The enhancements include new keyboard shortcuts and enhanced screen reader support. Google says it has "worked closely with advocacy organizations for the blind to improve our products with more accessibility enhancements" over the past few months, and that more changes are on the way. "We believe that people who depend on assistive technologies deserve as rich and as productive an experience on the web as sighted users," says T.V. Raman, Google's technical lead on accessibility, "and we're working to help that become a reality."

Google Docs and Siteswill now support the JAWS and ChromeVox screen readers. Here are some examples of the screen reader improvements from the Google Docs Blog:

• In documents, you'll hear feedback when you format text or insert tables, lists or comments in your document.
• In spreadsheets, you'll hear the cell's location, contents and comments when moving between cells.
• In both documents and spreadsheets, you'll hear feedback as you navigate to areas outside the main content area, such as the menu bar, chat pane and dialog boxes.
• In your documents list, you'll hear feedback when you upload or download a file, organize collections or move between files in your documents list.
• In Sites, you'll hear feedback as you navigate and manage your sites, create and edit pages, and navigate through menus and dialog boxes.

Docs and Sites also received new keyboard shortcuts, such as use of the arrow keys for navigation in the document list and the ability to open docs by pressing enter. The Docs Blog has links to the complete list of shortcuts.

Improvements to Google Calendar

Google Calendar added support for JAWS and ChromeVox as well as Apple's VoiceOver control, which allows visually challenged users to manage calendars, create and edit events or simply browse events. It also received keyboard shortcuts for navigation with the arrow keys and opening and closing details with the enter key. From the Gmail Blog:

• In your calendar lists, you can use the up and down arrow keys to navigate between your calendars. For each calendar in the list, you'll hear its name and can use the spacebar to turn the calendar on or off. To remove a calendar from the list, use the delete key.
• In the agenda view, you can use the up and down arrow keys to move between events and use the left and right arrow keys to move between dates. To expand an event and expose the event details, press enter. To go to the event details page, type 'e'. To remove an event, press delete. Although agenda view provides the best screen reader experience today, we are also working on improved accessibility for other views.
• In the guest list on the create/edit event page, you can navigate around using the up and down arrow keys. Use the spacebar to switch a guest's status between optional and required. To remove a guest from the list, use the delete key.
• Additional keyboard shortcuts make it easier to use Google Calendar no matter which view or screen you're on. Type 'c' to create an event, '/' to start a search, and '+' to add a calendar.

Making The Web Accessible

Last year, President Obama signed the 21st Century Communications and Video Accessibility Act into law, which formally pushed legal protections for disabled Americans into the digital world. Today's announcements of Google's accessibility improvements marks a big step forward for visually challenged users of some of the Web's key free services in the U.S. but around the world.

Do you know of any major sites that are especially good or bad at accessibility? Share some examples in the comments.

Such was the argument that Twitter made when the startup donated its archives to the Library of Congress. Tweets are important. They should be preserved, archived and accessible to scholars.

But Twitter's recent announcement that it was no longer granting whitelisting requests and that it would no longer allow redistribution of content will have huge consequences on scholars' ability to conduct their research, as they will no longer have the ability to collect or export datasets for analysis.

That's the news that 140kit just had to break to its users. 140kit is an extension of the Web Ecology Project, a project that grew out of work at the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard Law School and one of the very first research efforts into the cultural and political influence as expressed via Twitter. The group's research into Twitter's role in the 2009 elections in Iran was, in fact, one of the very first looks into how Twitter may both shape and reflect social and political upheaval.

140kit offered its Twitter datasets to other scholars for their own research. By no means a full or complete scraping of Twitter data, this information that the project had collected was still made available for download (for free) to researchers. But no longer.

As part of the new Twitter terms of service, 140kit like other organizations can no longer offer exports of Twitter data for any purposes - whether that's for profit or non-profit, whether that's for developers or scholars. You could be writing the next killer app. Or you could be working on the final chapter of your PhD dissertation. (And let me interject right here and say that having your access to research data shut down as a PhD student is beyond devastating.) It doesn't matter. Exporting Tweets now violates the TOS.

