[oats-sig] AT Portal/Search Engine?

I am curious whether anything good along this line exists, and if not,

On 13/11/2007, Christopher Leung
<christopher.leung at projectpossibility.org> wrote:
> I am curious whether anything good along this line exists, and if not,
> whether there is a need for such a thing.
>
> Basically an online portal that could intelligently index and present
> (possibly a mashup) of information to a user based on their queries
> related to accessible technology.  It could index the websites of
> certain accessible technology vendors, and even go so far as to offer
> prices for commercial products (an AT "Pricegrabber" of sorts).
>
> I guess I raise this question out of the general difficulty/learning
> curve in "discovering" certain AT unless one already knows about it
> somehow or through somebody's suggestion, or after lots of google searches..

I'm only aware of a number of manually compiled directories such as
OATSoft. Several have good introductory resources andfrom your last
comment perhaps the educational/discovery aspect is more useful than
prices/availability. A portal as you describe could be useful but no
doubt a challange w/o use of standards for data or meta data (e.g lots
of scraping needed).

JISC TechDis is a searchable DB though with an education focus. It
seems to have changed style since I last looked.
http://www.techdis.ac.uk/index.php?p=3_1

A price grabber could be useful, but would want to work on categories,
not just specific products. AT users will also want to know
ancillaries like support, e.g. does it have good community support
like Orca, is it manufacturer or third party? (perhaps a class and
value). Funding possibilities will also be important, especially as
that is often difficult and depends on your local health authority (in
the UK)

Such a resource should also cover the 'free' accessibility options of
desktops/OSs/specific programs such as sticky keys or other resources
like www.accessfirefox.com.

PS I think I saw you leaving #accessibility the other day so I'll keep
and eye out for you.

-- 
Steve Lee
--
Jambu - Alternative Access to Computers
www.fullmeasure.co.uk