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

Hi Steeve and all,

thanks for this "tub thumping", Mats, reminding 
the accessibility world that there is more to 
this field than visual impairment, even though 
they are a bigger and more vociferous lobby in 
all our countries!  It's really, really important 
that we (the clinicians & end user organisations) 
keep this BIG message high on the development 
agenda.  All the more reason, given the exciting 
mainstream developments on the Linux platform 
right now (both hardware & software).

While on the subject of getting language and 
literacy accessibility into the frame, how does 
Sheri Hunnicut see the future for Prophet?  Have 
you persuaded her to place it like our own 
"Wordaid" into the opensource community in order 
to encourage the Linux (and other) developers to 
join with us take on board good practice 
exemplars and designs within this important and 
much neglected area.  Maybe we'll get some 
interest in AAC & symbol systems too!

At least with our involvement in AEGIS and led by 
Peter Korn at SUN, we will have a really good 
platform to keep this message live, even though 
no specific resources are being directed towards it within AEGIS.

Andrew

At 23:36 17/02/2008, you 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>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,
><mailto:mats.lundalv at sit.se>Mats
>
>-----oats-sig-bounces at lists.becta.org.uk skrev: -----<”\Ãw€ë br>
>Till: "OATs Project Special Interest Group" 
><mailto:oats-sig at lists.becta.org.uk><oats-sig at lists.becta.org.uk>
>Från: "Steve Lee" <mailto:steve at fullmeasure.co.uk><steve at fullmeasure.co.uk>
>Sänt av: 
><mailto:oats-sig-bounces at lists.becta.org.uk>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 <mailto:William.Walker at sun.com><William.Walker at sun.com>
>Date: 17 Feb 2008 17:26
>Subject: Exciting news: funding coming our way!
>To: 
><mailto:gnome-accessibility-list at gnome.org>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 ”\Ãw€ë 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>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 measurem”\Ãw€ë ent 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
><mailto:gnome-accessibility-list at gnome.org>gnome-accessibility-list at gnome.org
>http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/gnome-accessibility-list
>
>
>--
>Steve Lee
>--
>Jambu - Alternative Access to Computers
><http://www.fullmeasure.co.uk>www.fullmeasure.co.uk
>

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