GNOME focuses on accessibility -- with a little help from Mozilla and others
,----[ Quote ]
| The GNOME Foundation has turned its attention to accessibility for people
| with disabilities. To help improve both Web accessibility within GNOME and
| the project's long-term direction, the Mozilla Foundation is joining the
| GNOME advisory board, and plans to help improve integration of the XUL
| development platform with GNOME. Even more significantly, the GNOME
| Foundation, the Mozilla Foundation, Novell, Google, and Canonical are jointly
| sponsoring a $50,000 outreach program to help improve accessibility in GNOME.
`----
http://www.linux.com/feature/127801
GNOME Foundation Announces Program to Sponsor Accessibility Projects
http://www.gnome.org/press/releases/gop-a11y.html
Related:
Ground swell in favour of open source
,----[ Quote ]
| Krishnakant Mane, a fellow from Tata Institute of Fundamental Research,
| Mumbai (himself a visually challenged person), spoke on ubuntu and Orca -the
| accessible screen reader that works with Linux.
|
| "There are certainly more to using open source OS (Linux) and screen reader
| besides cost," Mane said.
| "For once, Orca can comfortably read Hindi without support from any other TTS
| (Text-To-Speech) engines, something proprietary screen readers have not
| achieved so far.
|
| It is also possible to invest a fraction of the money paid for licences to
| tweak it and make it work better."
`----
http://www.deccanherald.com/Content/Dec122007/cyberspace2007121140739.asp
Low cost software for and by visually impaired
,----[ Quote ]
| Chennai (PTI): A city-based visually impaired software professional has come
| out with an 'open source voice-enabled software' based on LINUX system, for
| the benefit of visually handicapped.
`----
http://www.hindu.com/thehindu/holnus/008200710231725.htm
Device Profile: Levelstar Icon PDA for visually-impaired users
,----[ Quote ]
| Levelstar used embedded Linux to create a PDA (personal digital assistant)
| for visually impaired users. The "Icon" has a custom hardware design with
| built-in 30GB hard drive, WiFi, Bluetooth, and USB, and comes with a full
| complement of "life managing software," much of it written from scratch for
| blind users.
`----
http://linuxdevices.com/articles/AT3329252460.html
Barric: SBC with open-source Linux OS
,----[ Quote ]
| The "Balloon" project is an open source, Xscale based, single
| board embedded computer using an open-source Linux operating
| system and a collection of open source tools to enable
| engineers to develop on the platform.
`----
http://www.embedded-control-europe.com/prodnews?cat=1&pid=214
Free Operating System For Blind: Adriane Knoppix
,----[ Quote ]
| Klaus and Adriane Knopper are working on an operating system for the
| blind, and as compared to other solutions available, this one is
| absolutely free!
`----
http://www.efytimes.com/efytimes/fullnews.asp?edid=17094
Accessibility building momentum
,----[ Quote ]
| Recently, I've seen encouraging signs that the ICDL will be fully
| supportive of people who want to be "computer literate" with free
| software. Wouldn't it be something if that privilege were extended
| to EVERY user, regardless of financial circumstance, language, or
| disability?
`----
http://www.markshuttleworth.com/archives/93
IBM to Help Colleges Make Software More Accessible for Disabled and Aged
,----[ Quote ]
| The students wrote computer code that checks word processing documents
| that adhere to the OpenDocument Format (ODF), to determine whether they
| are accessible. To propagate the technology, the students contributed
| their code to the open source community (sourceforge.org).
`----
http://biz.yahoo.com/iw/070323/0230042.html
Reviewing the "Accessibility of Ecma Office Open XML File Formats"
,----[ Quote ]
| When and how will the accessibility failings cited in the paper be fixed? ...
| For example, the white paper notes that MSOXML fails to support WCAG 1.0
| checkpoints 4.2, 5.2, 9.4, 10.2, 12.1, 12.2, and 12.4. The white paper
| further notes that MSOXML only partially supports checkpoints WCAG 1.0
| checkpoints 6.4, 8.1, 9.1, and 11.1. Some of these are particularly important
| for blind users needing to understand the context of table cells and for good
| Braille and DAISY transcription of tables - issues we found in ODF v1.0 and
| fixed in ODF v1.1. Will these things get fixed in the future? If so, when? By
| whom? With what outside review (if any)? To appear in what update of the
| specification?
`----
http://blogs.sun.com/korn/entry/reviewing_the_a_href_http
Talking with Microsoft's Gray Knowlton about MSOXML accessibility
,----[ Quote ]
| Gray, at the start of your blog comment you say "I’m not sure that the “who
| did this?” question matters as much as your post seems to indicate", and you
| spend several paragraphs describing your (non-accessibility) background at
| Microsoft and Adobe.
`----
http://blogs.sun.com/korn/entry/talking_with_microsoft_s_gray
Happy (belated) birthday: GNOME accessibility turns 6 years old
,----[ Quote ]
| Ubuntu version 6.10 is shipping, with Orca available and optionally
| talking at boot up from the LiveCD, and talking and Brailling through
| the install (making this the first evern graphical desktop that you
| can install using Braille, and the second one that you can install
| using speech)
`----
http://blogs.sun.com/korn/entry/happy_%28belated%29_birthday%3A_gnome_accessibility
http://tinyurl.com/yammg9
Firefox: An open source accessibility success story
,----[ Quote ]
| Mozilla and Firefox are gradually becoming a core part of the future
| of web accessibility, where the open source license is a huge
| advantage. The Firefox accessibility effort has now truly achieved
| ignition, not only with base accessibility support in Firefox, but
| also by leading the future of accessibility for dynamic web applications.
`----
http://www-306.ibm.com/able/resources/firefox.html
|
|