Re: GNOME Presentations

[Dave Neary <dneary gnome org>]

Hi,

I've reused parts of "Digital ramps and handrails" quite often - and it
always goes down very well.

The presentation is in 3 movements, basically:

1. What is computer accessibility, and why should I care?

 - Computers have inputs & outputs: keyboard, mouse, screen
 - But those aren't enough - some people can't use a screen, others
can't use keyboards, others can't use mice.
 - It's not just people with visual or physical handicaps either - old
people find it hard to use mice, children can't use keyboards, and so
on. One French report found that 12 million French people had some
handicap - from an isolated or minor difficulty to more serious physical
or mental impairment.
 - Mobile phone users are essentially handicapped for web use - small
screens, thick fingers on touch screens, difficulty reading small type,
not being able to do chording of keyboard entries, text-only renderings
of web pages... all things which are typically associated with accessibility
 - So accessibility is important to a very large group of people, and
not just a small and ignorable subset of the population

2. What to do about it?
 - First, let's look at the various hardware inputs & outputs. Let's
start simple & reuse things that might not be considered accessibility
advices:
  * Joystick & roller ball mouse
  * graphics tablet
  * Earphones/speakers, microphone
  * Video game controls (the Wii is groundbreaking in this regard)
 - Then there's the specialised hardware:
  * Braille keyboards
  * Eye trackers

 - And on top of that, even if you don't have any special hardware,
there's a wide range of software that you can use to make your computer
experience more accessible.

3. GNOME and accessibility (DEMOS)
 - Here's where GNOME comes in. GNOME has built accessibility into the
heart of the project, not as an add-on, but as a core principle.
 - GNOME's vision of universal access has three main facets:
internationalisation and localisation (you can use GNOME regardless of
culture), usability (you can quickly learn to use GNOME, even if you
never have before) and accessibility (you can use GNOME, regardless of
any visual or physical handicap)
 - There are a bunch of basic GNOME features which make it more accessible:
  * Keyboard navigation - you can do just about anything in GNOME
without using a mouse
  * Theming - large text, high contrast themes make it easier for people
with visual impairments (including older people with failing eyesight)
to use GNOME
  * Sound - sensible use of sound effects (for example, a distinct sound
when your computer has booted up and reached the login screen) makes it
easier for blind people to know what is going on and when they can use
their computer
  * Sticky keys - many people have trouble chording on keyboards (for
example, typing Shift-T or Control-C). Sticky keys lets you chord easily
by simulating a held control key
  * Slow keys - for people with conditions such as early-onset
Parkinsons who have hand tremors, typing can be very hard because
pressing a key once can often result in multiple key-press events. Slow
keys allows you to set the sensitivity of the system to this kind of
accidental repeat-typing
 - On top of this, there are a bunch of features which can be optionally
enabled by activating accessibility support for GNOME (short explanation
of AT-SPI, GAIL and ATK, explain that most GNOME applications are
accessible by default because they use GAIL via ATK)
  * Dasher - a great little application which gives great demo. Drive
throughh an adaptive maze of letters to write what you want to. Import a
sample text from some strange language like C, and change alphabet to
write C with only a pointer (nice for a developer audience).
  * MouseTweaks - click on buttons without clicking using either a panel
applet or directional gestures (demo both). This is a particularly nice
demo (but long) coupled with a working webcam and MouseTrap - make sure
this is working well for you before you demo it. You can use head
movements to type with Dasher, and click stuff with MouseTweaks
  * Orca - Text to speech, screen magnifier (Note for presentation:
gnopernicus is dead, Orca's screen magnifier is what I should have
screen-shot) Mag on a projector can be a tricky demo.
  * Onscreen keyboard - Can be a tricky demo. Make sure you get the
set-up right. So tricky I ended up pasting screenshots for one presentation.
  * Mention Braille keyboard support is quite advanced, supporting both
"normal" Braille and contracted Braille
 - Accessibility support has pleasant side-effects!
  * GNOME has three different graphical testing frameworks, which are
made possible because accessibility support allows introspection of the
graphical display of applications. Scripts are used to do automated
tests of graphical applications, and there are also applcations which
can test that applications are accessible
  * GNOME on mobile devices allows for easy extension of GTK+ inputs to
add support for T9 support, and StickyKeys makes it easy to enable
standard mobile chording behaviour. (this is a pretty hairy argument,
but hey...)

The main criticism which I would make of this presentation is that it
starts with heartstring-pulling stuff (babies & grannies) and doesn't
finish with a bang - there's no take-away. But the parts split fairly
logically (even though while writing these notes I see that there are
things I have left out, and some slides I should re-order), and can be
made into separate 5 to 10 minute segments.

Cheers,
Dave.

Stormy Peters wrote:
> At the GNOME Marketing Hackfest we talked about creating GNOME
> presentation materials[1] that everyone can use.
> 
> The idea is to create 5-10 minute segments on different topics. We want
> to make them all with the same slideset template so they can be easily
> combined.
> 
> Here's the list of segments. Feel free to add more ideas or to add
> slides for any of the ideas. (Feel free to grab them even if someone is
> assigned to it. We divvied them up among the people in the room at the
> time and I'm sure there are others that can contribute.) We also need
> people to go through and review things as they are added, point out
> holes in the notes, add images, etc.
> 
> The idea isn't to dump whole presentations (although there is a spot for
> that at the bottom) but rather to create building blocks for people to
> create their own presentations.
> 
> Best,
> 
> Stormy
> 
> [1] http://live.gnome.org/GnomeMarketing/MarketingMaterial/Presentations
> 

-- 
Dave Neary
GNOME Foundation member
dneary gnome org