Shutting Off Researchers' Access to Data

These changes to Twitter's TOS mean that 140kit, as a service, can no longer provide its datasets wholesale, even for academic purposes. "For many of our users," the group says, "this effectively shuts them out of the ability to research the platform."

140kit has come to an agreement with Twitter, which according to Managing Director of the Web Ecology Project Devin Gaffney, means that some data will still be accessible to scholars. But not all the data. Rather than giving scholars the ability to download a particular dataset, 140kit will be able to offer researchers access to 140kit's analytics. That's not the same as having complete access, but as an academic group, it does sound as though 140kit will be as amenable as possible to scholars' needs and be willing to consider what sorts of analyses people need in order to complete their projects.

Nonetheless, Twitter's changing Terms of Service, without exception to scholars, creates an obstacle to research. "This decision is almost certainly going to shut some researchers out," says Gaffney. "Its a shame because Twitter's clearly thinking about money and operational stability, which are necessary, but they aren't considering the myriad number of PhD students that basically just lost their work, or the researchers that were close to saying something meaningful and now have no way to do it."

Gaffney says he sees a "rocky future" ahead for scholarship based on Twitter and says he hopes that the agreement he's made with Twitter "will last enough time for people to actually continue doing work until whatever comes next."

The law establishes federal guidelines that will require the telecommunications industry to make sure that the devices they build and programs they transmit are accessible to those with hearing and vision impairments. The new law requires a number of measures including an improved UI for smart phones that includes verbal commands, captioning for online TV programming, and compatibility between Internet telephone calls and hearing aids.

Although some argue that these standards will likely help improve the quality of the technology that is available, others note that the implications will go beyond simply access to better technology. The cost of the equipment used to fulfill some of these tasks now and to make the Internet accessible is estimated to cost deaf and blind Americans about $10 million a year.

Before signing the measure today, the president noted that 2010 marks the 20th anniversary of the enactment of the landmark Americans with Disabilities Act. But much of the emphasis of the ADA has been on ensuring access to the physical world. The law signed into effect today is meant to ensure that access also applies to the digital world.

The U.S. House of Representatives has announced a public hearing to explore making publicly-funded research open to the public. Legislators in both the House and the Senate have already introduced bills calling for this. If they pass, the implications could be significant and might result in an economic jump.

Rep. Mike Doyle (R-PA) introduced the Federal Research Public Access Act into the House on April 15. An identical Senate version of the bill was introduced by Senator Joe Lieberman (I-CT) and Senator John Cornyn (R-TX). Bi-partisan support for public access to federal research has been growing.

The bills propose specifically that the 11 federal agencies with research budgets of $100 million or greater make the published results of their research free to the public.

Knowledge is (Economic) Power

If these 11 massive agencies suddenly were required to make their research public (with a governmental value of suddenly), it could possibly act as a shot of adrenaline to the private sector. Who knows what products and services might be launched, or improved, on the back of this research? It could result in a significant leap forward for an economy that seems at times terminally stalled.

Presumably, the government already has the research that they've paid for. (Presumably.) But a public in possession of that information might make for a much less patient public. If a government agency, for instance, knows something that could improve its services, but allows bureaucratic foot-dragging or inter-agency squabbling to slow its implementation, that agency would find itself in, let's say, a compromised position politically when an informed public realized what it was doing.

Having been in a position to listen and talk to career bureaucrats facing change, we are not as sanguine as we could be at the news. It would be surprising indeed if half the people responsible for sharing this information with the pubic didn't go limp at the first approach of torch-wielding villagers at their castle door. To work, this bill will require that the chief executive make it known in no uncertain terms that any agency head with a hitch in his gitalong will shortly thereafter find himself on the street in the company of all his closest advisors.

The shift from facts to data is subtle and makes perfect sense. You could that say data are facts, with the difference that they can be computed, analyzed, and made use of in a more abstract way, especially by a computer.

