Cupertino, California — August 28, 2001 —
GNOME Foundation today announced the early access release of the
Gnome 2.0 Accessibility Framework. This framework paves the way for
a new generation of applications that integrate with assistive
technologies — enabling all users to access the GNOME desktop.
Sun’s contributions to the GNOME Accessibility Framework within
the GNOME open source project further underscores Sun’s commitment
to the delivery of an accessible desktop for the benefit of all
users in the workplace. The GNOME Accessibility Framework includes
a comprehensive toolkit and APIs that is comprised of the following
two key components:
- An Accessibility Toolkit (ATK API) and associated
implementation library integrated with the GTK+ 2.0 user interface
toolkit that provides built-in accessibility support – enabling
developers using GTK+ widgets to automatically build accessible
applications - An agnostic Assistive Technologies Service Provider Interface
(AT SPI) toolkit for developers to interface technologies such as
voice command, text-to-speech, screen readers, and screen
magnifiers with GNOME accessible applications on any UNIX
platform.
This built-in extensible accessibility framework provides the
foundation for developers to write accessible applications from the
ground up, provides built-in accessibility support for existing
GNOME applications, and enables assistive technologies developers
to adapt their enabling technologies to run on any UNIX platform.
“GNOME 2.0 will break down accessibility barriers” said Havoc
Pennington, Chairman of the Board of Directors GNOME Foundation.
Integrating the Accessibility Framework into the fabric of GTK+,
will enable developers to easily write accessible applications”.
“Because of the object- oriented structure of GTK+, it is easy for
application developers to incorporate accessibility capabilities
without having to change the architecture of their software” said
Owen Taylor, Engineering Lead for GTK+ at Red Hat. “This will lead
to more accessible applications being developed quickly for the
benefit of the entire GNOME user community”. “Our goal was to build
accessibility into the initial design, giving the GNOME application
developers uniformity across components by implementing one
standard API, while at the same time providing extensibility” –
said Robert O’Dea, Director of GNOME engineering at Sun Ireland.
“Also, our design philosophy took into consideration the many
graphical toolkits that could take advantage of the agnostic
approach of the AT SPI toolkit — this strategy saves time by
eliminating the need to reinvent accessibility for each platform.
Developers can get started with the Accessibility Framework now. We
have documentation and engineering support in place to help make
the upcoming release of GNOME 2.0 Accessible by first customer
ship. In addition, our Accessibility Lab is in place to help
assistive technology developers to write to the AT SPI while
leveraging available Sun hardware and software solutions”. “Nobody
builds a sidewalk without curb cuts we’re taking the same approach
with software – making GNOME 2.0 accessible will open new doors for
users with disabilities”, said Mike Rogers, Vice President of
Webtop and Applications Software at Sun. “With the growing
worldwide popularity of the GNOME desktop, it’s important that all
users have the freedom to interact with this powerful user
environment, using various assistive technologies to gain easy
access to information and applications, as well as collaborate with
team members”. “As use of GNOME spreads to more work environments,
accessibility for employees with disabilities becomes increasingly
important said Gregg C. Vanderheiden Ph.D. Director Trace R&D
Center at the University of Wisconsin”. “SUNs leadership and
efforts to ensure that GNOME is accessible is great news to both
Solaris and Linux users who have disabilities”.
Availability:
The GNOME Accessibility Framework is available now, please visit:
http://developer.gnome.org/feature/current/
GNOME Accessibility project status and documentation, please
visit:
GNOME Accessibility Project Status:
http://developer.gnome.org/projects/gap
Documentation:
API documentation:
http://developer.gnome.org/doc/API/2.0/atk/book1.html
http://developer.gnome.org/projects/gap/tech-docs
Keyboard navigation documentation:
http://developer.gnome.org/projects/gap/keyboardnav.html
About GNOME
Gnome is a unified, open and rich desktop that employs an intuitive
and appealing user interface, includes a wealth of productivity
applications, supports the latest industry standards and provides
an innovative component-based architecture, all built on a powerful
network-centric architecture. GNOME is a free software project
(also referred to as open source software) that is developing a
complete, easy to use desktop for Linux (GNU/Linux), BSD and a
variety of other Unix and Unix-like operating systems. The GNOME
desktop is used by millions of people around the world. More than
500 computer developers, including over 100 full-time, paid
developers, contribute their time and effort to the project.
About the GNOME Foundation
Comprised of hundreds of volunteer developers and industry-leading
companies, the GNOME Foundation is an organization committed to
supporting the advancement of GNOME. GNOME is an entirely free user
environment for desktops, networked servers and portable Internet
devices. The modern architecture and design of GNOME includes a
technically advanced application development platform and a
powerful end-user desktop environment. Major leading software
industry and computer manufacturers support the GNOME development
effort, which is led by a world-wide community of volunteers.
More information on GNOME is available at www.gnome.org