Scribe News

CNIB, CNIB Deafblind Community Services (DBCS) and Vision Loss Rehabilitation Canada (VLRC) have partnered with Scribe for Meetings to help make remote programs, meetings and presentations more accessible and inclusive.   Scribe for Meetings, a solution designed by Pneuma Solutions, allows users to create and screen share accessible slideshow content. How does it work? The Scribe app runs during a presentation, monitors the information displayed in the meeting, and sends information about the on-screen content to the Scribe cloud service. Scribe syncs that information with the slides that the presenter previously uploaded and displays an accessible version of the content in real-time in its own window. Using Augmented Document Remediation technology, Scribe for Meetings can convert presentations into eight different accessible formats in more than 140 different languages! This provides people who have a print disability, including sight loss, with access to accessible presentations using a screen reader, a braille display and/or Scribe’s own built-in speech synthesizer. Participants can also download presentations for offline viewing. Scribe for meetings is now available for … [Read more...] about Canadian organizations partner with Scribe for Meetings to enhance accessibility and inclusivity

Were you planning on purchasing Scribe For Meetings? If you’ve delayed the purchase, it’s time to act now. But, before we get to that, let me share some other bits of Pneuma Solutions news. Pneuma Solutions Scribe Augmented Media Remediation Platform is now available in your geographical region. This means YOUR data, in YOUR country. Scribe is also available on Amazon’s GovCloud infrastructure. Scribe for Meetings made a splash earlier this year when Pneuma Solutions announced the ability to make PowerPoint presentations on Zoom equally accessible to print impaired participants. Honestly, it’s not something we had put on our development roadmap, but when the pandemic struck we pivoted to the new reality. We saw the need for Scribe’s augmented media remediation technology to serve a different purpose, and what started off as a casual project evolved into a robust feature set that is now used by everyone from small nonprofits to major universities. Scribe For Meetings now works with Microsoft Teams. Today Scribe For Meetings breaks down yet another accessibility barrier with the inclusion of the Microsoft Teams platform. Now every exciting feature you have enjoyed with Zoom … [Read more...] about Scribe for Meetings Promotion Expiring Soon!

We're proud to announce the release of the Scribe for Meetings browser extension. Now there are even fewer steps to take when you need to attend an online meeting and enjoy real-time access to digital content presented on screen during the meeting. The process is ridiculously easy: Download the extension at the link below. Log into your registered meeting the same as you always have on your PC. Receive automatic notification the meeting has been registered, and enjoy the presentation! Follow the links you need for Firefox or Chrome/Edge. This extension marks another milestone in Pneuma Solutions' goal of leveling the information access barrier for those with print disabilities. Students and working professionals alike will never again be left out of the conversation. All the presenter needs to do is: Upload the presentation Share the link everywhere they share the meeting link Let in the Scribe For Meetings Bot at the start time of the meeting. Are you new to Scribe for Meetings? Give it a try. As meeting facilitators, we think you'll like the intuitive setup process. As end users, we know you'll love the on demand access to everything your peers are … [Read more...] about The Scribe For Meetings Extension Is Now Available on Your Favorite Browser

Matt and I recently had the opportunity to chat with Jonathan Mosen on his Mosen At Large podcast. As any long-time listener can attest, the show is consistently packed with great information and thought-provoking discussion. Among other things, Episode 139 featured a demonstration of Scribe for Meetings, and the quality of his  presentation is, as always, impeccable. We think the best way to understand the Scribe experience is by trying it out for yourself, but if you want to hear a quality, unbiased hands-on demonstration, then Jonathan can be counted on to deliver a balanced perspective. Check out the specific segment here: After listening, if you have any questions, we’d be glad to take those in the comments section below. … [Read more...] about Hear a Demo of Scribe for Meetings

Recently on the Mosen At Large podcast, a listener wrote in with a thoughtful question. He wrote: “I’d like to share some thoughts / questions about Pneuma Solutions Scribe and its promise to make documents accessible, hoping to get a  broader understanding and perhaps develop a fair opinion. Here is another company that promises fully automated accessibility for an affordable price, but I wonder what do they really mean by accessibility, how far their AI can go and how much of the remediation process they have been able to automate. I cannot imagine it going beyond OCR, automatic image descriptions and the addition of some structural tags for headings, lists and possibly simple tables. Can they fix color contrast issues? Can they check that the font is appropriate? How do they deal with data presented in diagrams and charts? I don’t know of any AI that can make data visualization accessible. How do they deal with situation where the document contains explanations based on color or graphical elements such as your typical product manual? In summary, is what they offer true accessibility or just a handful of automatic improvements for screen reader users? Are the files they … [Read more...] about Responding to Concerns About Scribe

We are proud to announce that Ohio State University (OSU), the third-largest university in the United States by enrollment, has recently implemented Scribe for Meetings, a product of Pneuma Solutions. Starting this summer, print-impaired students will be able to enjoy access to on-screen slides in Zoom lectures, in real time, just like their peers without print disabilities. Until now, accessibility for on-screen slides in academic lectures, whether in-person or remote, has been a tedious affair at best. Print-impaired students were required to work with instructors to provide the slides in advance, so the student could read the slides in an accessible format on their computer or mobile device during the class. If alternative formats like Braille or Large Print were needed, students and teachers were at the Mersey of an overburdened office of student accommodations to produce the material in a timely manner, especially on short notice. Even in the best case, when the instructor provided the slides before the lecture, print-impaired students often struggle to follow along with the live presentation, because they wouldn’t necessarily know what slide the instructor was displaying at … [Read more...] about Ohio State University raises the bar for Academic Accessibility by adopting Scribe for Meetings

Since we released Scribe for Meetings out of public beta last month, we’ve continued to enhance its features. Now, online presentations are even more accessible to attendees with a diverse range of print disabilities. Here’s an overview of the new features you’ll find in Scribe for Meetings. DVR Mode gives you more control. First, we know attendees need to be able to read slide presentations at their own pace. So, we added DVR mode (Dynamic Visual Representation). DVR Mode lets an attendee pause the live presentation, move to the previous or next slide, then rejoin the live presentation when ready. With DVR mode, an attendee can even review the slides they already saw when screen sharing is inactive, or after the meeting is over. New Read Aloud feature We’ve developed a feature called Read Aloud. This feature helps those who aren’t comfortable with a full-featured screen reader. It also aids print disabled individuals who can’t effectively read print because of a physical, perceptual, developmental, cognitive, or learning disability.  While viewing a slide, either live or in DVR mode, an attendee can click a single button to have Scribe for Meetings read the slide aloud. … [Read more...] about New Scribe for Meetings Enhancements Make Online Presentations Even More Accessible

Here at Pneuma Solutions, we’re always on the prowl for the latest technology that could redefine the way we interact with the world. Some of this technology we adopt into our own workflow for your benefit. At other times we have to stand back in admiration at the ingenuity other teams are leveraging to make the world more inclusive. A student team at Johns Hopkins is developing a screen reader that takes a unique approach to rendering text. The prototype is called A Set of Eyes, and it seeks to provide an intelligent means of engaging with elements on environments like websites. According to one of the students, Jonathan Edwards: “The term “screen reader” is kind of a misnomer—it’s not really a piece of software that “reads” your computer screen.  It actually scrapes the webpage’s underlying HTML code and reads back to you what that code is out loud. ... Our approach involves using computer vision and machine learning to detach the screen reader from the underlying code and also provide users with a flexible user interface—meaning they can practically talk with our screen reader to get information on the page.” Our very own David Calvo is spearheading the project. … [Read more...] about A Set of Eyes Helps You Engage with Your Computer Screen