Re: few questions

[Richard Rothwell <raroth42 yahoo co uk>]

Hi All,

I teach at the RNIB New College Worcester, England -
I'm Head of ICT and have been in-situ for about a
month now.  We're burdened with a legacy Windows
system which is causing many problems - but of course
I can't change that over night...

Anyway, I see a lot of students who have a range of
Visual Impairments.  Here are a few examples...

* blind since birth kids who seem to have been born
with an understanding of the complexities of Windows
and who cannot begin to understand the command line, 
* partially sighted kids who enjoy the fact that I've
given them a Linux box to shell into
* partially sighted kids who struggle because we can't
get MS Windows to enlarge the fonts evenly

What my kids need is a wide-range of options - some of
which might be deemed as 'configuration', some of them
might to be classed as full 'accessibility'.  They
need to be able to set:
 - default font sizes for all menus and documents
 - high contrast colour schemes that work
 - lower resolution but crisp displays

as for screen readers, they need fine level control
over how the reader behaves and where it is reading -
though to be honest I hope that most kids who rely
purely on using screen readers will see the sense of
the command line...

Of course, all this is IMHO.  I hope to be able to get
some of my students involved in these lists over the
next couple of years - as I secretly convert them to
the joys of Linux :-)

rgds,
Richard Rothwell
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