Re: [g-a-devel]Dasher & Gnome Accessibility ....

[Bill Haneman <bill haneman sun com>]

Thanks for introducing us, Michael:


On Wed, 2002-08-28 at 09:28, Michael Meeks wrote:
> Hi there,
> 
> 	Great to see the Dasher project; it seems you guys share Gnome's
> interest in making computers accessible, most pleasing to see you
> releasing it under the GPL.
> 
> 	Have you seen the Gnome accessibility work ? including our existing [
> but far more conventional ] on-screen keyboard 'gok'.

GOK is conventional in some ways, but it does include its own predictive
algorithms and dynamic behavior.  The ability to restructure itself in
response to changes in the active user interface is probably the most
groundbreaking feature of GOK, and this is made possible as Michael says
by the ability to query (and receive dynamic notification or) changes in
the user's GUI; thus GOK can remap and/or mirror UI elements and choices
as the user navigates a UI.

GOK also supports switch devices in addition to pointing devices.  Are
there any plans to extend dasher to other input methods besides
point/dwell, for instance switch device scanning methods? 

I am sure that as Micheal says, the GOK team would be very interested in
cooperation, but I will leave that to David, Chris, Simon, Jutta, and
other folks at the University of Toronto to comment more about that.

You may be interested in the mailing list
gnome-accessibility-devel gnome org, where technical aspects of the
Gnome Accessibility Project are discussed...

best regards,

-Bill

> 	The a11y architecture is briefly described here:
> 
> 		http://developer.gnome.org/projects/gap/
> 
> 	Although that page is horribly out of date - I notice [ the source
> 'preview' snapshots are very stale, we're shipping as part of the core
> of the Gnome 2.0 desktop ], the thrust of the architecture bits is
> accurate.
> 
> 	Since I imagine under X you can use raw XTest It remains to be seen
> what extra level of semantic information we can provide you with; but
> presumably the ability to introspect the widget hierarchy and adapt to
> novel widgets such as combo boxes; menus, toggle buttons etc. gives a
> wealth of possibilities.
> 
> 	Also - of course, the exisiting gok team would be most interested in
> some sort of collaboration at some stage I would imagine ? they are from
> the University of Toronoto: David, Chris and Simon.
> 
> 	Anyhow - apologies for introducing ourselves abruptly in this way;
> pleasing to see my Almer Mater churning out great stuff in this area.
> 
> 	Regards,
> 
> 		Michael.
> 
> On Tue, 2002-08-27 at 21:59, Luis Villa wrote:
> > Neat little alternative to a traditional onscreen keyboard, soon
> > (apparently) being released under GPL:
> > 
> > http://www.inference.phy.cam.ac.uk/dasher/
> > 
> > There is a demo binary that runs on Linux. 
> > 
> > It's pretty nifty, if a little hard to get used to.
> > 
> > Just an FYI-
> > Luis
> > _______________________________________________
> > gnome-accessibility-list mailing list
> > gnome-accessibility-list gnome org
> > http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/gnome-accessibility-list
> -- 
>  mmeeks gnu org  <><, Pseudo Engineer, itinerant idiot
> 
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