Re: Exciting news: funding coming our way!

[Bryen <suseROCKS bryen com>]

That *IS* exciting news.  It's always good when the world recognizes
that we are as much a part of this world as they are.

Question:  Will this funding be divided up equally amongst all mailing
list members?  :-)  (Okay, I can dream.)

Thanks again to Willie and everyone else for all their hard work and
dedication that makes our experience on Linux so much better!

Bryen


On Sun, 2008-02-17 at 12:26 -0500, Willie Walker wrote:
> Hi All:
> 
> The larger community has seen our work with identifying and prioritizing 
> the accessibility tasks we find really important.  As a result, they are 
> now providing funding to get the work done.  This is FANTASTIC news!
> 
> More details will be coming out very soon (this week?), but the GNOME 
> Board has requested that we let the GNOME accessibility community know 
> first.  :-)
> 
> David Bolter from the University of Toronto, Luke Yelavich from 
> Canonical, and I will be the judges for the program.  Between the three 
> of us, we can represent industry, academia, infrastructure, assistive 
> technology, standards, and end user considerations.  We of course will 
> not operate in a vacuum but will instead continually consult with you, 
> the community members, to make decisions.
> 
> Way cool stuff.  The nature of the funding will support shorter term 
> individual projects (e.g., USD$6K with a 6 month deadline).  When I look 
> at the tasks we identified as a community 
> (http://live.gnome.org/Accessibility/GetInvolved), I see a really good 
> balance of achievable tasks that fit within the budget, and they are all 
> on the top of the list.  In particular, the following seem to be very 
> good matches:
> 
> 1) Documentation.  There is a steep learning curve for users, 
> developers, and operating system integrators.  Many people just need a 
> place to start and concise hand-holding directions.  With good 
> documentation in place, we can provide answers to common questions such 
> as "how do I test my application for accessibility?", "how do I fix 
> common accessibility problems?", "what assistive technologies are 
> available for my disability and how do I use them?", etc.  We will get a 
> lot of really good impact across the board with this task.
> 
> 2) Evince accessibility.  Accessible free open source document viewing 
> is dearly needed on our platform, and Evince is sooooooo close.  With a 
> concentrated effort, this task will help bring accessible document 
> viewing to GNOME.  Way cool and way needed.
> 
> 3) Speech and magnification.  With Orca helping exercise speech and 
> magnification, we have been able to identify the strengths and 
> weaknesses of the existing support provided by gnome-speech and 
> gnome-mag.  At the same time, the world has changed a bit around us, 
> with considerations needed for a more global view.  These two separate 
> tasks will help move us to state-of-the-art cross-platform solutions 
> that can be used by GNOME, KDE, OLPC, OpenMoko, etc.  Again, way cool 
> and way needed.
> 
> 4) Testing.  It's hard for me to count the number of times we've seen 
> components make changes late in the release cycle that adversely effect 
> accessibility.  My only measurement is how much hair I have lost as a 
> result.  GNOME needs a unified testing strategy, and we need to make 
> accessibility a core part of that from the start.  This task will help 
> get us there.  AWESOME.
> 
> 5) Bug fixing.  We need bugs fixed and good hackers will now have money 
> to inspire them.  'Nuf said.  :-)
> 
> So...we still have some work to do as a community.  In a separate 
> e-mail, I will be sending out proposed times for an IRC meeting next 
> week based upon the availability I've received from everyone so far.  In 
> this meeting, we can discuss the program and the tasks further.
> 
> This is soooo exciting.  Many thanks to everyone who has helped -- we're 
> going to make some great strides with this.
> 
> Will
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