CSUN 2004 trip report
- From: Peter Korn <peter korn sun com>
- To: JA-PR basso SFBay Sun COM
- Subject: CSUN 2004 trip report
- Date: Wed, 21 Apr 2004 20:25:40 -0700
Greetings,
Last month was the annual CSUN Conference on Technology and Persons with
Disabilities. Sun Microsystems highlighted accessibility solutions for
computers running UNIX (such as the newly released Sun Java Desktop System,
the Solaris operating environment, GNU/Linux, and other computer systems). A
series of 5 sessions on Thursday hosted by Sun went into accessibility
topics in depth, and a special guest from Oracle corporation demonstrated
how he uses Gnopernicus daily on his GNU/Linux system as part of his job to
develop and test software and web pages using Oracle's JDeveloper 10g (a
large Java development tool). A session on Friday given by members of the
Accessibility Working Group of the Free Standards Group discussed the
development of open and free standards for accessibility. Visitors to Sun's
booth could try all of the technologies demonstrated in the sessions, as
well as see both JAWS and ZoomText supporting Java applications and
StarOffice. Many also signed up for the hands-on guided tours of the Sun
Java Desktop using the Gnopernicus open source screen reader (shown with
both BAUM and Alva Braille displays) and GOK dynamic on-screen keyboard
(shown with both the Tash USB switches, the Madentec Tracker and Origin
Instruments HeadMouse).
Below is a fairly detailed summary of each of the five sessions Sun hosted
on Thursday:
o The first session Sun hosted was "The Accessible Sun Java(TM) Desktop
System" - which detailed a compelling and accessible desktop
alternative built on GNU/Linux with built-in assistive technologies.
It was given by Peter Korn of Sun's accessibility team.
Peter began with an overview of the Sun Java Desktop, noting that it
is built on top of the open source GUN/Linux operating system, and
uses the open source GNOME graphical environment. Sun adds to that
base the StarOffice application suite which reads & writes Microsoft
Word, Excel, and PowerPoint files; the Mozilla web browser; the
Evolution e-mail and calendaring application that can use Microsoft
Exchange servers; an instant messaging application that supports all of
the instant messaging systems; and of course a full Java platform
environment - all for a remarkably affordable $100/year/desktop
license.
Peter showed what the Sun Java Desktop System looks like, with a
Launch menu that will be familiar to users of the Windows Start menu,
and many other elements that will be familiar to Windows users (such
as the Accessories menu, desktop icons and the trash, and Network
Places that supports Windows file sharing). Peter also highlighted
some of the many desktop applications that come with the Java Desktop
System including PDF & Postscript viewers, the CD-player and sound
recorder, a digital camera capture application, Macromedia Flash,
Real Player, and a video conferencing application.
Peter then demonstrated the accessibility features built into to the
shipping Java Desktop System. He first showed how the entire desktop
was operable from the keyboard, launching applications, moving their
windows, and navigating through complex applications. He then
demonstrated "AccessX" keyboard functionality (also known as the TRACE
keyboard accessibility features): StickyKeys, RepeatKeys, SlowKeys,
BounceKeys, and MouseKeys. Finally he showed several of the desktop
themes, including the high-contrast, low-contrast, and large-print
themes for people with mild visual impairments.
Peter noted that one of the key problems that schools and enterprises
face today in deploying accessible desktops is the effective
requirement of dedicating a system to classes of users with different
disabilities. He demonstrated an alternative hardware desktop
solution from Sun that nicely addresses this issue: the SunRay
Ultra-Thin network terminal. He described SunRay as an inexpensive
network appliance with little more intelligence (and no more state)
than a telephone system handset: all of the action is in a server with
the SunRay simply acting as a remote display and input/output
system for the user. Describing a typical work-day at Sun, he took
his actual employee badge - which is also a JavaCard smart chip card -
and inserted it into one of the SunRay terminals on stage. He then
logged into his Solaris GNOME desktop, and choose the high-contrast
large-print theme setting. Just as if he were moving to another
Sun building down the street, he removed his badge, moved to another
SunRay terminal (which he said could be in another building), and
inserted it - and instantly saw his high-contrast large-print desktop
running. He said that because his session is running on a central,
networked, Sun server - and not on a physical box on the desk in
front of him - he had the freedom to move to any SunRay in any
Sun building in Northern California (and later this year to any Sun
building in North America!) and get his personal, customized desktop
immediately. He finished the SunRay demonstration by describing plans
to support assistive technologies on SunRay, so that a screen reader
user would have the same facility with SunRay as anyone else - without
having to use only the special computer that has the screen reader
installed.
Moving into the development realm, Peter switched to a recent build
of the open source GNOME 2.6 beta desktop, to demonstrate the assistive
technologies in development for inclusion in a future edition of the
Sun Java Desktop System. For people who are legally blind, Peter
gave a brief demonstration of the Gnopernicus open-source screen reader
and screen magnifier with Braille support. He noted several of the key
features, including support for over 50 Braille display, magnification
to 16x with picture smoothing, and screen review functionality. He
urged attendees interested to learn more about Gnopernicus to return
in the afternoon for an extended session on it. Then for people with
severe physical disabilities, Peter gave a brief demonstration of the
GOK dynamic on-screen keyboard. He showed that GOK is far more than
a simple rendition of an alphanumeric keyboard on the screen, but
makes use of the accessibility framework in the GNOME desktop to
present a series of dynamic keyboards containing things like the
current application's menus, toolbar, and dialog box items for much
more rapid use by single-switch users. He urged attendees interested
to learn more about GOK to return in the afternoon for a dedicated
session on it.
