The Access Circle May 2026

Welcome

Dear Round Table members and supporters,

As Global Accessibility Awareness Day approaches on Thursday 21 May, it is a timely reminder of the importance of access and inclusion in the digital world, and of the work still needed to ensure information is available to everyone.

In this issue:

• National Cultural Policy
• Fido: A New AI Tool for Accessible Publishing from DAISY
• Round Table Conference
• News from the Monash Assistive Technology & Society Centre

Happy reading!

Francois Jacobs

Consumer Representative

News Roundup

National Cultural Policy – submissions close Sunday 24 May

The Australian Government is consulting on the next National Cultural Policy, and submissions close at 11:59 pm on Sunday 24 May 2026. This is an important opportunity to make the case for accessible books and reading and to ensure that people with print disabilities are visible in cultural policy.

We encourage Round Table members to consider making a short submission. Even 500 words is enough. In your submission, you may wish to support Books Create Australia’s call for a National Plan for Books and Reading, and explain why accessible and inclusive publishing matters to you – whether as a reader, educator, librarian, or disability advocate.

You might also include a specific ask relevant to the Round Table’s work, such as support for:

• ensuring born-accessible publishing becomes standard practice across the Australian book industry
• funding for accessible format production, especially braille
• inclusion of people with print disabilities in cultural participation goals and reading initiatives
• a coordinated National Plan for Books and Reading that embeds accessibility from the beginning.

Your submission does not need to be long or technical. A simple structure could be:

I write as a [role] whose work connects with [readers with print disabilities / libraries / / schools / accessibility organisations]. I support Books Create Australia’s call for a National Plan for Books and Reading, particularly [insert relevant priority]. The issue I am most concerned about is [describe issue]. In my experience, [add example or detail]. Government should [state what you’d like to see].

Useful resources:

1. Books Create Australia – advice on making a submission and supporting a National Plan for Books and Reading.
2. Australia Reads – advice for those interested in reading, literacy and reading participation.

The Round Table Executive is working on a longer submission. If you would like to discuss the details, please reach out to Agata Mrva-Montoya on [email protected]

Tech Talk

Fido: A New AI Tool for Accessible Publishing from DAISY

The DAISY Consortium has released Fido, a free AI-powered tool designed to speed up the production, remediation, and conversion of accessible publications. For organisations producing alternative formats, it’s worth a close look.

Fido tackles several of the most labour-intensive steps in accessible publishing workflows. It can convert PDFs – including image-only scans – into MS Word, EPUB, or HTML, extracting text, headings, lists, tables, images, and even mathematical content. It generates image descriptions across multiple file formats (MS Word, PDF, EPUB, and Adobe InDesign), with customisable prompts and support for over 100 image classifications. It can also detect and mark up foreign-language phrases in documents, analyse heading structure to catch errors in converted files, and generate metadata from Word documents.

Developed over the past year within DAISY Labs and shaped by the DAISY AI Special Interest Group, Fido has already been used by partner organisations producing accessible books in English, French, Spanish, Hindi, Arabic, and other languages. The feedback has been encouraging: tasks that once took days can now take hours.

Fido is available for Windows and macOS and supports multiple AI services including Claude, Gemini, ChatGPT, and others. Users will need either an unlock code from DAISY or their own API key. As with any AI tool, human review of outputs remains essential.

You can learn more and download Fido via the DAISY website.

Upcoming Events

Round Table 2026 Conference Begins This Month

The Round Table Conference on Information Access for People with Print Disabilities will take place in Adelaide from Saturday 23 May to Tuesday 26 May 2026. Delegates from across Australia and New Zealand will come together for presentations, discussion, networking, and collaboration on accessible information, inclusive practice, and emerging developments across the sector.

This year’s conference includes plenary and concurrent sessions, exhibitor engagement, the Round Table AGM, the conference dinner, and the SASSVI site visit. We are looking forward to welcoming presenters, sponsors, exhibitors, and delegates for what promises to be a strong and engaging program.

Conference hashtags for this year are #RoundTable2026, #PrintDisAbility, and #RTAccess.

We look forward to seeing everyone in Adelaide.

Member Matters

Monash Assistive Technology & Society Centre

Prof Kim Marriott delivered a keynote address at the IEEE Pacific Visualisation conference in Sydney on accessible data visualisations.

The centre received a best paper award for Supporting Multimodal Data Interaction on Refreshable Tactile Display: An Architecture to Combine Touch and Conversational AI.

They have submitted an ARC Discovery Project application to research conversational agents with refreshable tactile displays.

Dr Nicolas Bonne visited Monash and spoke about his experience as a blind astrophysicist and the Tactile Universe Project.

RT and its members are invited to join MATS as an organisational partner or individual Friend to receive updates on our work and invitations to seminars like the above.

The centre continues the call for participants in their online survey for senior maths students (and ex-students) who are blind or have low vision. Students are invited to take part in the 10 minute survey to share their experiences and go in the running for a $100 gift voucher. They can also indicate their willingness to take part in (paid) interviews or focus groups. For details, see https://www.accessiblemaths.org/get-involved/student-survey/.

 

That’s it for this edition, if you have any news items such as new technology making a difference, or events you think readers would be interested in attending , then please submit items of maximum 400 words by the end of the month to [email protected] for consideration for the next newsletter.