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"OT Phishing Scam via Twitter
Posted on November 25, 2009 by Claude Almansi
Claude AlmansiBy Claude Almansi
Editor, Accessibility Issues
There is a phishing scam going round via Twitter direct messages sent from already compromised accounts. The message says something like “Is this (from) you?”, followed by an apparently legit link, but which redirects to a scam page that asks you to log into your Twitter account.
If you do, the phisher can in turn use your account to send the same message to all your contacts. And so on. The problem is that the phisher can also use your account to send other messages, like: “I’ve been robbed while I was in X on holiday, can you send me some money I’ll repay as soon as I get home”, for instance.
So, just as with e-mail phishing scam, the best way is not to click on the link. But if you’ve clicked, not to enter your account data unless you are rock-sure the request is from twitter. And if you have entered your account data, to change your password as fast as possible, and warn your contacts about the scam."
"ITForum Discussion on Accessibility
Posted on December 8, 2009 by Claude Almansi
By Claude Almansi
Editor, Accessibility Issues
The URL for the video below is http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kTvHIDKLFqc.The possibility to automatically caption YouTube videos in English was announced by Google on Nov. 11, 2009: a huge step forward for deaf people that benefits all users. And this is typical of most accessibility measures.
About the discussion
Photo of Roberto ElleroFrom November 29 to December 2, 2009, Roberto Ellero and I animated a discussion about Web accessibility on the Instructional Technology Forum mailing-list.
This mailing list is private (if you wish to join, apply at it.coe.uga.edu/itforum/Subscribing.html), but our initial notes for the discussions are in a public wiki, accessibility4all.wikispaces.com, where the e-mail discussion has been copied to the accessibility4all.wikispaces.com/Discussion page.
The participants in the accessibility discussion were instructional design professionals, teachers and students. Therefore they were already well aware of the need for accessibility in teaching and of the existence of requirements for its enacting.
For instance they all knew that non-text objects – pictures, videos, audio files – conveying info but not accessible to all can be used, but that an alternative must be provided for people with disabilities preventing access to such objects. Nevertheless. as accessibility4all.wikispaces.com/Discussion shows, some interesting questions and issues emerged in the discussion:
General themes (...) Universal design and redundancy (...) Accessibility tools (...)
Specific issues (...) Language (...) Tables (...)
Invitation (...)"
"Accessibility and Literacy: Two Sides of the Same Coin
Posted on December 26, 2009 by Claude Almansi
Accessibility 4 All by Claude Almansi
Treaty for Improved Access for Blind, Visually Impaired and other Reading Disabled Persons
On July 13, 2009, WIPO (World Intellectual Property Organization) organized a discussion entitled Meeting the Needs of the Visually Impaired Persons: What Challenges for IP? One of its focuses was the draft Treaty for Improved Access for Blind, Visually Impaired and other Reading Disabled Persons, written by WBU (World Blind Union), that had been proposed by Brazil, Ecuador and Paraguay at the 18th session of WIPO’s Standing Committee on Copyright and Related Rights in May [1].
A pile of books in chains about to be cut with pliers. Text: Help us cut the chains. Please support a WIPO treaty for print disabled=
[Picture: From the DAISY Consortium August 2009 Newsletter]
Are illiterate people “reading disabled”? (...)
What does "literacy" mean (...)
Writing literacy (...)
Free Speech-toText for all soon? (...)
Moreover... (...)
Back to the literacy issue (...)"
"Online Multimedia: Italian Imperialism
Posted on February 1, 2010 by Claude Almansi
Accessibility 4 All by Claude Almansi
Italian bill on multimedia services
The Italian parliament is presently examining a government proposal of a decree that would modify the law on TV and radio towards the implementation of “Directive 2007/65/EC [Webcite archived version] of the European Parliament and of the Council of 11 December 2007 amending Council Directive 89/552/EEC on the coordination of certain provisions laid down by law, regulation or administrative action in Member States concerning the pursuit of television broadcasting activities.
The human-readable “schede di lettura” (reading notes) of the Camera dei deputati (Lower House) are available online [Webcite archived version]. The actual bill in legalese has not been officially published online, but an unofficial scan of a fax version is available from several sites, e.g., mcreporter.info/documenti/ac169.pdf (3.7 MB).
Online video = television
(...)”
Jurisdiction
(...)
Paradox of timing restrictions for adult (pornographic, violent) content (...)
Threat to accessibility (...)