Peter then discussed why Sun was leading the open source accessibility
work in GNOME. He talked about the four themes behind this work:
(1) building accessibility in from the start (vs. bolting it on as an
afterthought); (2) the evolution of screen access technologies from the
original text console, through the GUI and off-screen models, to the
approach Sun pioneered first with the Java platform and now in GNOME
of direct access through supported programming interfaces; (3) Sun's
proposal of a formal division of responsibility for accessibility:
the job of the platform, of the application, and of assistive
technologies; and (4) the idea that the platform, the accessibility
infrastructure, and even the assistive technologies themselves can
be open-source, which brings tremendous new opportunities to those
developing accessibility technologies and the ultimate users of
desktop computers.
Peter noted that today users of accessible desktop computers face
several problems, including the costs of specialized assistive
technology, the need to dedicate systems for use by various (and
different) user populations in public settings, that accessible
systems today are very brittle (don't let a non-disabled user mess
with it!), and that upgrades are frequent and expensive. Peter then
compared this to the Sun Java Desktop System: everything is built in
at a great price, accessibility is an explicitly supported part
of the design, and the assistive technology is delivered from the
same vendor as all of the applications providing a single source for
service & support.
Peter asked, and then answered the question of who is using the Sun
Java Desktop System today: the UK Office of Government Commerce
is standardizing on it and the UK National Health service is deploying
it on 800,000 desktops; and the China Standard Software company has
adopted the Sun Java Desktop System and is deploying 500,000 to 1
million copies across China in 2004, the first installment on their
bid to meet a government mandate of 200 million open source desktops
in China by the end of the decade.
Peter also asked, and then answered the question of who is using
GNU/Linux: the city of Munich has rejected Microsoft for Linux on
14,000 desktops; the Brazilian government has decreed that all
government desktops shall move to Linux; the South African government
offices are to use Linux; and the Nigerian Ministry of Education
has adopted Linux.
Finally Peter ended the presentation with bonus demonstration, showing
Dasher, an innovative assistive technology developed by the University
of Cambridge that is optimized for eye-tracking and head-mouse systems.
Dasher is available on for a number of desktop and palmtop systems,
but when it is running on GNOME it takes advantage of the rich
accessibility framework there to allow users direct control of all
of their applications through the Dasher interface.
For more information about the Sun accessibility effort, the GNOME
open source desktop, the GNOME accessibility framework, the Sun
Java Desktop System, and the SunRay Ultra-Thin client, please see
the following web pages respectively:
http://www.sun.com/access
http://www.gnome.org/start
http://developer.gnome.org/projects/gap
http://www.sun.com/software/javadesktopsystem
http://www.sun.com/sunray
o The second session Sun hosted was "StarOffice 7 - the Accessible
Office Suite" - which described and demonstrated this rich suite
of accessible office applications that can read and write files
from Microsoft Office,. It was given by Peter Korn of Sun's
accessibility team.
Peter began with a history of StarOffice - that it was developed by
the Germany company Star Division GmbH which Sun purchased several
years ago. Sun decided to re-license the overwhelming majority of the
StarOffice code as open source, creating the OpenOffice.org community
and application around it. Peter detailed the 6 key components of
StarOffice and OpenOffice.org: Writer (a full-featured word processor),
Calc (a powerful spreadsheet), Impress (the slide presentation package
that in fact Peter was using for this presentation), Draw (a drawing
application supports many image formats), Base (a programmable database
system), and the equation editor with support for MathML. He then
noted that these application ship with Sun Solaris, the Sun Java
Desktop System, and many GNU/Linux distributions; and also that they
are available on Windows, bundled by Sony and others with their PCs.
Peter then described in detail the key features of the various
applications that are part of StarOffice/OpenOffice.org. He noted that
Writer reads/writes MS-Word, RTF, text, HTML, DocBook, Palm, Pocket
Word, and Word Perfect file formats; that it will export to PDF; that
it can create complex documents, embed charts, spreadsheets, etc.
all within the document; that it has full style-sheet support; and that
it provides automatic spelling correction. He described Calc's
features, including that it reads/writes MS-Excel, dBASE, SYLK, Lotus
1-2-3, DIF, Pocket Excel, HTML file formats; it will export to PDF;
it can create 3-D charts & graphs; that it supports multiple sheets per
file; and that it has a large library of functions, including Database,
Financial, Logical, Mathematical, and Statistical functions. He
noted Impress' features, including that it reads/writes MS-PowerPoint
files; that it will export to PDF, HTML, and Macromedia Flash; that
it includes a large library of transition, animation & 3-D effects;
and that it has a built-in spell checker. Finally, Peter talked about
the Draw application features, including that it reads/writes AutoCAD,
EPS, Pict, SVG, Bitmap, GIF, JPEG, Photoshop, TIFF, & PhotoCD files;
that it will export to PDF, HTML, and Macromedia Flash; that it
includes vector and bitmap image manipulation tools; and that it has a
built-in spell checker. Peter also noted that the native file format
for all StarOffice and OpenOffice.org files is an open, published XML
standard, and that the office suites have been translated into many
languages, with Sun specifically supporting: English, German, French,
Italian, Spanish, Swedish, Simplified & Traditional Chinese, Japanese,
and Korean.
