Tactile reading 2021
Tactile Reading 2021 is arranged by Statped, The Norwegian Library of Talking Books and Braille, The Norwegian Association of the Blind and Partially Sighted, and The Norwegian Braille Authority.
About Tactile reading
Tactile Reading is a recurrent event arranged with the purpose to share experiences and research in the field of tactile reading and to promote best practices and inspire to new ideas for research. The conference aims to bring together people within the tactile reading field, academics, and practitioners, for future collaboration.
2021
Tactile Reading 2021 was arranged by Statped, The Norwegian Library of Talking Books and Braille, The Norwegian Association of the Blind and Partially Sighted, and The Norwegian Braille Authority.
The pre-conference on technology and aids was organized by The Norwegian Library of Talking Books and Braille.
Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the second Tactile Reading conference was held as a digital event. The conference gathered more than 400 participants from 30 countries. The program offered two keynote speakers, four plenary sessions and 37 parallel sessions.
2017
The first Tactile Reading was held in Stockholm. The conference was arranged by Swedish Agency for Accessible Media (MTM) and National Agency for Special Needs Education and Schools (SPSM). The organizers had the ambition to create a recurrent international conference on issues related to tactile reading, including literacy, with a conference organization touring between European interested parties.
2025
The third Tactile Reading was arranged by Dedicon in The Netherlands. Dedicon is the largest producer of alternative reading formats in the Netherlands. Dedicon is subsidized by the Dutch Ministry of Education Culture and Science and by the Dutch Royal Library.
The programme committee 2021
The programme committee consists of the following persons:
Lars Bjørndal, Senior Adviser, Statped national service for special needs education and leader of Programme committee.
Astrid Kristin Vik, Ph.D. Senior Adviser, Department of Visual Impairment nationwide support, Statped.
Arnt Holte, The Norwegian Association of the Blind and Partially Sighted – NABP.
Kari Rudjord, Senior Adviser, The Norwegian Library of Talking Books and Braille (NLB).
Björn Westling, Accessibility research and development at the Swedish Agency for Accessible Media, MTM. Secretary of the Swedish Braille Authority. Lecturer and project manager at Mälardalen University at the dep. of Information Design, School of innovation, design and engineering.
Catarina Hägg, Project manager, Department for teaching materials development and adaptation, National Agency for Special Needs Education and Schools (SPSM)
Requirements for digital presentations at Tactile Reading 2021
Universal design
Bear in mind accessibility for attendees with blindness and vision impairment. Present your work as if you “were on radio”. However, pictures are a good support for sighted to highlight and engage. We recommend the use of pictures and precise explanations of visual content like pictures, videos, and graphs.
Privacy
You are responsible for ensuring that privacy consideration is taken care of within your recording(s).
Video recordings
There are several ways to do a video recording. You can use
- A mobile phone
- A PC with PowerPoint presentation (Look for “Record” in PowerPoint)
- A recorded Zoom meeting: suitable if you are two presenters
- Advanced video editing containing different media sources, e.g. videos, screen recordings / screenshots, voice over
Sound and lightning
- Ensure high quality sound:
- Use external microphone/headset
- Speak close to the microphone
- Make the recording in a room with no background noise
- Test the sound quality before recording
- Ensure good lightning and visual conditions
Format
- Use minimum HD 720p as video format
- If you are using a mobile phone:
- use landscape mode
- use a tripod to ensure stability
Subtitles
In accordance with universal design, all videos must be texted before publishing.
Evaluation report 2021
This report evaluates the Tactile Reading Conference (TR2021), which was held 29th and 30th April 2021, with 420 participants.
The conference was held digitally due to the corona pandemic. The report describes the planning and organizing of the conference and will reflect our experiences. All participants at the conference were asked to complete an evaluation form. The results are part of this report.
Tips for screen reader users
The Tactile Reading digital conference will be accessible with a screen reader. Here you’ll get some useful tips on how to navigate. The shortcut keys listed are for the Microsoft Windows platform.
The program items
When you are at the program page, all program items are hidden under a collapsed button. Use the Space bar or Enter key to expand it, and use Down arrow to access the corresponding content, including the inline video player(s). When you are finished exploring a specific content, you can hide it again by going back to the button with Shift+B and press it again.
The parallel sessions will be located on a separate page. All parallels related to a specific topic, will be hidden under a collapsed button, that you may expand in the same way as explained above. Each parallel will have a separate heading, and you may navigate between them with h / Shift+H
How to manage playing the videos
All videos are accessed through ordinary inline YouTube video players, placed on the web page. Use letter b / Shift+B to move to next/previous button, or use Down arrow until you reach the play button and press Enter.
When you have the focus within the video player, you can deactivate the screen reader virtual view and use a few single key strokes to handle the stream.
For the different screen readers you can turn virtual view off/on:
- JAWS: Ins+z
- NVDA: NVDA+Space
- SuperNova: Left Ctrl+4
- Windows Narrator: CapsLock+Space
The keystrokes you kan use when the screen reader virtual view is off, are as follows:
- pause/play = k
- backward 10 seconds = j
- forward 10 seconds = l
- go to next/previous element = Tab / Shift+Tab
When at the seek slider:
- jump forward/backward one minute = PgUp/PgDn
- go forward/backward five seconds = Right/Left arrow
- jump to beginning = Home
When at the volume slider:
- increase/decrease volume by 5% = Right/Left arrow
When listening to videos it may be useful to deactivate the screen reader speech. You can turn on/off speech with the following keystrokes:
- JAWS: Ins+Space, s
- NVDA: NVDA+s
- SuperNova: Left Ctrl+0 (zero at the number row)
Technically two or more videos can be played at the same time. To prevent this from happening, make sure you’ve stopped/paused a video before you start a new one.
Please note that all videos have subtitle texts. If you want to read this texts comfortably, you will find the texts under a link called Video transcript, placed below the corresponding video.