Re: [orca-list] Topics Suggestion for Open Discussion (About Visually Challenged)

[hackingKK <hackingkk gmail com>]

I think Joanie raised very important point.
I have been taking this up politically in India for quite some time.
Also note that fsf and other such organisations are very well aware of 
accessibility and how free software is a major component of that.
Infact Dr. Nagarjun, the president of FSF India is actually my mentor 
and is very much aware of the accessibility issues.
But more importantly, I would like to bring to the notice of all the 
people concerned that some states in India have already made foss 
mandatory and they are taking initiatives to shift all education and 
public administration to foss.
So amrith, you may as well think of getting some government officials 
from Kerala involved.
I will provide you all the contacts of the list.

As was rightly pointed out by joanie, most of the foss based 
accessibility users are in contries like Brazil and India, or other 
european countries.
What she might not be knowing infact is that india has blind community 
in the numbers of 1.5 million.
Joanie, just imagine, even if we manage to educate 0.1% of this 
population of blind people in India and even if one fifth of them 
contribute to projects like Orca in some way including programming, what 
a big impact it will have.
I totally agree with the suggestions you have given.

Happy hacking.
Krishnakant.

On Friday 09 April 2010 08:13 PM, Joanmarie Diggs wrote:
> Hi Amrith.
>
> On Fri, 2010-04-09 at 16:51 +0530, Amrith Krishna wrote:
>
>    
> > The Free Software Cell of FISAT Engineering college, Angamali,Cochin,
> > India is conducting a 3-day national seminar ICE-FOSS'10. We are
> > conducting a 3 hour open discussion on the topic FOSS for the
> > differently abled(focusing on visually challenged). The discussion is
> > going to take place in a group containing both FOSS enthusiasts(Tech
> > side) and Differently abled people. It would be highly gracious if
> > anyone could suggest possible topics and matters that are needed to be
> > covered in the discussion.
> >      
> For what it's worth, I think long-term sustainability of FOSS AT
> solutions might be a worthwhile topic.
>
> Something we've recently seen is that we're relying too heavily on
> support and contributions from Western companies:
>
> * The Orca project took a major hit when Oracle laid off the project
> lead and UI lead.
>
> * Caribou got hit even worse when the ATRC of the University of Toronto
> stopped funding its one developer.
>
> * Right now, a number of companies (Oracle, Novell) are doing the work
> to implement AT-SPI over DBus. Thank goodness! But what if they decided
> suddenly to pull out, leaving that work unfinished? We'd be in big, big
> trouble. (Note: I'm not suggesting such a pull-out might occur because I
> don't foresee that happening; I'm merely pointing it out as another
> example of the AT community's heavy reliance upon Western companies.)
>
>    

> > From what I've seen and heard, these companies do not believe it is
> financially profitable to do the work they are doing in this area.
> Turning to Western agencies and associations for persons with
> disabilities to support development is something worth considering, but
> the reality is that in these countries we have educational and
> vocational rehabilitation systems in which most users get their AT paid
> for by their employers and/or by government-funded agencies. While I
> personally think such systems are broken, not everyone would agree with
> me. And even if they did, change is hard.
>
> My observation is that the majority of users with disabilities who rely
> upon FOSS AT solutions because of the sheer cost of the alternatives are
> in Latin America, Eastern Europe, and India. Therefore, what can
> companies and agencies in these regions do to help support FOSS AT
> development so that it not only continues to survive, but thrives so
> that their users with disabilities have truly compelling access to
> software and information?
>
> Possibilities that spring to mind:
>
> * Participating in some sort of consortium which would fund development
>
> * Providing developers
>
> * Adding FOSS AT to computer science curricula
>
> * Encouraging users with disabilities to become active community
> participants (and where appropriate, developers) for the software
> tool(s) they use
>
> I'm sure there are plenty of other options that make sense and are
> doable in your country. It's just a matter of figuring out what they are
> and implementing them. :-)
>
> Thanks for raising the question here. I hope you have a productive
> discussion!
>
> Take care.
> --joanie
>
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