英语单词大师：An English Professor Who

 AA: I'm Avi Arditti and this week on WORDMASTER: we're going to repeat a segment¹ from two thousand two. It was an interview with an English professor who, after going blind, devoted² his time to making the Internet more accessible. As it turned out, three years later, John Slatin was diagnosed³ with leukemia, blood cancer. He died last month at the age of fifty-five. Now, in tribute⁴, here again is that segment.

AA: I'm Avi Arditti, Rosanne Skirble has the week off. This week on Wordmaster -- making the Web more welcoming to the disabled.

John Slatin is director of the Institute for Technology and Learning at the University of Texas at Austin. He travels near and far, promoting ways to make the Internet more accessible to persons with disabilities.

His fellow frequent flier is Dillon. Dillon, a golden Labrador retriever, is a guide dog for the blind. John Slatin was an adult when he lost most of his sight.

Professor Slatin says the key to making a Web page more accessible is what he calls "principled redundancy."JOHN SLATIN: "Rather than just providing the information in one form, say a paragraph or a complex image, you're providing both things. So there's both an image that illustrates⁵ a process or an idea or whatever, and a prose⁶ description of that same idea, a prose explanation -- so that, for example, a blind person who can't see the image can read the prose description.

"Whereas⁷ somebody who for whatever reason can't read the prose -- perhaps they have dyslexia or a brain injury that makes it difficult for them to process information in text form, or perhaps they're not familiar or very comfortable with the native language in which the explanation is written -- the image can help them. And you might go even further and add a sound explanation, perhaps somebody saying the same thing or explaining the same idea, and yet a slightly different form."AA: Since the late 1980s, John Slatin has concentrated his teaching and research on information technology. That was a switch from his earlier passion: twentieth-century American poetry.

Ironically, John Slatin says the elements that go into making a Web page accessible go against his conventional training as an English teacher.

JOHN SLATIN: "We would have talked about that as redundancy and meant something negative about that, whereas now in Web design we're looking for principled ways of allowing the use of multimedia⁸, different media and different formats⁹, to help different people with different needs get to the same idea."AA: "In general, how accessible is the World Wide Web to the disabled?"JOHN SLATIN: "The short answer is, not very. The longer answer is that it depends partly on what kind of disability you have. For people with visual impairments, in particular, it's still a very, very difficult environment to operate in, because it's a very visual medium and a lot of the people who design for it are primarily visual thinkers, and that's what they're focused on.

"And so a lot of the work to provide alternatives in text form that the assistive technology that people who are blind use, such as screen readers or talking Web browsers¹⁰, doesn't have material to work with as often as it should. Or the material isn't of the quality that it needs to be yet."AA: "How difficult is it for a programmer to add some elements that make it more accessible?"JOHN SLATIN: "In many respects making a Web site more accessible to people with disabilities is quite simple. There are easy techniques for associating text material with images, so that, again, screen-reading software or talking Web browsers -- or what are called refreshable Braille displays that some people who are blind, and some people who are both blind and deaf, use -- read the text instead of coming up against a blank wall in the form of an image that they can't process. As the techniques become more familiar, I'm confident that more and more sites will be more accessible."AA: That was from a two thousand interview with University of Texas professor John Slatin. He died on March twenty-fourth after a nearly three-year struggle with leukemia. He was fifty-five years old.

And that's WORDMASTER for this week. Archives of our segments¹¹ are at voanews.com/wordmaster. I'm Avi

1 segment   

n.切片，部分，段，节

参考例句：

• The company dominates this segment of the market.这家公司控制着这一部分市场。
• Give me a segment of a tangerine to taste.给我一瓣柑橘尝一尝。

2 devoted   

adj.忠诚的，忠实的，热心的，献身于...的

参考例句：

• He devoted his life to the educational cause of the motherland.他为祖国的教育事业贡献了一生。
• We devoted a lengthy and full discussion to this topic.我们对这个题目进行了长时间的充分讨论。

3 diagnosed   

诊断( diagnose的过去式和过去分词 )

参考例句：

• Some foetal malformations cannot be diagnosed until late in pregnancy. 有些胎儿的畸形部位得等到妊娠后期才能诊断出来。
• He diagnosed the trouble that caused the engine to knock. 他找出了引擎咔咔响的毛病所在。

4 tribute   

n.颂词，称赞，(表示敬意的)礼物；贡品

参考例句：

• She accepted their tribute graciously.她慈祥地接受了他们的致意。
• Many conquered nations had to pay tribute to the rulers of ancient Rome.许多被征服的国家必须向古罗马的统治者朝贡。

5 illustrates   

给…加插图( illustrate的第三人称单数 )； 说明； 表明； （用示例、图画等）说明

参考例句：

• This historical novel illustrates the breaking up of feudal society in microcosm. 这部历史小说是走向崩溃的封建社会的缩影。
• Alfred Adler, a famous doctor, had an experience which illustrates this. 阿尔弗莱德 - 阿德勒是一位著名的医生，他有过可以说明这点的经历。 来自中级百科部分

6 prose   

adj.散文的；n.散文

参考例句：

• His writings include poetry and prose.他的作品包括诗和散文。
• He has a taste for purple prose.他喜欢风格华丽的散文。

7 whereas   

conj.而，却，反之

参考例句：

• They want a house,whereas we would rather live in a flat.他们想要一座房子，而我们宁愿住在一套房间里。
• Some praise him,whereas others condemn him.有些人赞扬他，而有些人谴责他。

8 multimedia   

adj.多种手段的，多媒体的；n.多媒体

参考例句：

• Multimedia is the combination of computer and video technology.多媒体是计算机和视频技术的结合。
• Adam raised the issue of multimedia applications and much useful discussion ensued.亚当提出了多媒体应用的问题，从而引发了许多有益的讨论。

9 formats   

n.（出版物的）版式( format的名词复数 )；[电视]电视节目的总安排（或计划）

参考例句：

• They are producing books in all kinds of different formats. 他们出版各种不同开本的书籍。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• A true GUI includes standard formats for representing text and graphics. 真正的图形用户界面包括表示文字和图形的标准格式。 来自互联网

10 browsers   

浏览器

参考例句：

• Three-layer architecture is a model made up of browser, web server and background database server. 这种体系结构是由Browser、Web Server、Database Server组成的浏览器／Web服务器／后台数据库服务器三层模型。 来自互联网
• Another excellent approach is to abandon the browser entirely and, instead, create a non-browser-based, Internet-enabled application. 另一个非常好的方法是干脆放弃浏览器，取而代之，创建一个不基于浏览器，但却是基于互联网的应用。 来自About Face 3交互设计精髓

11 segments   

部分( segment的名词复数 )； 瓣； [计算机]（字符等的）分段； [动物学]节片

参考例句：

• He is eating oranges in segments. 他正在一瓣瓣地吃橘子。
• Gene cloning provides a means of purifying and propagating specific DNA segments. 基因克隆化提供了一种纯化和扩增特定DNA片段的方法。