Re: [g-a-devel] Taking access forward (was: Status of IBM a11y)

[Henrik Nilsen Omma <henrik ubuntu com>]

Hi Peter,

Thanks for taking the long view on this and asking good questions on how 
we can increase the constructive activity within our community.

Peter Korn wrote:
> One place I continue hoping will become a real source of energy are the 
> disability organizations - like various national organizations for the 
> blind.  For so very long the primary - and perhaps sole - tool of 
> disability organizations to improve technology access has been 
> advocacy.  Disability organizations pushing industry through letters and 
> laws and lawsuits to develop accessible products and technology.  But 
> open source provides a new and powerful tool to disability organizations 
> and the disability community overall.  I encourage everyone who is a 
> member of a disability organization on this alias to consider ways of 
> having those organizations formally get involved in improving open 
> source accessibility solutions.  So many of these organizations have as 
> a goal increasing the digital literacy of their constituents, and 
> improving their access information, services, and the Internet.  Also 
> improving the dismal rates of employment of people with disabilities.  
> Open source accessibility is one of the best vehicles I can think of to 
> move rapidly on those goals.
>   

These groups should absolutely be our allies, as our goals are 
fundamentally the same. The problem is that open source can be a tricky 
concept to get your head around (How can it be fee, is it any good? How 
do the community dynamics work?).

I'd like to approach disability organisations and introduce them to open 
source so we can at least open a dialog. I think we have a good vehicle 
for that now in the Ubuntu Live CDs that boot up in various access 
modes. I've sent out a few to local groups here in Norway, but this 
really needs to happen on a larger scale.

If someone in the community wants to do a mailing or otherwise 
distribute CDs to disability groups in their own country, I'd be happy 
to send a batch of Feisty CDs.

> Separate from all that, as someone who has been part of the GNOME and 
> OpenOffice.org accessibility efforts since their beginning (and part of 
> the Mozilla accessibility effort since the start of the UNIX portion of 
> it), I very much welcome any suggestions you have for what I and Sun can 
> do to further help bring more developers from a wider spectrum of 
> organizations into our community. 
>   

I have my own take on this, but I know that it's somewhat controversial 
within this group. When considering new accessibility initiatives I 
always try to stay as close to mainstream trends as possible. I want to 
use the technologies that are starting to take hold in the community 
generally, and if possible, add access features to multiple-use 
applications rather than making access-specific tools. That's why 
onBoard was written with Cairo and python and made to work on tablets, 
and why we have been working on zoom and colour filters within Beryl/Compiz.

I also try to catch developers working on new projects early in the 
process and just make them aware of the access issues. That way they can 
build it in from the start and not have it be an add-on later. 
Conferences like Guadec, Akademy, UDS and LR Live are great for that. 
You can stop the cutting edge developers in the hall and just ask them 
if they have thought of the access issues. You then get to do a 10 
minute presentation on what that means :) 

Henrik