Webmultimediale (...)
Threat to education (...)"
YouTube, Geoblocks and Proxies
Posted on March 4, 2010 by Claude Almansi
Accessibility 4 All by Claude Almansi
Skip to updates
Geoblocking as censoreship measure
E-rara.ch: Ancient Books, Public Domain and Moral Barriers
Posted on April 6, 2010 by Claude Almansi
Accessibility 4 All by Claude Almansi
Contents
Erara.ch
Some e-rara.ch books
Accessibility and usability
E-rara’s terms of use
A small moral barrier
Italian Alice in true open access land
Plea to the e-rara.ch team
Links
"End of Free Ning Networks: Live Online Discussion: Apr. 20th
Posted on April 18, 2010 by Claude Almansi
Claude AlmansiBy Claude Almansi
Editor, Accessibility Issues
Ning social networks have been very popular, particularly among educators for whom they meant a free – without ads for K-12 classes – learning environment, with blogs, forums, photo and video galleries, personal pages for members and the possibility to create sub-groups.
But on April 15th, Ning’s new CEO, Jason Rosenthal, announced that they were going to end Ning’s free offer: see Ning Update: Phasing Out Free Services by John McDonald, Ning Creators‘ forum. This is a severe blow, as there is no simple way to back up a Ning network.
Fortunately, Steve Hargadon – who has an extensive knowledge and practice of collaborative online tools for education and of Ning in particular - is organising a live online discussion about the implications for educators of this change. From his April 15 Ning Changes and the Impact on Educational Communities post:"
"Facebook Is Unfit for Educational Use
Posted on June 1, 2010 by Claude Almansi
Accessibility 4 All by Claude Almansi
Due to Ning’s decision to go pay-only on June 1 (see End of Free Ning Networks: Live Online Discussion: Apr. 20), some educational networks are moving from Ning to Facebook, for instance, College 2.0. However, Facebook is unfit for educational use in several respects.
Privacy
Facebook’s privacy is notoriously dismal, as Britt Wattwood pointed out in Yes or No on Facebook | Learning In a Flat World. See also Delete Your Facebook Account: “Quit Facebook Day” Wants Users to Leave by Catharine Smith (Huffington Post, 2010-05-15) and Graham Cluley’s 60% of Facebook users consider quitting over privacy on his Sophos blog (2010-05-19). According to Cluley’s survey, 16% of users have already quit for that reason. True, Ning’s privacy is bad too, but if you have to move to another platform, it makes sense to choose one where privacy is better.
No back-up
You cannot back up the contents of Facebook groups. This is also true of Ning networks, but at least you can archive public Ning content with Webcite®. With Facebook content, Webcite® will apparently work, but the “archived” page says:
You are using an incompatible web browser.
Sorry, we’re not cool enough to support your browser. Please keep it real with one of the following browsers:
Mozilla Firefox
Safari
Microsoft Internet Explorer
Arbitrary application of Terms of Use (TOU) (...)
Business-only"
"UNESCO, World Anti-Piracy Observatory and YouTube
Posted on April 28, 2010 by Claude Almansi
Accessibility 4 All by Claude Almansi
Content:
UNESCO’s World Anti-Piracy Observatory
Call to WAPO for a public domain calculator
WAPO’s features
Presentation of WAPO on YouTube | Only automatically captioned | Humanly captioned version
Call for the accessibility of all UNESCO’s YouTube videos
UNESCO’s World Anti-Piracy Observatory
Game Einstein, Rapid Eye, Picassissi, Mary Lotter, Bluesman and Bill Creats are assaulted and robbed. Help these creative guys fight against the pirates! In German only
Screenshot of Microsoft's pirate hunting game at stop-piracy.ch. Click on the picture to enlarge it.
On April 23, 2010, for the World Book and Copyright Day, UNESCO launched the World Anti-Piracy Observatory (WAPO). Now, the terms “piracy” and “anti-piracy” are heavily loaded, most often wielded by the content and software industry and the associations representing its several branches: MPAA, RIAA, US Authors Guild, Association of American Publishers, IFPI etc., or by joint efforts of the same, like Stop-Piracy in Switzerland, on the line expounded in the latter’s Microsoft-sponsored flash game:
Whatever the number of points you score, you get a message saying:
Danke für deine Unterstüzung. Leider wurde dein kreativer Kopf sehr schnell von den Ideenpiraten ausgeraubt. Deshalb verzichtet er auf weitere Ideen und steht schon morgen ab 7 Uhr in der Fabrik.
