GNOME Project Receives $15,000 for Accessibility Work

GNOME Project Receives $15,000 for Accessibility Work October
28, 2010 — BOSTON, Mass. — The GNOME Project has received two
grants for a total of $15,000 from Mozilla and from the
F123.org-Mais Diferenças partnership for accessibility
work.

Mozilla has once again stepped up to support GNOME accessibility
(a11y) work with a $10,000 grant. The F123-Mais Diferenças
partnership has awarded a grant of $5,000 in total. This is the
second accessibility grant that GNOME has received from Mozilla in
the 2010 calendar year.

The F123.org-Mais Diferenças partnership has awarded
GNOME for its design and implementation of cursor and focus
tracking on the eZoom module of Compiz fusion, and other
accessibility improvements in GNOME to benefit persons with low
vision and other disabilities.

Mozilla is helping to fund improvements in the Orca screen
reader. The Mozilla Project has helped to identify performance
problems when Orca interacts with Gecko-based applications and
other desktop applications. The funds will be used to perform a
review of Orca performance bottlenecks and help fix problems that
are identified. Orca is an extremely important tool for users of
GNOME with reduced vision.

“The web is an integral part of everyday life and it’s important
for it to be accessible to everyone.” says David Bolter of Mozilla.
“I am thrilled we are again contributing funds to the GNOME
Foundation for critical efforts, including Orca, and events like
the accessibility hackfest at CSUN.”

GNOME used the previous funds for accessibility to participate
in the CSUN Conference. CSUN is one of the largest and most
important gatherings on the topic of technology and persons with
disabilities. While most technology that was showcased at this
event was proprietary and typically had a high price point, GNOME
offers a free personal computing platform that was feature rich,
easy to use, and accessible to people with many disabilities.

Because of different laws and regulations, technology
accessibility is a consideration and concern primarily to large
employers and government agencies. It is deeply important that free
software solutions be at par with proprietary applications in order
to gain adoption by government and large employers. The GNOME
Project held three talks at CSUN, demonstrating Orca, smaller
assistive technology projects, and an introduction of the
collaborative development model employed by open source projects
like GNOME.

The GNOME Foundation and Mozilla are committed to open source,
open standards, and open formats. Both organizations and their
contributors contribute to numerous projects to ensure an open Web
and open desktop platform for all users. Part of that effort is
working hard to ensure users with physical disabilities are able to
make use of a free desktop and Web browser.

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