ANNOUNCE: Linux Screen Reader 0.3.0

["Peter Parente" <parente gmail com>]

==============
* What is it ?
==============

The Linux Screen Reader (LSR) project is an open source effort to
develop an extensible assistive technology for the GNOME desktop
environment. The goal of the project is to create a reusable
development platform for building alternative and supplemental user
interfaces in support of people with diverse disabilities.

The primary use of the LSR platform is to give people with visual impairments
access to the GNOME desktop and its business applications (e.g. Firefox,
OpenOffice, Eclipse) using speech, Braille, and screen magnification. The
extensions packaged with the LSR core are intended to meet this end. However,
LSR's rich support for extensions can be used for a variety of other purposes
such as supporting novel input and output devices, improving accessibility for
users with other disabilities, enabling multi-modal access to the GNOME
desktop, and so forth.

==================
* What's changed ?
==================

A demonstration of LSR 0.3.0 will be presented at the GNOME Accessibility
Summit. A screencast of the demo will be posted on the LSR homepage
shortly thereafter. The demo will showcase the latest screen reading
features of LSR
as well as two prototype interfaces for people with cognitive decline and
reading disabilities.

For users

* The new settings dialog allows for configuration of settings defined by a
 particular device or script as well as the current user profile. For
 instance, a user can change their speech synthesizer without restarting LSR.
* Settings are now persistent across sessions. More settings will be added
 in future versions.
* New keyboard commands are now available such as reading accessible
 descriptions, reporting text attributes, routing focus and caret, etc. See
 the list of defined commands at
* The LSR review keys now function on web pages in Firefox 3.0. The FirefoxPerk
 will grow new commands for rich document navigation in future releases.
* The Perk chooser dialog allows users to manually load and unload scripts for
 the current application. This allows users to dynamically load/unload tool
 scripts at runtime, kind of like Emacs modes.
* DECtalk is now supported through gnome-speech.
* SpeechDispatcher is now supported.
* A script to better support accessible login has been added. Instructions for
 configuring Fedora Core to start LSR at login are now available in the LSR
 FAQ. (http://live.gnome.org/LSR/FrequentlyAskedQuestions)

For developers

* The developer scripting API has grown a tremendous number of new convenience
 methods. See the epydoc on the LSR homepage for details.
* Three developer monitors now exist in LSR for watching raw accessibility
 events from at-spi, execution of LSR scripts, and I/O streams to devices.
* User configurable settings may now be defined by LSR scripts. The settings
 dialog automatically generates an accessible user interface for changing
 their values.
* Developers can now add new dialogs and debugging monitors to LSR just as they
 can add scripts and input/output devices. They're all just extensions to LSR.
* The command line interface for managing extensions is now simpler.
* Extensions may now be added by the root user and made available system-wide,
 or added by an unprivileged user and available for his/her use only.
* The spec is updated to support the building of relocatable RPMs.

Translations

* en_GB(David Lodge)
* vi(Clytie Siddall)
* zh_CN(Funda Wang)
* pt_BR(Raphael Higino)
* sv(Daniel Nylander)

For full details, please see the ChangeLog at
http://cvs.gnome.org/viewcvs/lsr/ChangeLog?rev=1.29.

For an idea of where LSR is headed next, visit
http://live.gnome.org/LSR/Timeline

======================
* Where can I get it ?
======================

Source code release and contributed packages:
http://live.gnome.org/LSR#downloads

For more information, visit the LSR home page:
http://live.gnome.org/LSR