Peter then discussed the accessibility features in StarOffice and
OpenOffice.org. He noted that for people with mild physical
disabilities, virtually every aspect of the office suite is operable
entirely from the keyboard. For people with mild visual impairments,
the office suite supports the selected desktop theme (on both GNOME
and Windows desktops) - including large print, and high & low contrast
themes. And for people needing to use assistive technologies, Peter
described that both StarOffice and OpenOffice.org implement the
Java Accessibility architecture - thereby supporting the use of
JAWS and ZoomText on the Windows platform, and Gnopernicus and GOK
on the GNOME desktop.
Peter continued with a demonstration of StarOffice accessibility. He
first showed theme support by switching to the high-contrast theme
of the Sun Java Desktop, and then launching StarOffice Calc, which
rendered the window in the high-contrast theme. Staying with Calc,
Peter built a small spreadsheet using only the keyboard. He then
switched to a different computer running the Sun Java Desktop but
also running the Gnopernicus screen reader/magnifier, where he inserted
a StarOffice demo CD (handed out to everyone in this session) and
proceeded to install StarOffice with the entire installation voiced
and magnified by Gnopernicus. Finally he closed Gnopernicus and
launched GOK to demonstrate single switch access to StarOffice. Peter
discussed the difficulties single switch users have in navigating
complex dialog boxes and then showed how with GOK and the ability to
grab the StarOffice toolbar a single switch user could change text
attributes to bold, italic, and underline for entering text in only
three keystrokes per attribute change - a dramatic improvement compared
to single switch users in Windows or Macintosh.
Not to leave Windows users out, Peter then switched to a computer
running Windows, and repeated some of the same demos there. He showed
StarOffice support for the Windows desktop theme (this time using
the large-print theme), and he operated the office suite using
the keyboard exclusively. He then launched JAWS, and showed JAWS
reading text in the Writer application. Exiting JAWS, he launched
ZoomText, and demonstrated speech and magnification in the Calc
spreadsheet application. Finally he showed the Accessibility
Options dialog, and noted the special accessibility features in
StarOffice: whether it should support the system colors & fonts,
whether it should load support for assistive technologies, whether
it should support keyboard selection in read-only text (where normally
there is no text caret), and whether it should turn text animation
off.
Peter ended the presentation talking about who is using the popular
StarOffice suite: the 800,000 employees of the U.K. Ministry of
Health who are moving the Sun Java Desktop System; the 500,00 to
1 million users of the Sun Java Desktop system that is being deployed
in China this year; every user of a Sony PC sold outside of the
United States, and the ~240 million students worldwide attending
schools that received StarOffice through a $6 billion donation
Sun made two years ago. Finally, Peter noted that StarOffice is
available for purchase directly from Amazon.com, CompUSA, Fry's
Electronics, Staples, Circuit City, Best Buy, Micro Center, OfficeMax
and Office Depot, and that it can also be purchased directly from Sun.
For more information about the StarOffice & OpenOffice.org
accessibility effort, to purchase StarOffice from Sun, or to
download OpenOffice.org, please see the following web pages
respectively:
http://ui.openoffice.org/accessibility/
http://www.sun.com/software/star/staroffice/get
http://download.openoffice.org/1.1.0/
o The third session Sun hosted was "Evolution and Mozilla
Accessibility: e-mail, calendaring, and the web" - which described
the features of these two applications in detail, as well as
a bonus demo of the GAIM instant messaging client. It was given by
Peter Korn & Marc Mulcahy (along with a special guest appearance
over the Internet by Bill Haneman), all of Sun's accessibility team.
The session began with Evolution, which Peter described as a
"look-alike" alternative to Microsoft Outlook (only without the
viruses). He described how Evolution will work with most existing
mail and calendaring environments, supporting IMAP, POP, SMTP,
and Authenticated SMTP servers; and that it specifically works with
Sun Java System Calendaring & Messenging servers, with Lotus Notes
servers, and with Microsoft Exchanges servers (this last one via a
3rd party connector). He also noted that Evolution will import mail
from Eudora, UNIX mbox, MH, Maildir, Netscape, and Outlook Express
mailboxes; and it supports multiple account management and Palm
synchronization.
Next, Peter noted some of the key features of Mozilla, including
tabbed browsing support, the popup ad blocker, "find as you type"
functionality for typing the contents of a hyperlink to select it,
and the sophisticated junk mail filtering capabilities in the
Mozilla e-mail application. He then described the key accessibility
features of both Evolution and Mozilla: keyboard operability of
the user interface and in manipulation of content; support for the
GNOME desktop theme, and support for the GNOME accessibility
architecture and thereby interoperability with the Gnopernicus and
GOK assistive technologies.
