[3186] in Release_7.7_team
GNOME 2.0 accessibility features (fwd)
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Bill Cattey)
Mon Mar 25 15:52:05 2002
Date: Mon, 25 Mar 2002 15:52:02 -0500 (EST)
From: Bill Cattey <wdc@MIT.EDU>
To: <release-team@mit.edu>
Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.4.30L.0203251546340.23048-100000@tokata.mit.edu>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII
This came in from Kathy Cahill. She is wondering if there is
accessibility work in progress under GNOME 2.0 that we can incorporate
into Athena.
I can respond to Kathy. I was thinking of saying:
GNOME 2.0 is on our radar screen. Athena will migrate to it when
its stable. The September '02 deploy date will probably means that nobody
will see it on Athena until 1/03 at the earliest, more likely in the 7/03
timeframe.
The GNOME 2.0 API's are ostensibly incompatible with the current
GNOME API's. While some things might back-port without modification, the
expectation is that the normal case is "significant effort" to do
back-porting.
Any suggested changes/additions/deletions to my proposed reply?
-wdc
---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Mon, 25 Mar 2002 13:26:19 -0500
From: Kathleen Cahill <kcahill@MIT.EDU>
To: wdc@mit.edu
Subject: GNOME 2.0 accessibility features
Hi Bill;
Below is an update from a colleague regarding some accessibility features
slated to be included in GNOME 2.0. Is there a way to incorporate these
improvements into the AUI, assuming that you will also be upgrading to
GNOME 2.0 at some point? I'd love to talk about this sometime.
Thanks,
Kathy
>----- Original Message -----
>From: "Janina Sajka" <janina@afb.net>
>To: <speakup@braille.uwo.ca>
>Sent: Friday, March 22, 2002 10:29 AM
>Subject: Report from CSUN
>
>
> > Dear Friends:
> >
> > The news here is very good. Exciting technologies will be in our hands by
> > autumn. Let me elaborate just a little.
> >
> > Sun Micro sponsored an entire day of sessions on the work in progress to
> > make the GNOME desktop accessible. These sessions, held yesterday, where
> > very well attended. Upwards of 150 people attended the opening overview
> > session and the closing open discussion. Here's a quick rundown of what we
> > learned:
> >
> > GNOME 2.0, which is a major rewrite of GNOME in all respects, not just
> > accessibility, is slated to ship late summer.
> > Sun will ship their version shortly after. They're saying September. It
> > will contain the accessibility api, Gnopernicus with speech, braille, and
> > magnification support, an and an onscreen keyboard which had some of the
> > folks with motor disabilities very excited. The gnopernicus demo used
> > ViaVoice, though Sun's FreeTTS will be shipped with GNOME. Thomas
> > Friehoff, Baum Retec AG
> > explained that gnopernicus work has only been ongoing since November.
> > Baum took it on because they did not feel they could do anything on
> > Windows any longer because the Windows market was saturated and dominated
> > by just a few companies. Baum's first problem, therefore, was coming up
> > to speed with linux/solaris programming. They also had to think hard
> > about the GPL because this was novel thinking to them. They're now fully
> > behind it;
> >
> > Anyone who wants to play with this technology now is welcome to do so.
> > Be advised, though, that it's not stable, and you will need to build and
> > install GNOME 2.0 by hand from the CVS tree;
> >
> > Messaging between the various libraries involved is being achieved through
> > XML. Among other advantages, this will enable gnopernicus to support
> > speech and braille in many languages almost immediately;
> >
> > Sun announced two development teams now at work on applications. Nine
> > people have been tasked to add accessibility into Mozilla, but no
> > availability date was offered. Likewise, a team is at work adding
> > accessibility to StarOffice/OpenOffice, again with no ship date yet;
> >
> > Among other things, I asked about support for smooth interaction among
> > this new technology and those existing, console based technologies that
> > many of us will certainly continue to use in many ways. I learned that one
> > of the chief programmers working at Sun on the accessibility API uses
> > speakup to write the api, and expects he will continue to use speakup for
> > programming even after gnopernicus is available. Marc Mulcahy committed to
> > write necessary drivers to support speakup under GNOME.
> >
> >
> > --
> >
> > Janina Sajka, Director
> > Technology Research and Development
> > Governmental Relations Group
> > American Foundation for the Blind (AFB)
> >
> > Email: janina@afb.net Phone: (202) 408-8175
> >
> > Chair, Accessibility SIG
> > Open Electronic Book Forum (OEBF)
> > http://www.openebook.org
> >
> >
> >
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Kathy Cahill
MIT Adaptive Technology (ATIC) lab
77 Mass. Ave. 11-103
Cambridge MA 02139
(617) 253-5111
kcahill@mit.edu
