RE: Forming an Accessibility Steering Committee

["Ian Pascoe" <ianpascoe btinternet com>]

All

I agree with Willie's road map for the initial touch point, but would
suggest, well actually insist, that the page is in plain English, without
technical terms or jargon used.  From here you can move to the additional
areas of, for instance, developers, advanced users, testers, standard users,
newbies and whatever else we think is necessary.

I really believe that this approach to a single "un-scary" touch point is
needed.  Take the following scenario for a blind user who is using a helper
to read the contents of the screen.  Although the AT SPI stuff is important
it's not necessary to know about it from the initial step, but what they do
want to know about is how to get it, how to use it, and what it does.

Which leads me onto my second point, that of integration of the content
between the Gnome weiki and distro weikis.

As Luke mentioned in an earlier post, Ubuntu is only the distro of choice
for accessability by virtue that it has it built into the Live CD and is
therefore the distro used for a  large proportion of the user community.  So
by virtue of this, should the Gnome weiki advocate Ubuntu as one of the
leading distros, or should we leave the potential user with the ability to
make an ill informed choice?  No.  Perhaps what we should do is once we have
an idea of what content we want to provide, we should approach the distros
so that links from the Gnome site will go to, for instance, the Ubuntu weiki
and how to install Ubuntu with accessability turned on.  This would also
ensure that the removal of out of date or content pages that says do A for
this distro but B for that would be avoided etc.

For the committee itself, I think that through natural selection people will
migrate to those areas that they feel most comfortable in and those in which
they can achieve.  Perhaps three groups - the actual steering committee,
supported by two loosely coupled groups one for dealing with the users
experience and one for developers, but of course one person would not be
restricted to one area as cross fertilization of ideas and concepts is what
it is all about.

I have other not quite formed ideas yet about such things as the committee
forming a centrral point through which developers can get / find information
and also act to re-inforce the FOS community approach and join up with
comparable groups both inside the FOS community and other outside bodies.
However, I don't really feel that comfortable with either of these thought
processes just yet, but only mention to throw into the group melting pot.

Communication for my own preference is either by phone or mailling list, but
being a UK resident I am a tad out of line with the American time zones!

I'd like to see movement made to a compelling accessability experience with
those apps that are minimally required for a user to access their computer
successfully - an area that needs some focus would be audio apps.  A
secondary level would be to ensure that the apps that use the GALE
(apologies if wrong terminology) interface but only partially implemented,
and lastly to ensure that other widgets used by standard Gnome apps have the
ability to be interogated by AT SPI, or whatever interface and provide
correct useful information.

What are people's thoughts about extending our eventual remit to encompass
those apps which uses the GTK but are not within the Gnome desktop as such?

My apologies if this seems a little jumbled and mismatched, with Xmas
looming so near, things are frantic here!

Seasons Greetings

Ian


-----Original Message-----
From: gnome-accessibility-list-bounces gnome org
[mailto:gnome-accessibility-list-bounces gnome org]On Behalf Of Brian
Cameron
Sent: 20 December 2007 20:03
To: Willie Walker
Cc: gnome-accessibility-list gnome org
Subject: Re: Forming an Accessibility Steering Committee



Willie:

> So...let's try to work out what we want the GNOME A11y WIKI to look
> like.  I'll start with a proposal that we can twist/turn/modify.  :-)  I
> think the first question to ask is "who are the typical visitors to the
> site and what do they want to do?"  I'm going to guess it will be a mix
> of mainly the following:
>
>   o End users wanting to know how to get going with a11y support

I'd say "End users and sysadmins who manage systems with users with a11y
needs".

>   o IT staff making decisions about whether or not they want GNOME
>   o Developers and future a11y developers wanting to know how they can
>     help the GNOME a11y project
>   o Developers wanting to know how they can test their stuff for
>     a11y and how to fix problems they run into

I'd say "testers interested in sharing test cases, or how to get
involved with helping with testing" would be another category.

Also, might be good to break down general legal issues into a separate
section, and to have a separate section for conferences, radio shows,
news appearances, etc.

> The top level page, http://live.gnome.org/Accessibility, will be our
> face to the world.  It should be relatively short, clear, and easy to
> navigate by our target visitors.  Much of this information is already
> available; we just need to organize it and bring it up to date.  Here's
> a potential skeletal outline, though it's not short and probably not
clear:
>
>    [Logo] -- we really need a good logo.
>    o "A11y 101" (what is a11y?)
>    o GNOME A11y is for Real
>      o Impact of GNOME a11y around the world
>        - Testimonials
>        - Case studies (e.g., GNOME in Spain)
>      o Commonly used apps that provide compelling access
>        - Evolution, gedit, gnome-terminal, ...
>        - Firefox 3, Thunderbird, OOo, Pidgin, ...
>      o Organizations involved
>        - Sun, Mozilla Foundation, Ubuntu, OLPC(?), ...
>        - Steering committee (see below)
>    o Latest news: ...
>    o Active projects and current focus
>      - Orca, AT-SPI/DBus investigation, ...
>    o Future directions and ideas
>      - (achievable tangible projects)
>    o GNOME's built-in a11y:
>      - keynav, theming, AccessX, MouseTweaks, ...
>      - GOK, Dasher, Orca, ...
>      - A11y infrastructure
>        - AT-SPI, ATK, GAIL, GTK+, bridge(s), ...
>        - pyatspi
>        - gnome-speech, gnome-mag
>        - accerciser
>        - External extras: BrlTTY, ...
>    o For application/toolkit developers
>      - How to develop/test for a11y
>      - Matrix of a11y vs. application coverage
>      - Accessibility bugs sorted by priority/severity
>    o For a11y developers
>      - A11y projects for you to help with (see active and future above)
>      - Getting started with pyatspi (or whatever)
>      - Jumping off points to Orca, GOK, ... developer documentation
>    o For operating system distributions
>      - Dependency lists
>      - Short smoketest steps
>        - Accessible login
>        - Quick tests with AccessX, GOK, Dasher, Orca, ...
>      - Integration tips, tricks, and troubleshooting

This looks good, but it seems a bit overwhelming.  Perhaps it would be
better if the main page just had links for the use cases you discussed
above, with the detail in the sub-pages?  For example, perhaps the main
page could look more simply like this:

  o Introduction to a11y
  o NEWS
  o Why you should consider a11y for your organization.
    (sub page could include testimonials, organizations already involved)
  o GNOME a11y for users
    (sub page could include information about the AT programs, keynav)
  o GNOME a11y for developers
    (sub page could include reference and programming documents)
  o GNOME a11y for testers
    (sub page could include test cases, how to get involved)
  o General a11y legal references
    (sub page could include info on Section 508 references, etc.)
  o Conferences, appearances on the news and radio, etc.
  o Contact info

Then we could organize the links into the subpages, and have a very
clear website for finding what you need.

> I'd propose that the 'doings' of the steering committee be held at
> http://live.gnome.orca/Accessibility/SteeringCommittee.  It will contain
> our charter (which we need to create), a member list, and meeting
> agendas/minutes. Representation of the other work of the committee
> probably should find its way into the rest of the WIKI.

Sounds reasonable.

Brian
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