Hi,
I would like to add something to what Jean-Philippe Mengual already wrote.
I am involved in the development of a few
OpenOffice.org extensions that are related to
accessibility: an extension that exports ODT to
digital talking books in the DAISY format
(odt2daisy on SourceForge), an extension that
exports ODT to Braille (odt2braille, also on
SourceForge) and a soon-to-be-released
accessibility checker for ODT files. I have
presented these extensions at various
conferences, and the question I invariably get
when there are people with disabilities in the
audience (especially blind users) is: "When will
OpenOffice.org become accessible on Windows?" I
then explain that OpenOffice.org uses the Java
Accessibility API on Windows and that this needs
to be replaced with IAccessible2 code. Until then
the extensions are not (or very poorly)
accessible on Windows, the OS used by most people with disabilities.
At the next conference I will be able to say that
we can expect this to happen after the release of
A00o 3.4. (After the integration of IAccessible2,
I will need to check how this impacts UI created
by the extensions, but that is for later.)
Best regards,
Christophe
At 15:47 28-9-2011, you wrote:
Hi,
Very interesting answer, thanks:
>
> I say 'potentially' as the developers in the community will make it a
> priority if, and only if, it is clear there is a strong demand for IA2
> and someone leads the work and use of it. So I would encourage you to
> continue your work of letting us know of the need and also suggest you
> guide other users and developers who require IA2 support in AOO to
> join in the discussion here. (...)
I will try doing that. But I'd like to mention
one problem and several elements which make me
think I represent an enormous part of users who
want IA2 to be integrated. The problem is that I
have feedbacks essentially from France or
French-speaking people, and they decided me to
be intermediate between English-speaking
community and them. So, they have difficulties
to write here directly. The language is a problem for the major part of them.
However, several things make me think there's a large demand:
- In the public administrations in France, where
OOo is choosen, we have thousands of people who
work and who are blind or sight-impaired;
- The workgroup "Accessibilité et logiciel
libre" (A11y and Free software), from April (the
main French organization which Promote the Free
Software in France) asked for this evolution. It
appeared in our "bug tracker" (used to enable
not English-speaking users to report problems so
that we forward, as I do now). 4 bugs appear about this issue.
- The LibreOffice project expressed the desire
to wait for AOOo integration to integrate itself IA2 in their utility.
- The problems with OOo are very often denounced
on French mailing list of blind people (for instance, ALLOS mailing list).
- The CFPSAA, an official enormous organization
which defends the blind people rights,
published, this June, a newsletter where they
explained that migrating a desktop to OOo was a
mistake as it's not accessible (it's a pitty! ).
I tried answering and communicating about this,
but of course if such official organization has
this approach, it proves the need.
- I met 60 people in France IRL a few weeks ago,
to show them what free software gives to
accessibility. The cain problem where I had to fight was OOo.
(...)
--
Christophe Strobbe
K.U.Leuven - Dept. of Electrical Engineering - SCD
Research Group on Document Architectures
Kasteelpark Arenberg 10 bus 2442
B-3001 Leuven-Heverlee
BELGIUM
tel: +32 16 32 85 51
http://www.docarch.be/
Twitter: @RabelaisA11y
---
Open source for accessibility: results from the
AEGIS project www.aegis-project.eu