I.e., “Thank you for your support. Unfortunately your creative head [i.e., the creator character you have picked to play the game with] was very quickly plundered by pirates. He therefore gave up further ideas and is now clocking in at the factory at 7 a.m.” While some content producers do know that mere ideas cannot be protected, this game does illustrate the attitude usually connected with the use of the terms “piracy” and “anti-piracy.” And so it is rather odd to see UNESCO – i.e., the the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization – adopt them."
"UNESCO’s Intergovernmental Copyright Committee – 14th Session
Posted on June 4, 2010 by Claude Almansi
Accessibility 4 All by Claude AlmansiThe 14th Session of UNESCO’s Intergovernmental Copyright Committee will take place from June 7 to June 9 in Paris. Two of the available working documents for that meeting give further information on UNESCO’s “anti-piracy” policy (already discussed in UNESCO, World Anti-Piracy Observatory and YouTube on this blog):
UNESCO World Anti-Piracy Observatory IGC(1971)/XIV/5B
WAPO covers 52% of UNESCO member countries
UNESCO World Anti-Piracy Observatory IGC(1971)/XIV/5B (available in English, French, Spanish, Russian, Arabic), apart from the information already made available by UNESCO on the World Anti-Piracy Observatory (WAPO) site and in the French Wikipedia article about it, reveals that only 52% of the UNESCO member countries answered the survey on which WAPO bases the information concerning national copyright laws and “anti-piracy” measures.
Some UNESCO “electoral colleges” (regions) are particularly under-represented in WAPO: Asia and the Pacific, where only 34% of the countries answered the survey and Latin America and the Caribbean, where only 39% of the countries answered. The fact that China is not represented in WAPO is particularly puzzling, considering that it was one of the 18 members of the Intergovernmental Copyright Committee during its 13th session (2005) where the creation of WAPO was decided, and that, according to the final report of that 13th session , China had supported the principles embodied in WAPO:
The delegate of China informed the Committee of the measures taken by her country to fight against piracy. She pointed out the serious negative effect of piracy on her country’s sustainable development. She said that piracy was a global issue. Therefore regional and international cooperation was needed. She further expressed the wish that UNESCO and WIPO jointly play an active role in providing guidance and assistance for efficient copyright enforcement, as well as assistance in training and exchange of experience."
Easy Captioning for UNESCO’s World Heritage Videos on YouTube
Posted on June 16, 2010 by JimS
Accessibility 4 All by Claude Almansi
Skip to updates
[Editor's note: The following message was sent by Claude Almansi to UNESCO workers on 12 June 2010 with the heading "Easy captioning for UNESCO's World Heritage Videos on YouTube - Demo sample - copyright question." See the following related articles by Almansi: UNESCO’s Intergovernmental Copyright Committee – 14th Session and UNESCO, World Anti-Piracy Observatory and YouTube. -JS]
Sent e-mail
Dear Workers of the “Section de la communication, de l’éducation et du partenariat (CLT/WHC/CEP)” of UNESCO’s World Heritage Center:
First, congratulations on the remarkable World Heritage video series posted by UNESCO on YouTube, with links to the relevant pages of http://whc.unesco.org. This is a great education tool.
However, I was wondering if you could not caption these videos: for most of them, you already have and offer a plain text transcript on http://whc.unesco.org. So on YouTube, for the videos in English, it would be enough to add that transcript to the video as a .txt file, and then the YouTube software would automatically time-code this transcript to produce the captions – and an interactive transcript viewing below the video.
Moreover, YouTube also offers automatic translation of existing captions. And as the comments of these videos are a remarkable example of “Simple English,” these automatically translated captions are rather decent.
To illustrate the above, I have done such a captioned version of your “Vézelay” video:
- Your original: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aFoakBvsKlA>
- Captioned version (with link to the original, your original description and some explanations about captioning in the description): <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VbNI9dBtDRw>
I am aware that this video about Vézelay is under UNESCO’s copyright. So I was not surprised when I got an automatic warning from YouTube (reproduced below) about possible copyright violation within minutes of posting the captioned version.
