Re: Dasher 3.1.9 released

[Chris Ball <cjb mrao cam ac uk>]

Hi, Murray.

On Thu, Oct 23, 2003 at 04:00:52PM +0200, Murray Cumming Comneon com wrote:
> As I understand it, Dasher is aimed at accessibility needs, and maybe at
> handhelds.

Exactly so.  We're funded mainly to research Dasher as an accessibility
tool, but an interesting sideline has been finding out that Dasher can
be much faster than other input methods on a keyboard-less PDA.

> So it would be nice to hear from the accessibility folks about this.
> Do they like it? Are they using it? Does it meet their needs? 

We're hoping to start receiving answers to your questions as users try 
the new build, since yesterday's beta release is the first release of 
Dasher that really integrates well with Gnome accessibility -- we can 
now send the text generated with Dasher to other X apps, and embed the 
menu tree from a11y-aware applications into Dasher (thanks to at-spi); 
so, one can perform tasks such as launching processes using the panel 
menus or changing font settings in AbiWord without leaving Dasher.

> Is there unwanted overlap with existing accessibility tools such as 
> gok? Etc.

I think Dasher and gok complement each other well.  Dasher's predictive 
nature means that it will often output text faster, but it does require 
good eyesight and very time-critical motor control -- without which a 
large gok with an eyetracker or headmouse may prove a better solution.  

- Chris.
-- 
Chris Ball                                        <cjb mrao cam ac uk>
  Inference Group:            <http://www.inference.phy.cam.ac.uk/is/>
  The Dasher Project:     <http://www.inference.phy.cam.ac.uk/dasher/>