Re: Dasher 3.1.9 released

[Peter Korn <Peter Korn Sun COM>]

Hi Murray,

> > ...
> As I understand it, Dasher is aimed at accessibility needs, and maybe 
> at handhelds.
> 
> 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? Is there 
> unwanted overlap with existing accessibility tools such as gok? Etc.

To amplify on Chris Ball's reply, Dasher is a different approach to
addressing the needs of users with significant physical impairments. 
There is such a wide range of physical impairments (limited/no mobility,
tremors, spasms, etc.) that it is important to have a multiplicity of
approaches and alternative input mechanisms.  While GOK addresses a very
wide range of user needs (and especially excels at single-switch use -
better than any commercial product on the market for any desktop in my
opinion), Dasher is particularly well suited to users with (x,y)
coordinate motor control, and further works pretty well for those users
who have only a single axis of fairly well controlled movement.  

As Chris said, the two technologies compliment eachother.  I for one am
delighted that we have both on our open source desktop!


Regards,

Peter Korn
Sun Accessibility team