There is nothing new about pointing out the importance of public data being made available. Sir Tim Berners-Lee has discussed at length the importance of governments and institutions putting their data online, making it accessible and useful. His TED talk and interviews with ReadWriteWeb and Talis (disclosure: I am a blogger at Talis) all explain his belief that by publishing linked data we can begin to solve many of the problems the world faces. Innovations in medicine, science, and development could all be achieved if only currently hidden data were made available. Data-driven journalism could be the first step in realizing this dream. The best stories would then come from innovators who read about trends reported in news media and are then able to draw new conclusions and solve bigger problems. In his recent discussion with BBC, Berners-Lee said that the next step is to go for low-hanging fruit by just getting the data out there.

Thus far, this has made a lot of sense to me, and I have been tracking the publication of linked data and increasing access to public knowledge as emerging trends over at Talis. But my perspective has shifted a bit in the past few weeks.

First, there was data.gov and President Obama's call for more access to government data. A sitting head of state (and one of some significance) was clearly calling for public access to government data: this was news! But the idea has been discussed, praised, and debated for a while since then and may have lost some of its luster.

Then about a month ago, UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown made it part of his digital strategy to prioritize the publication of government information. He asked Sir Tim personally "to help us drive the opening up of access to Government data in the web over the coming months" and appointed Berners-Lee an official governmental adviser. By now, neither of these stories is news and comparisons between the initiatives have been made.

The Guardian newspaper recently launched its own Data Blog, with the intention of letting readers access, mash up, and reuse much of its information in the form of data, which could in turn drive stories.

What is perhaps not as explicitly recognized is the voracious appetite for data that has been apparent for months. It is less about turning good ideas into stories and more about seeing how data informs our understanding of events happening right now. Each new initiative is another piece of low-hanging fruit picked.

Access to data is important: it drives innovation and even social change. Governments that publish their data have to become more transparent. Humanitarian organizations that make their findings known could spark bigger projects and source innovative solutions from their communities. Scientific findings and raw information could be used to solve bigger problems than the result of a single experiment or trial could ever manage. Even the simple comparison of two or more facts can lead to new insight, and all of these things happen only when the walls around an institution become porous.

2009 could become known as the year of data, the year of open access, or the year of the semantic Web (see links above for how this relates), and it may also be the first year when it becomes news that data wasn't published in a story when it should have been. That a government body isn't being transparent or is blocking access by publishing its findings in PDF or other non-linking formats would make a very interesting story indeed. We can expect to see more and more organizations and public bodies remove their own barriers through initiatives and legislation. Examples have been set, and seeing excuses die along with barriers is not far-fetched.

Do you know of other data-driven stories? We'd love to hear about any insights that were made through publicly accessible data or where this data might come from next.

Guest author: Zach Beauvais is a Platform Evangelist for Talis and editor of Nodalities Magazine.

Internet access in a time of democratized online publishing may be understood as a contemporary form of the right to self-expression. It could also be understood as part of basic access to public services in an increasingly online world. We do wonder what such a designation would mean for pricing policies and the internet economy.

Legal theory trailblazer Corey Doctorow wrote the following bold prediction in an article about homeless people and internet access last week:

Here's a prediction: in five years, a UN convention will enshrine network access as a human right (preemptive strike against naysayers: "Human rights" aren't only water, food and shelter, they include such "nonessentials" as free speech, education, and privacy). In ten years, we won't understand how anyone thought it wasn't a human right.

What do you think? Do you think internet access should be understood as a fundamental human right? Do you think that it's a frivolous distraction at a time when millions of people still don't have access to food, clean water and shelter?

France is a nation that decided earlier this year to give its citizens free one year subscriptions to a newspaper of choice on their 18th birthdays. Ostensibly to bail out the newspaper industry but also to foster a life-long habit of learning. That's pretty neat.

If you're interested in more details about this particular French ruling and can read French, check out our partner blog ReadWriteWeb France. If English is a requirement, Techdirt will no doubt have solid coverage of this and related issues.

Image: "PC bang", Seoul. By Flickr user tawalker