)

– other image metadata (e.g., target age, grade level, etc.)

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Example: The Hydrologic Cycle

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Standards: Content Model ExampleAbout this description

Author: John Doe, Ph.D. in Water Engineering

Target Age: 9-12

Target Grade: 4-7

Summary

The image depicts the cycle of water evaporating, turning into clouds, falling back to earth in the form of precipitation and being filtered through sediment.

Long Description

The image depicts the natural process of evaporation and precipitation and how rain water gets filtered and cleansed through the earth's sediment.

On the left-hand side of the image is a lake...

A weather event such as a rainstorm eventually returns the precipitation to the ground...

The natural filtering agents in the soil...

Annotation added by teacher

In the winter we get snow instead of rain.

Simplified Language Description

The image shows how water becomes clouds, then rain, and then gets cleaned by the soil.

Tactile Image

[Tactile image]

In the upper left corner of the tactile…

Simplified Image

[Simplified image]

Moving front the top left corner of the image

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Future Plans: Aligned with User-Centered DIAGRAM Goals

● Make it easier for content producers to create accessible images

● Make it easier for consumers to use accessible images via technology

● Make it easier for both producers and consumers to discover accessible images and tools

● Make it easier for both to interact with content that need not be stored as traditional images in the first place (e.g., mathematical equations)

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Future Plans: Outreach, Training, Piloting Goals

These goals address how we make it easier to create and use accessible images by spreading the word about how and why to use DIAGRAM tools and best practices.

•End-to-end piloting … so everyone gets how we’re improving the process•Library of training videos and demos… so everyone has easy access to our info•Reach out to authoring software tool makers … so tools already in use also create accessible images•Field testing and piloting… so we’re delivering quality software•Clear articulation of goals, mission, and benefits… so we can inform and inspire

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Future Plans: More Collaboration

● Numerous Partnerships proposed– ETS

– Smith-Kettlewell Eye Institute

● “Born Accessible” and Inclusive Publishing● International opportunities● DIAGRAM’s sphere of influence continues to grow● More work to be done!

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Future Plans: Content Goals

These goals address how we make it easier to create accessible images by demonstrating clear examples, and how we make it easier to discover accessible images by providing a way to search for them.

•Create sample accessible image book… so others have tangible examples•Design image library with some cleared licensing… so people have access to accessible images•Explore Learning Registry for searching images across multiple libraries… so we make it easier to find accessible images•Understand the content workflow… so we identify addressable gaps in the process and fill them

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Future Plans: Tools Goals

These goals address how we make it easier to create, discover, use, and interact with accessible images by developing new tools to do each, especially for emerging modes and formats across broad bodies of content.

•Reference implementations… so tools builders and content creators know what works•Support for interactive accessible image widgets… so we can inspire more smart image creation•Enhance accessible math navigation and explore math manipulation… so students can work better with math content •Accessible Image Coverage checker for EPUB3… so content creators can tell if they are creating accessible materials

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Future Plans: Standards Goals

These goals address how we make it easier to create, use, discover and interact with accessible images by providing the framework for building authoring and reading tools, and exchanging data so images can be shared.

•IDPF representation… so we can effectively advocate for accessible ebook standards•Monitor HTML5 but spend more time on other learning standards … so we make sure accessible images are in all educational content•Content model support for alternative, multi-modal image representations… so we can facilitate as many modes as possible•Multi-modal, smart image standards… so we can advocate and demonstrate good models

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Thank You

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