[ Thanks to JP
Schnapper-Casteras for this link. ]
There was a flurry of activity in the Linux accessibility world
at CSUN 2002, one
of the most widely attended, well known, and longest running
conferences on technology for the disabled. Accessibility, for
those who do not know, is the practice of making software
accessible or usable by the disabled (e.g., blind or low vision);
under United States law, software, including Linux, must be
accessible for it to be used by the government. Similar laws exist
in other countries.
On Thursday, March 21st, Sun Microsystems presented the UNIX
Accessibility sessions, which ranged in subject matter from panel
discussions about the general importance and state of UNIX
accessibility, to overviews of the structure of GNOME 2 and the
GNOME Accessibility Architecture, to presentations about new
Assistive Technology (AT) for the platform. Most notable were
demonstrations of Gnopernicus,
a GNOME screen reader, magnifier, and Braille outputer and GOK, the
Gnome Onscreen Keyboard. Sun also
announced that a team of engineers in China is working on making
Mozilla accessible through the GNOME Accessibility Architecture and
that several engineers are doing the same for Nautilis. Overall,
Thursday’s sessions were representative of the great progress made
in the last year in the Linux and UNIX accessibility world,
specifically in the GNOME, GTK+, and X Windows arenas.
The next day the 2nd Linux Accessibility Conference, also at
CSUN 2002, served as the stage for more in-depth and technical
material as well as group discussions about the community’s
direction. Presentations were given on subjects such accessibility
checklists and guides for application developers, modifying the
Linux kernel to speech-enable console applications, and Linux
accessibility in the United States government. Among the most
prominent parts of the conference was a roundtable on
interoperability and collaboration, which lead to the formation of
lengthy and detailed TODO list. As with the
1st Linux Accessibility Conference, this year’s meeting allowed
developers to share their work and plans for the coming months and
hopefully better coordinate them.
Overall, in two days at CSUN, UNIX, Solaris, and Linux showed
themselves to be increasingly capable platforms for disabled users.
The Linux accessibility community continues to grow and is looking,
now more than ever, for new developers and volunteers. E-mail
JP
Schnapper-Casteras and with your skills and experience
(experience with accessibility not required) and he will put you in
contact with the appropriate people and projects.
URLs:
- TODO items
- Notes from the
conference - Free Desktop
Accessibility Working Group (FDAWG) - GNOME
Accessibility Project (GAP) - Gnopernicus
– An integrated screen reader and magnifier for Gnome - Gnome Onscreen Keyboard – Aims
to enable users to control Gnome without a standard keyboard (with
alternate input devices). - Linux Accessibility
Resource Site (LARS)