Peter then gave a demo of Evolution, showing it on the Sun Java
Desktop System with the Gnopernicus screen reader/magnifier. He
noted that assistive technology support in Evolution is still in
the early stages, and that he was using a special build of Evolution
with accessibility support that was in the process of being put back
to the open source master cod repository. Peter opened his e-mail in
Evolution, read one of the messages, and composed a reply all while
using Gnopernicus with speech and magnification.
Exiting Evolution, Peter launched Mozilla and demonstrated access
to the web through Gnopernicus on the Sun Java Desktop System.
He noted that there were still a number of keyboard navigation issues
that were being worked on for Mozilla accessibility, but nonetheless
managed to successfully browse the Microsoft Web site. In fact,
he went to a page listing an example PowerPoint slide for education,
and when he activated the link Mozilla downloaded the slideshow, which
was then automatically opened in StarOffice. Using Gnopernicus,
Peter proceeded to read through the contents of the first slide, with
Gnopernicus correctly indicating when the text he was reading on
the slide was in boldface!
At this point Marc Mulcahy came on stage for a discussion and
demonstration GAIM, the open source GNOME instant messenger application
(which also ships as part of the Sun Java Desktop System). Peter noted
that GAIM supports more instant messaging protocols than any other
IM client, including AIM/ICQ & TOC from AOL, Yahoo Messenger, MSN,
IRC, Jabber, Napster, Zephyr, and Gadu-Gadu. He said that GAIM
supports web proxying (to get outside a firewall), allows you to
maintain buddy lists and be informed when your buddies are on-line,
and provides rich sound events inform you when things happen (like your
buddy goes on-line).
In order to ensure that GAIM worked well with Gnopernicus and other
assistive technologies, Marc made a few modifications to the GAIM
source code, with were accepted back into the open source project.
Thanks to these small changes, Marc then demonstrated how he uses GAIM
for having IM conversations with Gnopernicus. Not to be left out,
Peter opened another GAIM session on another computer running the Sun
Java Desktop System, this time using the GOK dynamic on-screen
keyboard. And to round out the IM chat session, they were joined by
Bill Haneman from Dublin Ireland chatting over the Internet. Peter
invited people in the audience to interact with Bill through us,
and as Marc and Peter entered their questions, Bill's responses were
spoken to the room from Marc's computer via Gnopernicus. Peter ended
the session by noting that GAIM was more than a nice way to keep in
touch with your friends - the GNOME development team actively uses
instant messaging and the IRC service for all manner of engineering
discussions. GAIM accessibility is critical if developers with
disabilities are to participate successfully in many open source
projects.
For more information about the Mozilla accessibility project
in general, and Mozilla accessibility on UNIX platforms, please
see the following web pages respectively:
http://www.mozilla.org/projects/ui/accessibility/
http://www.mozilla.org/projects/ui/accessibility/unix/
o The fourth session Sun hosted was "GOK - the open source Dynamic
On-screen Keyboard" - which went into depth on the on-screen keyboard
developed by the University of Toronto Adaptive Technology Resource
Center and which is a core part of the GNOME desktop starting with
GNOME 2.4. Jan Richards of University of Toronto ATRC gave the
presentation, along with demonstrations by Peter Korn of Sun's
accessibility team.
Jan began the talk with an overview of GOK: it is an on-screen
keyboard and more that utilizes the GNOME accessibility framework
to provide a series of dynamic keyboards on screen for rapid
access to applications and the desktop. He stated that it was
free software - using the LGPL library - designed for UNIX and
UNIX-like operating systems, and that it had been fully translated
into ~30 languages. He said the mission of GOK is to "give the user
access to all the functions of the UNIX and GNU/Linux desktop in the
least number of steps." He said that UToronto choose GNOME because
it is one of the two popular desktops for UNIX and GNU/Linux, and
that Sun Microsystems and the open source community have have built
a powerful accessibility infrastructure into GNOME which is necessary
for the advanced features of GOK. He noted that KDE, the other
popular desktop for UNIX and GNU/Linux systems, is presently working
to support the same infrastructure in a future edition of that desktop.
Jan then talked about the project's history, and GOK's philosophy.
He said that work began in 2002 by a group of clinicians, students,
programmers and visionaries with a lot of experience with users
with motor impairments. Their philosophy is to put the user first,
and GOK is designed to enable clinicians to asses people with motor
impairments who would then configure GOK to take best advantage of
the motor function of that particular user.
Jan showed a series of pictures of the GOK preferences dialog. He
show the Actions pane, and described how a clinician (or user) would
define a set of actions a user could perform (with switches or a
joystick) for an x or x,y axis movement. He showed the Feedback pane,
where a clinician (or user) would define the visual and/or auditory
feedback to associate with various actions. He showed the Access
Methods pane, where the clinician (or user) would choose the
method by which the user would generate input, and the actions
(defined earlier) that trigger that input - including direct selection,
dwell selection, and scanning (automatic, inverse, row/column,
column/row, and single key scanning). He showed the Appearance pane,
where a clinician (or user) has great control of the visual appearance
of the on-screen keyboard. And finally he showed the Prediction pane,
where a clinician (or user) can enable word completion and command
prediction, as well as load an auxiliary word list for word completion.
