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Using annotation techniques - Techshare 2007 presentation

Summary: Techshare 2007 presentation

• Using annotation techniques for improving the accessibility of electronic documents
• Objectives of presentation

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Using annotation techniques for improving the accessibility of electronic documents

Fanny Manon, INRIA/BrailleNet
Bruno Marmol, INRIA/BrailleNet

We have conducted a research to explore the potential of annotation techniques for improving the readability of documents for people with print impairments. These techniques make possible to enrich a document in merging it with additional information. The main advantages are:

• Enrichment is independent from the authoring process.
• Several popular office software suites offer annotation functions.
• Original documents aren’t modified (so that copyrights aren’t affected).
• Annotation can use text, audio, images, video.
• Different annotations can be distributed to different categories of readers according to their specific needs.

We have conducted this study on different platforms involving two main formats, namely HTML and PDF. We discuss how we have overcome some technical problems and we propose a general model for implementing annotations practically.

We conclude that this approach is appropriate in education for adapting teaching material for students, in primary or secondary schools, or in universities, when the major part of the material is based on text, and when teachers, parents, relatives, or other students can easily provide alternatives to images, tables, graphics as to make the full document much easier to understand.

Objectives of presentation

• To present the annotation techniques.
• To show some examples.
• To propose solution for implementing this model.

Prior knowledge of topic assumed: Low
Contains advanced technical content: No

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Content author: techshare@rnib.org.uk

Last updated: 08/04/2008 18:38