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

Here, here. I nominate Mats for explaining this to the Gnome list!

Steve, here is a naive question - I use KDE on Ubuntu, do any of the accessibility pros from this work ever cross over?  If not, how does one know which one to support?!

Cheers.

Simon

-----Original Message-----
From: oats-sig-bounces at lists.becta.org.uk [mailto:oats-sig-bounces at lists.becta.org.uk] On Behalf Of Andrew Lysley
Sent: Monday, February 18, 2008 9:27 AM
To: OATs Project Special Interest Group
Cc: William.Walker at sun.com
Subject: Re: Ang: [oats-sig] Fwd: Exciting news: funding coming our way!
Importance: High

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,
	Mats <mailto:mats.lundalv at sit.se> 

	-----oats-sig-bounces at lists.becta.org.uk skrev: -----<”\Ãw€ë br>

		Till: "OATs Project Special Interest Group" <oats-sig at lists.becta.org.uk> <mailto:oats-sig at lists.becta.org.uk> 

		Från: "Steve Lee" <steve at fullmeasure.co.uk> <mailto:steve at fullmeasure.co.uk> 

		Sänt av: oats-sig-bounces at lists.becta.org.uk <mailto: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> <mailto: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 <mailto: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

		gnome-accessibility-list at gnome.org <mailto:gnome-accessibility-list at gnome.org> 

		http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/gnome-accessibility-list <http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/gnome-accessibility-list> 

		-- 

		Steve Lee

		--

		Jambu - Alternative Access to Computers

		www.fullmeasure.co.uk

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