Jan described the GOK user experience, starting from a "main" keyboard
with the buttons "Compose", "Window", "Mouse", "Launcher", "Activate",
"GOK", "Menus", "Toolbars", and "UI Grab". He said that additional
dynamic keyboards come up as the user interacts with their
desktop and applications. Jan then described in detail each keyboard
and its function. He first described the static keyboards: the
"Compose" keyboard - the basic alphanumeric hardware keyboard
rendered as a window of buttons on the screen; the "Window" keyboard
presenting buttons for moving the GOK window around on the screen
or docking it to the top/bottom of the screen; the "Mouse" keyboard
for moving and the clicking the mouse; the "Launcher" keyboard which
is based on a user-editable XML file and lists applications a user
can launch; and the "GOK" keyboard for getting help, opening the GOK
preferences dialog, and exiting the application. He then described
the dynamic keyboards: the "Activate" keyboard which lists all of the
running applications on the desktop for rapidly switching between
them (much faster than scanning to ALT, then scanning to TAB, then
scanning again to TAB, etc. to switch); the "Menus" keyboard which
reaches into the running application and dynamically builds a keyboard
of the menus for rapid selection; the "Toolbar" keyboard which likewise
reaches into the running application and dynamically builds a keyboard
of the toolbar for rapid selection; and the "UI Grab" keyboard which
examines the topmost window and dynamically builds a keyboard with
all of the "user interface elements" on it (the buttons, checkboxes,
popup menus, editable text fields, etc.) for rapid access - especially
useful in dialog boxes. He noted that these dynamic keyboards
know about the kinds of objects they are displaying, and optionally use
color and other visual indicators to show the user the kind of object
represented with each button on the keyboard. Further, selecting
a button representing an editable text field will not only bring
focus to that text field, it will also bring up the "Compose" keyboard
for immediate editing.
At this point in the presentation, Jan invited Peter to give a live
demonstration of GOK on the Sun Java Desktop System. Peter began
with GOK on the GNOME desktop and a TASH USB Mini-click single-switch
device. He observed that with any other on-screen keyboard running
on Windows, launching applications is a lengthy and painful process
of scanning to CTRL to latch it, then scanning to ESC to bring up
the Start menu, then scanning repeatedly to down and right arrow
to navigate the Start menu to finally get to the application you
want to launch (he started this process on the GNOME desktop from
the GOK "Compose" keyboard, then gave up in frustration). He
said that in GOK there is a better way: simply activate the GNOME
menu panel from the "Activate" keyboard, choose the "Applications"
menu from the "Menus" keyboard, and immediately select the application
you want to run (or the submenu listing the application); dramatically
faster! Alternately of course, Peter noted that frequently launched
applications could be placed in the "Launcher" menu; in fact that's
what he did before this presentation to put GAIM and StarOffice there.
Peter proceeded to launch the GNOME Text Editor application, and
using the "Compose" keyboard, he wrote a sentence. He then noted
that if he wanted to edit this sentence, that on any other on-screen
keyboard on any other platform he would have to slowly scan down
to the arrow keys to slowly move character at a time (or latch
the CTRL key to use the arrow keys to move a word at a time).
But then he brought up the "Text-manipulation" keyboard, and
demonstrated rapid selection by letter, word, line, and sentence,
as well as immediate access to cut, copy, and paste functionality
via the GNOME Accessibility architecture. He then used the "Menus"
keyboard to rapidly choose "Save" from the "File" menu, and the
"UI Grab" keyboard to put the contents of that dialog onto a
dynamic keyboard to quickly choose a directory, a filename, and
the "OK" button.
Peter then exited Text Editor, and brought up the GNOME Help system.
Again comparing GOK to other on-screen keyboards for other platforms,
he noted that the normal and tedious way to select hyperlinks is
to repeatedly scan to the TAB key until the correct link is focused,
and then scan to the SPACE key to select it (and repeat this
process again and again until you find the help document you want).
But then he showed how the GOK "UI Grab" keyboard would immediately
extract all of the hyperlinks and put them on a keyboard dynamically,
for immediate selection. Going to the "Accessibility Guide" help
document, he showed how the GNOME Help system displayed a table
of contents in a tree-view pane on the left side of the window, and
how GOK's "UI Grab" keyboard also listed that table of contents on
the dynamic keyboard allowing him to rapidly go to Chapter 3.2 titled
"Navigating the Desktop Background" in just three clicks of his
single-switch device.
Peter emphasized that this all works because of the GNOME
Accessibility architecture, which is implemented across the entire
GNOME desktop as well as in large applications like StarOffice and
Mozilla and Java applications (all of which Sun is incorporating
in the Sun Java Desktop System). To underscore this point, Peter
then launched StarOffice and used the GOK "Menu" keyboard to open
a new text document. Noting how difficult it usually is for a
single switch user to navigate a complex dialogs like Character
Font and Style dialogs, he used the "Toolbar" GOK keyboard to
put the character attribute settings "Bold", "Italic", and
"Underline" (among others) onto a keyboard, and in three clicks
each quickly selected them. He then proceeded to enter text from
the "Compose" keyboard that was italicized, boldface, and underlined!
Having demonstrated GOK at length with single switch, Peter then
changed the Access Method to "Dwell selection", placed a reflective
dot onto his forehead, and used a Madentec Tracker to operate GOK.
