Re: Gnome and support for the visually impaired

[Bill Haneman <Bill Haneman Sun COM>]

Hi Jason, All:

Magnification has come a long way in the past 6 to 12 months.  And a 
serious bug affecting high magnification ratios was fixed only recently 
(and will be in the next gnome-mag version, for gnome-2.12.1 on 
Monday).  So for good results, you need a recent gnome-mag and a recent 
Xserver, preferably XOrg 6.8.1 or later, or a recent XSun (i.e. as 
provided with Solaris 10).  The key features are the 'DAMAGE' and 
'XFIXES' xserver extensions, which you can check for by running 
"xdpyinfo". 

On such an up to date system, you should be able to get reasonable 
fullscreen magnification that doesn't hog the system resources.  It 
won't be quite as snappy as a magnifier that has direct access to video 
hardware, but it should be much better than what you describe below.

Best regards,

Bill

Jason Grieves wrote:

> Point taken, 
>
> My low vision friend who see's 20/1700 loves open source and the idea of
> linux.  He's also a computer administrator.  He worked at the Dept. of
> Homeland security where they house *nix and windows boxes.  The boxes they
> had just didn't work very well with the gnome magnifier.  He came to me and
> we worked with gnopernicus for a long time, trying to get it working better
> and even full screen support.  Problem is its just not usable in a work
> environment that he is used with ZoomText.  He's fast as anything with
> ZoomText, and watching the system lag and get stuck behind the magnifier and
> widgets getting stuck with magnifier and keyboard focus not sticking with
> him was hard.  He just had to ask his admins to be put to work on the
> Windows boxes. 
>
> Accessibility is coming its just taking its time.  I appreciate all the
> support and coders who are working hard to bring it around.
>
> Jason
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: gnome-accessibility-list-bounces gnome org
> [mailto:gnome-accessibility-list-bounces gnome org] On Behalf Of Sébastien
> Hinderer
> Sent: Thursday, September 29, 2005 12:35 PM
> To: gnome-accessibility-list gnome org
> Subject: Re: Gnome and support for the visually impaired
>
> Hi Sun folks & other listers.
>
> Bill Haneman :
>  
>
> > Samuel Thibault wrote:
> >
> >    
> >
> > > ...
> > >
> > >
> > > They say "open source is not accessible", which is wrong, but what is
> > > true is "open source is not yet really accessible". 
> > >
> > >      
> > I do not agree with this assessment.
> >    
>
> [snip]
>
> Hey Bill. Just for an experience, please do the followingthings :
>
> 1. Switch off your computer.
> 2. Close your eyes and do something so that you can't see anything.
> Are you really blind, now ? Ok, so:
> 3. Switch on your computer, choose any graphical mailer you like,
> and try to reply to this mail _without_ opening your eyes.
> Just use a speech system, or a braille one, if you have one you know
> well enough.
>
> Now... I'm waiting for your blindly sent reply.
>
> Sébastien.
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