Imagine a world where writing and the printing press had not been invented. Except for a few braille publications, and volunteers willing to record audio books, that is the world most blind people live in. The lucky ones are those with access to a computer, for they have recently become privy to any text in electronic form. Imagine how exciting it must be, to suddenly get almost equal access to the written word. If you are an English speaker, that is.
Many blind persons are professional typists. With typewriters, they had to be extra careful not to make any mistakes. The computer gives them the backspace key, and all the benefits of a word processor. If you type English, that is. The blind rely on a neat little “screen reader” software called Jaws, that costs $900, and keeps speaking to the user, reading out what is on the screen, providing her with all the information she needs to decide what key to press next. It does not handle Indian languages. So, if you are a blind Hindi typist, and your office switches from typewriters to computers, you lose your job. Under Linux, there is also a screen reader available, called Gnopernicus. Work is going on to attach Indian-language text to speech to it. With a little extra effort, the whole range of Linux software can, through Gnopernicus, become accessible to the blind. Computers are rapidly becoming affordable to the blind, considering the benefit they provide. A little effort by Linux geeks, to help the transition of blind users to Linux, will dramatically increase the number of Linux users in years to come. Additionally, this effort will benefit a far wider community, you and me included. Those of us who can speak a language but not read the script, are in the same position as the blind with regard to any written material in that language. When driving, or engaged in activities that demand the attention of our eyes, we are effectively blind from the point of view of the computer that is trying to navigate us, or to display a text message on a tiny screen. Thus, software for the blind is very useful for sighted persons as well, particularly in a country such as India, where we have over a dozen scripts, and illiteracy is high. There is therefore a huge professional opportunity here for developers and deployers of computer technology. With a view to opening the eyes of geeks to such opportunities, on Sunday, July 17, 2005, the National Association of the Blind, RK Puram, would like to invite the Delhi Linux users group to a gettogether. The tentative agenda is as follows: Dr. Dipendra Manocha will provide an introduction to the work being done at the technology center. In particular, he will talk about Daisy, www.daisy.org, a standard and system for content production, that effectively marries text with audio, so that users have the pleasure of listening to quality audio, while retaining the benefits of text, such as the ability to use search facilities, and to edit efficiently. This is a very interesting area with many opportunities for software development. Students and faculty of the NAB will then demonstrate their use of diverse software packages. This part of the event will hopefully irritate our guests, for almost all they will see is software running on the MS Windows platform. This segment will show them, however, how useful computers can be in the lives of the “print challenged,” and provide them the incentive to make equivalent software work for the blind on the Linux platform, which we have not very successfully been trying to do at the NAB. Arun Mehta will then make a presentation on Technology, Abilities and Disabilities, the outline can be found and commented on at http://www.india-gii.org/wiki/index.php/Presentations/ITandDisability We will then have a general discussion, with a view to identifying projects that are interesting to work on, for which funding may be available, and have applications for both the sighted and the blind. All are cordially invited. Our first project will be a simple eBook reader, http://www.india-gii.org/wiki/index.php/Projects/mobile_eBook_reader . Thanks to Dipendra Manocha for detailing the specifications as soon as we asked him for an idea! This reader could grow into a full-fledged Daisy editor, which is described at http://www.india-gii.org/wiki/index.php/Projects/mobile_Daisy_creator If you would like to help, but cannot come, here is a list of what we would like to learn in Java: http://www.india-gii.org/wiki/index.php/Java_wish_list -- your suggestions on appropriate courseware would be terrific. Arun -- No virus found in this outgoing message. Checked by AVG Anti-Virus. Version: 7.0.323 / Virus Database: 267.8.9/42 - Release Date: 7/6/2005 _______________________________________________ ilugd mailinglist -- [email protected] http://frodo.hserus.net/mailman/listinfo/ilugd Archives at: http://news.gmane.org/gmane.user-groups.linux.delhi http://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected]/