He re-launched the GNOME Help application and followed a few
hyperlinks, all simply by moving his head.
For more information about GOK and about the GNOME Accessibility
architecture, please see the following web pages respectively:
http://www.gok.ca
http://developer.gnome.org/projects/gap
o The final session Sun hosted was "Gnopernicus - the open source
Screen Reader/magnifier" - which was a double-length presentation
covering all aspects of Gnopernicus: how it works, the motivation
behind developing it, the voices & Braille displays supported,
demonstrations of Gnopernicus on the Sun Java Desktop System, and
also a special guest presentation from Oracle Corporation discussing
their use of Gnopernicus with their large Java application
JDeveloper 10g. This presentation was given by Thomas Friehoff of
BAUM Retec AG, Marc Mulcahy and Peter Korn of Sun's accessibility
team, and Kerstin Goldsmith and Mike Pedersen of Oracle Corporation.
Thomas began the presentation with a discussion about who BAUM is
and why they are developing an open source screen reader for the
UNIX and GNU/Linux desktop. He noted that BAUM has been developing
products for the blind and visually impaired for over 20 years,
focused on the mission: "To offer Products and Services to Blind and
Visually impaired persons, to make them more successful in their
business and private life!" However, he said, lately they are
frustrated with the current situation for accessibility: Windows
is dominating the market, and they and their customers are looking
for alternatives, so BAUM decided to be early adopters of the new
accessibility infrastructure and technology for UNIX and GNU/Linux.
Thomas also said that GNU/Linux is growing in popularity in Germany:
many users (mostly private individuals) are asking for access to
the graphical environments in Linux, the German Parliament recently
decided to use Linux on their desktops, and there is a lot of interest
in the public sector as well.
Thomas said that Gnopernicus is targeted for x86 "PC" hardware
running GNOME, X Windows, and Linux; and also for Sun hardware
running GNOME, X, and Sun Solaris. He said that architecturally,
Gnopernicus is simply another application running on the system,
using the platform accessibility infrastructure to communicate with
other applications in a standard and supported fashion. Furthermore,
Thomas noted that Gnopernicus doesn't patch the operating system or
graphical framework, nor does it replace any video or keyboard
drivers. Rather, he said, it functions by virtue of the
accessibility framework built into the platform. Thomas noted that
because of this, Gnopernicus supports all "native GNOME applications
that use the GTK+ graphical library, all Java applications using
the Swing graphical library, StarOffice and OpenOffice.org, and
Mozilla. And now that the KDE community is working on support for
the accessibility framework developed for GNOME, Thomas said that
in the future KDE/Qt applications should also be supported.
Thomas then walked through a series of slides that showed the
Gnopernicus user interface. He showed the Gnopernicus main menu,
General Settings dialog, where a user turns on or off support for
Braille, Magnification, Speech, and the Braille Monitor window
(a software "Braille display" which shows what is rendered on a
physical Braille display). He went through the Magnification
settings dialogs, which contain the following features: mouse
cursor display on/off, mouse cursor magnification & color choice;
full-screen cross-hair on/off, size, color, and inversion; zoom
magnification factor (2x, 3x, etc.) separate in the x & y dimension;
zoom region placement on the screen; inversion on/off, panning on/off,
smoothing mode, and mouse magnification tracking mode. Next Thomas
talked about Braille settings: the choice of Braille device and
serial port; language translation table; Braille cursor cell choice;
Braille position switch action (move the mouse & click, move the
caret, or output one of a wide range of information about the letter
or object at a particular Braille cell). He also noted that
Gnopernicus supports over 50 different Braille displays. Thomas
talked about the speech settings, with the ability to tune how
punctuation is spoken, turn on character or word echo, have speech
count multiple consecutive characters, echo modifiers, echo cursor
changes, and whether spaces should be spoken. He also noted the
Gnopernicus pronunciation dictionary. Thomas showed the voice
settings dialog, where the user can change the way different things
in the user interface are spoken: names of objects vs. their roles
vs. their accelerator keys; each one of these can be spoken by
a particular text-to-speech engine with a particular set of settings
(pitch, volume, and rate) - thus allowing the user to quickly
tell from how something is spoken what sort of thing it is.
Thomas discussed the powerful Find feature of Gnopernicus, which
can search within the window, application, or desktop for text,
specific text attributes, or named graphics.
Leaving aside the graphical user interface portion of Gnopernicus,
Thomas next discussed the keyboard interface. He said that
Gnopernicus uses the numeric keypad for commands, and groups
related commands together into a "layer". The 0 key on the
numeric keypad is used to switch between layers. Gnopernicus
provides two navigation layers containing commands for screen
review movement, describing the surroundings of the focused
object, navigating the UI hierarchy, and immediately speaking
the title bar, status bar, toolbar, and menubar. The mouse
layer allows the user to simulate mouse button clicks. The
two magnification layers provide commands for increasing and
decreasing the magnification level, setting cursor size and crosshair
thickness, toggling cursor magnification on/off, toggling picture
image smoothing, changing the panning mode, and changing the
focus tracking mode. The speech layer provides commands for
increasing and decreasing the rate, volume, and pitch, as well
as a pause/resume command. Finally, the Braille layer includes
commands to scroll the Braille display in various increments.
