[oats-sig] Fwd: Exciting news: funding coming our way!

Hi Steeve and all,

Hi Mats, I'm very happy to pass on your comments but I do think that
the most effective action will be if you make the point yourself on
the GNOME a11y list. You can explain it much better than I could and
having another person raising the issue makes it clear there is a real
demand to be met.

They are a friendly bunch and you can join the list at:
http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/gnome-accessibility-list

Steve

On 17/02/2008, mats.lundalv at vgregion.se <mats.lundalv at vgregion.se> wrote:
> Hi Steeve and all,
>
> Exciting news indeed, and I really look forward to learn more, BUT ...
>
> Will's priority list immediately makes me slightly frustrated and worried:
>
> Why not a word about the most embarrassing accessibility shortcoming of them
> all for the Gnome desktop? That is; the complete lack of suitable support
> for the largest groups of users with accessibility problems - that is; users
> in need of reading and writing support (other than users with pure visual
> impairments)!
>
> It's all there in the
> http://live.gnome.org/Accessibility/GetInvolved listing, so
> please, please don't let it be left over once again!!
>
> This lack of support is the reason for us currently not really being able to
> recommend the free and open source platforms for schools from an inclusion
> and accessibility point of view (review project performed by the Swedish
> Institute for Special Needs Education 2007 - unfortunately not available
> (yet) in English), as students with reading/writing and learning
> disabilities - ranging between 5-15 % of the students in different school
> environments - are left without proper assistive support.
>
> The issues on the Gnome Accessibility listing includes: "Dyslexia and
> Learning Disabilities", Word Prediction Component", Speech Synthesis (TTS)"
> - (opening up for higher quality options needed for wider target user
> needs), OCR, DAISY-reader (the latter two are common needs for users with
> visual impairments and the wider range of users with reading/writing and/or
> learning disabilities), etc.
>
> So please make these part of the top priority tasks!
>
> Cheers,
> Mats
>
> -----oats-sig-bounces at lists.becta.org.uk skrev: -----
>
> Till: "OATs Project Special Interest Group" <oats-sig at lists.becta.org.uk>
> Från: "Steve Lee" <steve at fullmeasure.co.uk>
> Sänt av: oats-sig-bounces at lists.becta.org.uk
> Datum: 2008-02-17 19:33
> Ärende: [oats-sig] Fwd: Exciting news: funding coming our way!
>
>
> This is great news!
>
> ---------- Forwarded message ----------
> From: Willie Walker <William.Walker at sun.com>
> Date: 17 Feb 2008 17:26
> Subject: Exciting news: funding coming our way!
> To: gnome-accessibility-list at gnome.org
>
>
> Hi All:
>
> The larger community has seen our work with identifying and prioritizing
> the accessibility tasks we find really important.  As a result, they are
> now providing funding to get the work done.  This is FANTASTIC news!
>
> More details will be coming out very soon (this week?), but the GNOME
> Board has requested that we let the GNOME accessibility community know
> first.  :-)
>
> David Bolter from the University of Toronto, Luke Yelavich from
> Canonical, and I will be the judges for the program.  Between the three
> of us, we can represent industry, academia, infrastructure, assistive
> technology, standards, and end user considerations.  We of course will
> not operate in a vacuum but will instead continually consult with you,
> the community members, to make decisions.
>
> Way cool stuff.  The nature of the funding will support shorter term
> individual projects (e.g., USD$6K with a 6 month deadline).  When I look
> at the tasks we identified as a community
> (http://live.gnome.org/Accessibility/GetInvolved), I see a
> really good
> balance of achievable tasks that fit within the budget, and they are all
> on the top of the list.  In particular, the following seem to be very
> good matches:
>
> 1) Documentation.  There is a steep learning curve for users,
> developers, and operating system integrators.  Many people just need a
> place to start and concise hand-holding directions.  With good
> documentation in place, we can provide answers to common questions such
> as "how do I test my application for accessibility?", "how do I fix
> common accessibility problems?", "what assistive technologies are
> available for my disability and how do I use them?", etc.  We will get a
> lot of really good impact across the board with this task.
>
> 2) Evince accessibility.  Accessible free open source document viewing
> is dearly needed on our platform, and Evince is sooooooo close.  With a
> concentrated effort, this task will help bring accessible document
> viewing to GNOME.  Way cool and way needed.
>
> 3) Speech and magnification.  With Orca helping exercise speech and
> magnification, we have been able to identify the strengths and
> weaknesses of the existing support provided by gnome-speech and
> gnome-mag.  At the same time, the world has changed a bit around us,
> with considerations needed for a more global view.  These two separate
> tasks will help move us to state-of-the-art cross-platform solutions
> that can be used by GNOME, KDE, OLPC, OpenMoko, etc.  Again, way cool
> and way needed.
>
> 4) Testing.  It's hard for me to count the number of times we've seen
> components make changes late in the release cycle that adversely effect
> accessibility.  My only measurement is how much hair I have lost as a
> result.  GNOME needs a unified testing strategy, and we need to make
> accessibility a core part of that from the start.  This task will help
> get us there.  AWESOME.
>
> 5) Bug fixing.  We need bugs fixed and good hackers will now have money
> to inspire them.  'Nuf said.  :-)
>
> So...we still have some work to do as a community.  In a separate
> e-mail, I will be sending out proposed times for an IRC meeting next
> week based upon the availability I've received from everyone so far.  In
> this meeting, we can discuss the program and the tasks further.
>
> This is soooo exciting.  Many thanks to everyone who has helped -- we're
> going to make some great strides with this.
>
> Will
> _______________________________________________
> gnome-accessibility-list mailing list
> gnome-accessibility-list at gnome.org
> http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/gnome-accessibility-list
>
>
> --
> Steve Lee
> --
> Jambu - Alternative Access to Computers
> www.fullmeasure.co.uk
>
>
>

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