Ubuntu Developers Summit - Mountain View - Accessibility

If you are participating, please add your name, availability, interests and BOF topics so we can organise a schedule.

Participants

• -- I've taken some liberties adding people's names and interests to the list. Please correct as appropriate. -- HenrikOmma

Remote participants

Several people who would ideally like to attend are not able to do so due to lack of funding or practical difficulties. They will often be available on line and can contribute via phone, VoIP, IRC and the wiki.

Possible discussion topics

What AT is missing?

Products for folks with LD

cf. TextHelp for Windows, BigShot

Other cognitive impairments?

cf. WYNN for Windows

Braille translation software

cf. MegaDots for Windows

Talking OCR packages

cf. OpenBook Unbound

AT hardware support?

Drivers for less expensive head tracking devices?

<list of them here...>

Eye-gaze hardware?

<list of vendors here...>

Braille printer drivers

<list of vendors here...>

User Experience improvements

What accessibility do you need? 'wizard'

cf. Windows XP, and what is coming in Vista

Speech/Braille

Better Braille support

Achieve the same level of bootstrapping ease in testing a live CD and optionally installing with pure braille as you can currently do with speech (given a few more bug fixes)

Improve multilingual speech support

Allow non-English speakers to use the Ubuntu on the Live CD. The most likely solution is to use the eSpeak synthesiser, which has more (though simpler) voices than Festival. This would also reduce the disc space requirement and should improve performance. It should be easy to switch to Festival after install.

mbrola synthesiser in multiverse

mbrola is a non-Free speech synthesiser with high quality voices in many languages (zero-cost for non-commercial use). It's a good option for those who do not have Festival voices in their language, and many may prefer the sound. We cannot include it in main, but we can hopefully make it work with speech dispatcher and therefore Speakup and Orca.

Speakup user space scripts

Speakup is now in the kernel, but we should make it easier to load and unload the module from gnome or the command line [Deferred from Edgy]

Spoken Boot

One specification that was drafted and approved at the previous developer's summit, was to allow users to get spoken feedback on system boot. This was deferred, due to big changes in the system init process. Now that this has settled down, we can discuss with the core devs just how this could be implemented in a sane manner. It should also be extended to provide braille feedback as well. (Deferred from Edgy)

Magnifier

HW accelerated magnification

xmcm? a compiz/beryl solution? Ideally something that integrates well with the stock Xorg [Deferred from Edgy]

Infrastructure

Should at-spi be enabled by default in Ubuntu?

?

Accessible Technologies

Are there any cases that the current stack of ATs do not cover, can we change this?

• GOK usability and configuration improvements.

• Giving onBoard the ability to navigate the desktop - for switching users. https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Accessibility/Specs/onBoardSwitching

Revamp of AT dialogs

Redesign gnome-at-properties dialog to support multiple AT in each category eg. orca, gnopernicus in a more intuitive way.

A wizard to setup accessibility - could be run when a new user logs in for the first time.

Application Support

What applications are there which are currently unusable or very difficult for users with various disabilities?

Possible solutions:

• Orca scripts
• Change current interface
• Write an alternative interface for a11y users.

More cross-desktop collaboration

We should generally support work to remove gnome dependencies from key tools to allow them to work better on KDE and XFCE (without installing all of gnome). This might include using speech dispatcher, removing gconf dependencies, etc. There is a limit to how much we in Ubuntu can achieve in this area, as we are dependent on upstream work.

Streamlined configuration

Combine several access related configuration panels. Reduce the number of of custom themes, but make the options configurable elsewhere.