All of these commands can be remapped by the user to different keys
in different layers of the numeric keypad, and in addition
there are a variety of commands assigned to keys on a Braille
display so that Braille users can execute them without taking their
hands off of the Braille display.
Thomas ended the slide portion of his talk with a few conclusions:
that Gnopernicus is open source, and is bundled with the GNOME 2
platform; that it is targeted at GNU/Linux and Solaris systems;
and that it is under heavy development with testable versions
available in source code form in the GNOME source code repository.
Marc Mulcahy then took the stage, and gave a brief demonstration
of all of the voices supported by Gnopernicus. Gnopernicus uses
the gnome-speech architecture, and there are gnome-speech drivers
for the open source Festival and FreeTTS engines, as well as
drivers for the Cepstral line of commercial text-to-speech engines,
and for the Fonix DECtalk engine. Marc demonstrated all of the
voices, in multiple languages, that are available with these
engines. In addition, Marc gave a preview of gnome-speech support
for the IBM ViaVoice engine, though he noted that there are still
a few issues to work out before this will be ready for end users.
After Marc, Peter Korn came up and gave a series of Gnopernicus
demonstrations on the GNOME desktop. He launched Gnopernicus and
then took the audience on a tour of the desktop through speech.
He noted that his copy of Gnopernicus was configured so that the
text of objects was spoken in one voice, and information about those
objects in another (thus pressing F10 to bring up the File menu
resulted in "File" being spoken in one voice, and "Menu, shortcut
Alt F, 11 items" in a somewhat softer and quieter voice). Peter
then reprised a demo he gave earlier in the day, launching the
Mozilla web browser, following a bookmark to the Microsoft web
site, browsing that page, and downloading a PowerPoint slide
that was then automatically opened in StarOffice, where he
proceeded to use the keyboard navigation features of StarOffice
to go through the graphical slide and read that slide's text.
Observing that some of the text on the slide was in boldface, Peter
move the text caret to that boldface text and noted to the audience
that the software Braille display in the Braille Monitor window was
correctly indicating the text was bold in the four status cells on
the far right end of the display. Peter continued his demonstration
in StarOffice, entering text in the word processor and opening a
spreadsheet where he navigated through the cells (being told by
Gnopernicus always which cell he was on, as well as the cell's text).
The final segment of this lengthy presentation was given by
Kerstin Goldsmith and Mike Pedersen of Oracle Corporation.
Kerstin and Mike talked about one of Oracle's developer tools -
Oracle JDeveloper 10g - a large application written entirely
in the Java platform and designed to be accessible to people with
disabilities. Kerstin said that JDeveloper 10g is a powerful
integrated development environment (IDE) for creating Java
applications and web services. Filled with features, Kerstin
noted that JDeveloper 10g includes the Oracle Accessibility
Checker, an extension which provides tests for Section 508 1194.22
and WCAG Double-A, and works on all kinds of HTML files. Mike -
a blind Oracle employee - then gave a demo of JDeveloper 10g.
Mike launched Gnopernicus from his GNOME desktop (which he compiled
himself from the public source code repository), and then launched
JDeveloper 10g. With Gnopernicus reading along as he used JDeveloper
10g, Mike opened a Java source file containing an intentional
programming error and showed how to use JDeveloper 10g to find the
error, fix it, and then run the resulting application from the IDE.
Mike noted that this demo was similar to the kinds of tasks he does
every day as part of his job at Oracle. Then together with Kerstin,
Mike demonstrated the Oracle Accessibility Checker (again with
Gnopernicus), which pinpointed several accessibility issues with a
sample web page and provided assistance in fixing those issues.
Mike and Kerstin invited attendees to come to their station in the
Sun booth for hands-on demonstrations of JDeverloper 10g on both
the GNOME desktop with Gnopernicus and Microsoft Windows with JAWS.
Thomas and Peter ended the session by taking questions from the
audience.
For more information about BAUM Retec AG and Gnopernicus, please
see the following web pages respectively:
http://www.baum.ro/gnopernicus.html
http://www.baum.de
For more information about the open source text to speech engines:
Festival and FreeTTS, and the commercial text to speech engines:
Cepstral, and Fonix DECtalk, please see the following web pages
respectively:
http://www.cstr.ed.ac.uk/projects/festival/
http://freetts.sourceforge.net/
http://www.cepstral.com/
http://www.fonix.com/page.cfm?name=espeech_dectalk
For more information about Oracle's JDeveloper 10g, please see:
otn.oracle.com/products/jdev
In addition to the Sun hosted talks on Thursday, Sun participated in the
Free Standards Group presentation on Friday morning:
o "Developing Accessibility Standards for Free and Open Platforms" -
was a presentation on work by the Accessibility Working Group of
the Free Standards Group on developing free and open standards
for accessibility and for interoperability with assistive
technologies. It was given by Janina Sajka of the American
Foundation for the Blind and chair of the Accessibility Working
Group, and Peter Korn of Sun's Accessibility team (and a Sun
representative to the Accessibility Working Group).
