Hello, To save you digging in gobby, here are the notes we had put there for the BoF.
Samuel Note: previous talk on http://brl.thefreecat.org/fosdem.odp http://meetings-archive.debian.net/pub/debian-meetings/2008/fosdem/ What is accessibility? aka a11y Making Software usable by all people including disabled: blind, low vision, deaf, colorblind, one-handed, finger-handed, "eye-handed", speech impaired, cognition, elderly, ... See Accessibility HOWTOs Technologies Braille input/output Speech synthesis Joysticks Press button Don't focus on one technology Braille is not perfect (expensive, not everybody can read it, ...) Speech synthesis is not perfect (noisy environment, accurateness, deaf, ...) Dedicated software firevox, self-voicing apps, ... Generally a bad idea lack of manpower: javascript support, OOo document support, ... Better use the same software In particular to get help & work with others. Better make existing applications accessible State of the Art Text mode apps usually accessible Particularly when the cursor automatically goes to a sensible place. Gnome being accessible (since about 2004) OpenOffice being accessible, still cumbersome, but some people use it in everyday work KDE should get accessible Real Soon Now We're late compared to Windows What you developer can do Design your application without gui in mind first Logical order, just like CSS ☺ Provide text equivalents, based on shared libraries or backend daemons (wicd!!!) For text application, put the cursor in a sensible place To guide screen readers Take users suggestions into consideration E.g. bracketed links in text web browsers Try to test it yourself! gnome-terminal+brltty / accerciser / gnome-orca How about Debian? ================= Debian Installer Braille & speech work! Adding AT-SPI to the debian installer Add zoom/gok/... support? Debian Distribution Text-based distribution Installation, configuration, ... Please maintain this alternative! A plethora of software, often text equivalents Mpg321, mc, o3tohtml... Please continue packaging those! How to test? ============ Debian Installer http://wiki.debian.org/DebianInstaller/Accessibility basically, install kvm and brltty, wget http://d-i.debian.org/daily-images/i386/daily/netboot/gtk/mini.iso and run $ /sbin/brltty -b xw -x no -A auth=none,host=127.0.0.1:1 $ BRLAPI_HOST=127.0.0.1:1 kvm -usbdevice braille -cdrom mini.iso Also give a try to the speech synthesis boot option (just enable soundcard in kvm command line to test it in a VM). Graphical applications note: will be temporarily broken in testing/unstable with gnome3/at-spi2 transition easy way is to enable the braille monitor Please mute your sound card before proceeding, so it's not a mess install gnome-orca, run it in a terminal (run orca), use gnome-speech and espeak for simplicity, enable braille and braille monitor. It will prompt you to re-login your whole gnome session to enable accessibility Note: if you chose the laptop layout, the orcakey will be capslock; if you chose the desktop layout, the orcakey will be insert in new gnome session, re-start orca browse into your application (try gobby-0.5 for instance, there are a few shortcomings) just with the standard keybindings with flat review mode: press orcakey+p, then use orcakey+j or l and orcakey+ctrl+j or l to move around. start accerciser to access the exact information that orca has access to. (possibility for automated GUI testing) Text applications See http://brl.thefreecat.org/text-apps-a11y-test.html Projects ======== Some ideas: packaging Tag your packages: interface::text-mode, uitoolkit::gtk Add package tags? accessible-with::{at-spi,tty-screen-reader} accessible-with::{braille,speech} accessible-with::{gnome-orca,brltty,speakup} Install "required" accessibility package by default those that some people can't use a computer without way to enable them More general ideas Getting more people involved Subscribe to debian-accessibility Keep debian.org accessible It is great atm, without us even having had to ask! (even mentioned in their talk) Add an “accessibility” chapter to the New Maintainers' guide Add “accessibility” questions to the NM process (*after* adding the documentation above of course :) ) Add an "accessibility" section to Derivatives Guidelines Add an “accessibility” tag to bugs Cc-ed to debian-accessibility archive Accessibility section? -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [email protected] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [email protected] Archive: http://lists.debian.org/[email protected]