e-Book Readers: Attempting to Bugger the Blind Is Bad for Business
Posted on July 6, 2010 by Claude Almansi
Accessibility 4 All by Claude Almansi
"DoJ’s and DoE’s letter to college and university presidents on e-book readers
On June 29, 2010, Thomas E. Perez (Assistant Attorney General, Civil Rights Division, U.S. Department of Justice) and Russlynn Ali (Assistant Secretary for Civil Rights, U.S. Department of Education) sent a joint letter on electronic book readers:
Dear College or University President:
We write to express concern on the part of the Department of Justice and the Department of Education that colleges and universities are using electronic book readers that are not accessible to students who are blind or have low vision and to seek your help in ensuring that this emerging technology is used in classroom settings in a manner that is permissible under federal law. A serious problem with some of these devices is that they lack an accessible text-to-speech function. Requiring use of an emerging technology in a classroom environment when the technology is inaccessible to an entire population of individuals with disabilities–individuals with visual disabilities–is discrimination prohibited by the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990 (ADA) and Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973 (Section 504) unless those individuals are provided accommodations or modifications that permit them to receive all the educational benefits provided by the technology in an equally effective and equally integrated manner.(…)"
‘Emerging Technologies in Distance Education’ ed. by George Veletsianos
Posted on July 24, 2010 by Claude Almansi
Claude AlmansiBy Claude Almansi
Editor, Accessibility Issues
Emerging Technologies in Distance Education, edited by George Veletsianos, has just been published by Athabasca University Press, a Canadian publisher of Open Access, peer-reviewed, scholarly publications. The book, under an Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 2.5 Canada Creative Commons License, can be bought in print or downloaded (at no cost) as PDF from aupress.ca/index.php/books/120177.
Cover of Emerging Technologies in Distance Education, ed. by George Veletsianos
Thus, this book is doubly important:
for its multidisciplinary, multi-author examination and definition of core concepts in technology for education, which have often been used with different, at times diverging, meanings
as an illuminating example of a scientific Open Access contribution: Open Access and the Creative Commons licenses that can be used to implement it are also sometimes misunderstood.
Ning’s Self-Contradictions
Posted on July 30, 2010 by Claude Almansi
By Claude Almansi
Editor, Accessibility Issues
" Do I contradict myself?
Very well then I contradict myself,
(I am large, I contain multitudes.)
About Ning’s decision to scrap free networks and for alternatives to Ning, see End of Free Ning Networks: Live Online Discussion: Apr. 20th.
Three plans
Ning sent an e-mail entitled “Important news about your Ning Network” to Ning network owners on July 28, 2010, telling them about three choices that will remain available to them until August 20, 2010: Mini, Plus and Pro."
Ning’s New Deadline for Pay-Only: Aug. 30
Posted on August 22, 2010 by Claude Almansi
By Claude Almansi
Editor, Accessibility Issues
"Ning announced repeatedly that it would delete free networks whose creators had not paid for one of its new pricing plans by midnight Aug. 20. On Aug. 21, however, Ning extended this deadline to August 30. Here’s the announcement of this extension on its Help page:
Deadline for Selecting a Ning Plan Extended to August 30, 2010
A number of Network Creators, particularly those based outside the United States, have requested more time to arrange for payment and make the right decision on a plan for their network. As a result, we have extended the deadline for selecting one of the three new plans (Ning Mini, Plus and Pro) to August 30, 2010. Beginning on this date, we will block access to any free Ning Network that isn’t subscribed to one of the three plans.
Please let us know if we can help, or if you have questions or comments. Thank you!
Thus, if you are the creator of a free Ning network, you can still:..."
Why Unjoin Ning Networks that Won’t Pay
Posted on August 28, 2010 by Claude Almansi
By Claude Almansi
Editor, Accessibility Issues
"In Ning’s New Deadline for Pay-Only: Aug. 30, I quoted the announcement of the new deadline set by Ning for paying to keep a network online. It now turns out that creators of Ning networks that won’t do so cannot delete them anymore. In view of this, the following passage in the announcement of the new deadline becomes worrying:
…As a result, we have extended the deadline for selecting one of the three new plans (Ning Mini, Plus and Pro) to August 30, 2010. Beginning on this date, we will block access to any free Ning Network that isn’t subscribed to one of the three plans.
“block access” – and not “delete” – this means that after August 30, Ning will have sole access to, and use of:
the content posted in these networks
the profile data of all members of these networks, which include their e-mail addresses."