Janina began the session with an overview of the Accessibility
Working Group's charter and goals. She talked about the growing
popularity of open source operating environments such as GNU/Linux
and the open source graphical desktops of GNOME and KDE, as well
as the use of other UNIX and non-UNIX computing environments which
are looking to adopt accessibility standards as they are
developed. She noted that there is a large body of existing
open source GUI software that isn't accessible for these environments,
and stressed the importance of establishing and promulgating
accessibility standards that open source GUI software can use.
Janina then discussed the existing open source solutions available:
AccessX, the GNOME Keyboard Accessibility Preferences dialog, and
the XKB specification which all address keyboard accessibility needs;
the GNOME Accessibility Toolkit (ATK), the Java Accessibility API,
and the UNO Accessibility API (from OpenOffice.org) which are all
accessibility APIs for applications; the GNOME Assistive Technology
Service Provider Interface (AT-SPI), Java Accessibility API, kttsd
speech API, gnome-speech text-to-speech API, gnome-mag magnification
API, and the Macintosh accessibility API which are all interfaces for
assistive technology applications; and then the end user solutions
such as BRLtty, Emacspeak, Console508, Speakup, the GNOME On-screen
Keyboard, Gnopernicus screen reader/magnifier, KMagnifier, KMouseTools,
and KMouse.
Janina stated that one of the key goals of the Accessibility Working
Group was to gather together all of the stake holders working on
these existing solutions and out of them build a set of open and
free standards which would then be adopted by the community and
become available on the various GNU/Linux, UNIX, and graphical
desktop systems. She went on to state the three goals for the first
year: standardize on the Assistive Technology Service Provider
Interface (AT-SPI) which comes from the open source GNOME accessibility
work; standardize on AT device shared I/O to coordinate use of
AT devices among multiple software clients and for uniformity of
the AT device interfaces across all systems; and standardize on
keyboard accessibility components (e.g. the "StickyKeys" family).
Peter Korn then gave a demonstration of the existing GNOME
accessibility framework through the assistive technologies Gnopernicus
and GOK - which utilize AT-SPI and provide access to a large number of
GNOME and Java applications already on the GNOME desktop, as well
as access to Mozilla and StarOffice/OpenOffice.org through that
same interface - which is the subject of standardization by this
group. Peter also noted recent work by the KDE desktop, which
is in the process of implementing support for AT-SPI in their
suite of desktop applications and graphic user interface libraries.
For more information about the Accessibility Working Group, the
Free Standards Group, and for the proceedings from this session,
please see the following web pages respectively:
http://www.a11y.org/
http://www.freestandards.org/
http://www.csun.edu/cod/conf/2004/proceedings/264.htm
On Friday and Saturday, Sun hosted a series of "Accessibility Experience"
sessions in their booth. Up to six attendees at a time attended these
hands-on hour-long sessions on either the Gnopernicus screen
reader/magnifier, or the GOK dynamic on-screen keyboard. Several of the
systems were set up with the BAUM Vario 40-cell Braille displays, some with
either the Madentec TrackerOne head-tracking device or the Origin
Instruments HeadMouse, and all with the Tash USB switch devices. Many users
signed up for these sessions, and attendees were quite enthusiastic about
the technology.
This was an exciting conference, with a dizzying series of demonstrations of
accessibility on the UNIX platform, on GNU/Linux, and on the Sun Java
Desktop system. The features and flexibility of the assistive technologies
under development is very impressive. The promise from Sun that these
assistive technologies will be bundled with their desktop computers, and the
expectation that various Linux vendors will also bundle these technologies
with their UNIX offerings, is particularly exciting!
I would like to thank Tash Inc. for their loan of a USB Switch Click and USB
Mini Click single switch devices for use at CSUN. These switches work well
with the GOK dynamic on-screen keyboard on both x86 GNU/Linux systems and
Sun Solaris workstations, as was demonstrated last month at the conference.
Numerous people used these switches in Sun's booth and also as part of
their hands-on Accessibility Experience sessions (see above). You can get
information about these switches at: http://www.tashinc.com/
I would also like to thank Madentec for their use of their Tracker One head
pointing device. Like the Tash switches, these USB head trackers work very
well with the GOK dynamic on-screen keyboard on both x86 GNU/Linux systems
and Sun Solaris workstations. Numerous people used the Tracker One at CSUN
in Sun's booth and also as part of their hands-on Accessibility Experience
sessions (see above). You can get more information about the Tracker line
of head pointing devices at: http://www.madentec.com/
I would like to thank Origin Instruments for their use of their HeadMouse
Extreme head pointing device. Like the Tash switches and the Madentec
Tracker line, these USB head trackers work very well with the GOK dynamic
on-screen keyboard on both x86 GNU/Linux systems and Sun Solaris
workstations. Numerous people used the HeadMouse Extreme at CSUN in Sun's
booth. You can get more information about the Origin Instruments line of
HeadMouse devices at: http://orin.com/
Finally, I would like to thank BAUM for their loan of several Vario 40 cell
Braille displays, which work flawlessly with the BAUM Gnopernicus screen
reader/magnifier on both x86 GNU/Linux systems and Sun Solaris workstations,
as was demonstrated at CSUN. Attendees seemed particularly pleased by the
degree to which Gnopernicus supported all of the features of these displays.
Sincerely,
Peter Korn
Sun Accessibility team
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