Peter Verhoeven at magnifers.org has a good review of a new open sourced application called Accessible PDF. It makes PDFs accessible by using an component called PDFtoHTML to convert the text into a structured format that is easily manipulated and read by screenreaders. It's ability to change colours and line spacing also makes it useful for low vision users or users with dyslexia. More information is available on the Accessible PDF page. Alternatively you can download it directly.

A favourite application of mine that I recommend installing for vision impaired users is called Accessible BBC Listen Again. It's part of a larger suite of excellent programs that includes WebbIE, a podcasting program and a RSS reader. All are designed to work well with any screenreader, but work particularly well with JAWS and Thunder, a free screen reader.Hopefully one day it could be extended to include NPRs excellent programming.

ID Mate OMNI is a portable "all-in-one" talking bar code scanner. It allows an individual to identify items using the product's bar code. A database of over 1,000,000 (one million) Australian bar code descriptions gives the user a huge head start in identifying the product and getting the information needed about the item. Newly established not-for-profit organisation Visual Independence are distributing the Omni in Australia. More information can be found on the Omni product page.

Tactile displays may have a big future with the development of Ferrofluids. These materials have the ability to morph upward into any shape via a controlled electromagnetic field, thus creating reading materials in the form of braille, accompanied by three-dimensionally-rendered images. More images and descriptions can be found at Yanko Design. The bad news is that designer Jonathan Lucas doesn't expect the device to be available commercially until around 2015, although youtube has some video of Ferrofluids in action right now.

Firefox 3 is due to be released soon and contains some new features that will be of interest to blind and low vision users.

Improved accessibility on Windows

Firefox 3 introduces IAccessible2, an extension to the well-known Microsoft Active Accessibility interface that allows screen readers to more tightly integrate with web pages. Through this new technology Firefox can expose more information directly through independent interfaces. Screen readers such as NVDA do not require the use of video interception technology to gain access to all relevant information.  Voice dictation software can implement speaking of selected text without having to rely on direct screen manipulation.