Re: Forming an Accessibility Steering Committee

["Steve Lee" <steve fullmeasure co uk>]

> 3) Brainstorming / developing improvements that push the envelope in
> the user experience. It's great to have a set of familiar assistive
> technologies for people to use today when migrating to GNOME from
> other platforms. But a benefit of developing on an open stack with an
> excellent (the best?) accessibility infrastructure is that it affords
> us the opportunity to create alternative, better, more usable, (pick
> an adjective) software to help users. Dasher is a perfect example:
> born out of research and later packaged with GNOME releases as a new
> "flavor" of on-screen keyboard.

Absolutely! FOSS offers the possibility of innovation (ignoring those
who say it only copies existing projects) so we could offer something
that can't be got elsewhere.

This is especially true of alt input where users could get maximum
benefit from technology. While I only hinted at it before it looks
like 'eye gaze' is one such area as it is effective, in it's infancy
and commercial solutions are VERY expensive at the moment as vendors
recoup R&D costs.

Reading support and communication aids are also ripe for innovation.

Steve