One Busy Week --Daman

This week was busy and productive, I am sure happy it’s the weekend! I completed a large PDF accessibility project that I have been working on for a couple weeks. I had to convert Macromedia Freehand files to PDFs and then change a lot of the PDF structural elements to make them accessible. I am also almost complete with an 88 page PDF that has to be made accessible. Other than those large projects, this was a week of meetings. On Monday I attended a debate about electronic healthcare records and privacy issues. This was interesting because with electronic healthcare records there’s easier access to a patient’s medical records when he/she goes to different doctors and hospitals, but it’s very hard for a patient to protect their privacy. On Tuesday, David Hale from AAPD came to visit my worksite and we discussed the internship program. Then, I had a tour of the Target Center, the assistive technology lab at USDA where I found a really cool device, the Ergodex DX1 Input System. This device has 25 programmable buttons that can do macros. For example, I set up three buttons, each one will log me into one of my e-mail accounts, and I can now glance at all three of my inboxes in under one minute. On Wednesday, I attended three meetings. The first one was a proposal to create an Office of Innovation Policy at the White House. This office would help federal agencies continue to find new and more productive ways of doing their work. The second meeting was a demonstration of software that allows viewers of your website to have the option of reading the contents of your website aloud. The software was neat, but the only interface you can use is the mouse, which makes it inaccessible to people with somewhat severe physical and vision impairments. I think the software could be designed to be used more universally by using a keyboard interface. The third meeting was a demonstration of Accessaphone, which is a soft phone which allows people to control their phone with their computer. I really liked the software, but the price tag was way too steep for my liking. Thursday, I went to the senate hearing on the CLASS Act, but when I got there, it was postponed to after the 4th of July recess. I am going to the new Transformers movie this afternoon and then out to dinner with one of my fellow interns.

--Daman Wandke