‘Locked’ Ning Networks? Access, Copyright and Privacy
Posted on September 23, 2010 by Claude Almansi
By Claude Almansi
Editor, Accessibility Issues
Context
On September 14, 2010, after Ning had postponed the deadline for shutting nonpaying networks for the umpteenth time, I wrote:
I will not write another full post about Ning until the non paying groups have been deleted, or Ning gets bought by a more efficient firm, or disappears. But I’ve opened a Ning page on the wiki of ETC Journal where I shall attempt to keep track of what happens at Ning.
in a comment to my Why Unjoin Ning Networks that Won’t Pay (Aug. 28, 2010).
And now I am writing one, even though nonpaying groups have not been deleted and no one — to my knowledge — has shown any interest in buying Ning. Motive: a discussion entitled “Deletion of Free Ning Networks?” started by Alex on September 18 in the Ning Creators network. Though it disappeared very quickly, there is a copy archived with WebCite® on the same day: http://webcitation.org/5sq785FZF.
Eric Suesz — senior community manager at Ning — participated in this discussion, stating that “All free Ning Networks are now locked and can’t be accessed.” This is simply untrue.
The Ning “lock”
To illustrate how the Ning lock works, let’s use http://piusplacenow.ning.com, which is the network created by Alex, about whose nondeletion he wondered academically — he successfully migrated it to http://piusplacenow.spruz.com — in the above mentioned discussion. In fact, it is now greyed, with most of the content covered overlaid by a Ning form:..."
ICE’s Seizures of Domain Names Concern Us All
Posted on December 7, 2010 by Claude Almansi
By Claude Almansi
Editor, Accessibility Issues
" ‘Operation in Our Sites II’ – Out of Sight for the Blind was about the inaccessibility for the blind and for people with print disabilities, of the notices added to the sites that were seized by ICE in the last week of November: because accessibility is what I write about here, normally and because this crass violation of the very first principle of accessibility was so odd, from a US government’s agency, that it suggested a hoax or a parody.
Conquest Of Constantinople By The Crusaders In 1204
However, make no mistakes these seizures concern us all, and particularly educators. As Hartwig Thomas pointed out in
US-Attacke auf das System der Domänen-Namen (my translation):
…One consequence [of the seizures] is that average users must now learn about the concepts of IP addresses and domain names, in order to keep control of what happens with them (…).
So it is the responsibility of educators to help students understand these concepts. especially because, as Hartwig adds:
Another consequence is that the US has shown the word how cyberwar is played. It is to be feared that the world will prove very good at learning.
And therefore the younger must learn these things to be able to resist rogue governments that violate their own country’s laws and international agreements by waging – or by hiring privateers to wage (link updated 2011-01-12 as URL changed; WebCite archived version) – cyberwars against alleged “pirates” or “traitors”.
‘Operation In Our Sites II’ – Out of Sight for the Blind
Posted on November 30, 2010 by JimS
By Claude Almansi
Editor, Accessibility Issues
"[Note: On Cyber Monday, Operation In Our Sites II, a coordinated effort of the U.S. Justice Department’s Criminal Division, the Department of Homeland Security, and nine U.S. Attorneys’ Offices, "obtained and executed seizure orders against 82 domain names of websites engaged in the sale and distribution of counterfeit goods and illegal copyrighted works." It specifically "targeted online retailers of a diverse array of counterfeit goods, including sports equipment, shoes, handbags, athletic apparel, sunglasses, and illegal copies of DVDs, music and software" (USDOJ). In her letter below to the Justice Department, Claude Almansi, Educational Technology and Change Journal associate administrator and editor for accessibility issues, points out that "the seizure notices added to the sites seized in 'Operation In Our Sites II' are surprisingly inaccessible to people who must use a screen reader because they are blind or have other print disabilities." -js]"
How to Report Phishing?
Posted on December 11, 2010 by Claude Almansi
By Claude Almansi
Editor, Accessibility Issues
"On Dec 8, 2010, I received the following e-mail, entitled “Alert!”, at my gmail address, apparently from “GMAIL <onlineupdatealert@gmail.com>”:
Dear Email Client,
There was a failed attempt to login into your account from a blacklisted IP. Kindly login below
http://www.gmail.com
It looked suspiciously phishy so I checked the source – click here to see the source.
The full header indicates that the sender might be spoofed, the chunk of code suggests a web bug that verifies that the message has been viewed, hence that the receiver’s address is valid and spammable, and the last two lines show that what appears to be the URL of the legit gmail login page actually links to a well-made duplicate: http://www.4dsystems.com.au/flashimg/gmail/signon.html. "
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