Awesome! Well done everyone and huge thanks to Will for leading us. Now we can see GNOME and Open Source and really rock the accessibility world and even take the lead.
I need to lie down..... Steve Lee On 17/02/2008, Willie Walker <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> 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 > _______________________________________________ > gnome-accessibility-list mailing list > [email protected] > http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/gnome-accessibility-list > -- Steve Lee -- Jambu - Alternative Access to Computers www.fullmeasure.co.uk _______________________________________________ gnome-accessibility-list mailing list [email protected] http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/gnome-accessibility-list
