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

[Amrith Krishna <krishnamrith12 gmail com>]

Hi,

Thank you very much krishnakant and Joanie for your suggestions.Sorry I couldnt provide much details about our event. It is from April 19th to 21st. This particular session is going to be conducted on 21st apri from 1:30 to 4:30. A team from insight project is moderating the discussion. What we have planned was to discuss topics related to issues in accessing various softwares as what kk had pointed out. We will be also discussing about one of our student projects on creating a 6-key braille keyboard. Thank you once again for your suggestions and please do check out our site www.icefoss.in

Thanking you,
Amrith Krishna,
FISAT.

On Fri, Apr 9, 2010 at 6:42 PM, hackingKK <hackingkk gmail com> wrote:

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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