Eurochance Project Homepage

The aim of the project is to widen the range of employment opportunities for the blind and visually impaired, improve their qualifications and skills and make the professional community aware of their knowledge and competences.

The primary results of the project are English and German language courses with a vocational focus suitable also for self-learning. For each language there are two levels: Intermediate and Advanced.

All the outcomes of this project are available free of charge (see the licenses below).

You can use the courses on-line or download them for off-line use.

We welcome your feedback. See the Support page for more information how to contact us.

Further information:

• Technical Requirements
• Demands for Technical User Skills
• Accessibility Statement
• Employment Possibilities for the Blind
• Software Development
• Licenses

Technical Requirements

These language courses are presented using a standard web browser. Any browser compliant to W3C standards should be usable. The following browsers have been tested and are known to work well with the course:

• Microsoft Internet Explorer
• Mozilla
• Mozilla Firefox
• Opera
• Konqueror
• w3m
• Links
• Lynx

Note that some features may be missing in browsers which do not support JavaScript. However, the course is designed to be usable even without these features (but with less convenience).

Your browser must be configured to play back the MP3 sound format if you want to use native speaker recordings. MS Media Player is used automatically in MSIE (if available). In other browsers, you will need to configure an external player.

In addition to a standard browser, many visually impaired persons use assistive technologies to access their software, namely a screenreader and a refreshable Braille device. The course does not implement any screenreader-specific functionality and complies to the relevant W3C-WAI standards, so it should work with all available technologies. The following combinations were tested and are known to work (see Support for more details):

• Jaws for Windows and Microsoft Internet Explorer
• Window-Eyes and Microsoft Internet Explorer
• Supernova and Microsoft Internet Explorer
• Speechd-el or Emacsspeak and w3m-el
• Linux with Speakup and text based browser (Links, Lynx, w3m, ...)
• Orca on Linux with Mozilla or Firefox

The Intermediate level courses often display texts in two languages on the page. All the texts are marked up properly, so if you use a speech synthesis system and it supports switching languages on the fly, all the contents will be pronounced as expected. If not, it is most likely the fault of your assistive technology or its setup.

More details about setting up the software for best results can be found on the Support page.

There are no special hardware requirements. If you are able to run a web browser and surf the web on your hardware, you will be able to run this course. Of course, you will need a sound card to play sound.

Note that no commercial software is required. The course can be used on a completely free platform.

Demands for Technical User Skills

The courses are usable by blind users, although the user must have general skills in using a browser as well as his/her assistive devices.

The following knowledge is essential:

1. Using a web browser (basic navigation, reading pages, selecting links, basic setup, ...)
2. Controlling the assistive technology (filling in forms, advanced navigation, special modes, configuration, etc.)

Accessibility Statement

The courses are optimised to be accessible for blind and visually impaired people using assistive technologies, such as screen-magnification or screen-reading with speech synthesis and/or refreshable Braille displays.

The W3C WAI Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 1.0 are respected and the product was tested with users of different target technologies.

Due to the specific objective of the project, other types of handicaps were not taken into account, so the result cannot be considered generally accessible to the full extent recommended by the WCAG. Some features (for example listening comprehension exercises) are inherently inaccessible to deaf people, others (such as special keyboard shortcuts to control the exercises) may be inaccessible to motor handicapped users.

Employment Possibilities for the Blind

The information concerning employment possibilities for the blind as well as information for employers of blind people is only available in the English language.

The following documents are available:

• Labour Market Report (PDF)
• Eurochance Case Studies (PDF)

Software Development

Software tools were developed as a part of the project in two main fields:

• Processing the multimedia learning content and producing an interactive, accessible presentation suitable for use in an on-line or off-line learning environment.
• Improving the available free software tools to ensure that users are able to access the product without being required to use any commercial or proprietary software.

The first goal was achieved by developing a new product called LCG (Learning Content Generator). You can find out more about the LCG at http://www.freebsoft.org/lcg.

The second goal was achieved by contributing the development of the following projects:

• Festival Czech and Czech Diphone Database (speech synthesis system)
• speechd-el (speech support for the Emacs environment)
• Speech Dispatcher (common interface to speech synthesis)
• Speechd-Up (Speakup interface for Speech Dispatcher)
• Gnome Speech SpeechD Driver (Gnome Speech driver for Speech Dispatcher)
• Wiking (accessible content management system)
• WAhelper (Web Accessibility helpers)

See the Free(b)soft project homepage for more information about these projects.

All the software that was developed is available free, including its source code, under the terms of GNU GPL (see below).

Licenses

All the project outcomes are available free of charge. The source texts can be downloaded from the project website. Copyright information and concrete applicable license is stated for each particular part separately (in the course, in the software etc), but in general the license is always either GNU General Public License or GNU Free Documentation License as published by the Free Software Foundation.