During the Boston Accessibility Summit we generated a list of"what is needed" items. We track them here.
End user needs:
Project |
Description |
Notes |
Bookshare reader for UNIX |
A UNIX edition of something like the Victor Reader Soft software Bookshare (and DAISY) reader |
There is a binary unpack tool for Bookshare for Linux |
RFB&D media reader |
|
|
A UNIX edition of something like the Victor Reader Soft software DAISY (and Bookshare) reader |
|
|
OpenBook (unbound) software equivalent |
A self-voicing OCR package that automatically reads text to you, or works with your screen reader |
|
High quality OCR engine that is open source |
|
Needed for use in an OpenBook (unbound) software equivalent |
High quality ASR engine, then end-user app for it |
To provide functionality similar to Dragon Naturally Speaking, a dictation & command-and-control application & ASR engine |
(Sphinx-4, ASR/dictation engine written in Java; See OSSRI for a project for this) |
High quality Text-to-Speech in many languages |
|
We have several open source concatenative engines (such as Festival, Flite, FreeTTS); they may be good enough so long as we have high quality voices for them |
Braille translation & formatting (Duxbury equiv.) |
End-user software that takes text in a variety of formats (e.g. UNICODE, ODF) and turns it into Braille format for printing and other uses (BRF) |
(Janina: TurboBraille is an app). Would be good to create a standard API for communicating with Braille translation and formatting engines. |
Braille editing capability inside Open Office |
Allow users to flip back and forth between a print and Braille view of the same document, editing in either |
A standard API for communication with Braille translation and formatting engines as described in the previous item would be useful for this. Various engines could be used together within the same document, for different kinds of content, such as mathematics and different languages. The same engines could be reused by various editors that support Braille, etc. |
Drivers for Braille embossers |
Need drivers for a variety of embossers |
Work with ONCE on this, they already are working on drivers for Impacto, Porta-thiel, BetaX3 and Vax. Also see liblouisxml/xml2brl/tiger from http://www.jjb-software.com/index.html. Should probably find its way in CUPS. |
UNIX software to sync. to Windows CE devices |
|
(may have something now...) |
GPS system support, integration (with speech, Braille, Magnification) |
|
(Geoclue guys at summit) |
Database accessibility |
|
(the front ends need to work well) Post meeting comment: review phpMySql, Aqua Data Studio |
MathML accessibility |
A strategy, and end-user tools for gain access to mathematical equations |
|
Flash, SVG, PDF viewers to be accessible |
Accessible stand-lone viewers of these formats, as well as accessible UNIX browser plug-in viewers of these formats. |
cf. Adobe Reader for Linux & Solaris SPARC |
Accessible "Skype" and similar products |
Accessible versions of this new class of end-user VOIP products. |
|
UNIX drivers for inexpensive AT hardware |
|
(e.g. the inexpensive head mice) |
Accessible installers for software |
|
|
Chording keyboard support |
|
|
TTY interface |
|
(to talk with Baudot, and new TTY) (also IP/TTY interoperability) |
Web accessibility (to Firefox, etc.) |
|
Aaron Leventhal & Ginn Chen agreed to work on this for Firefox |
Web browser plug-in accessibility |
|
(e.g. Flash plug, PDF plug, Java plugin) |
Magnification improvements (cf. ZoomText) |
Today gnome-mag is fairly limited in the magnifcation functions it provides. We would like much more featureful magnification. |
We need COMPOSITE and some other X extensions to make this happen |
Better "out of the box" experience |
|
Ubuntu 'Edgy' is probably the current state of the art here |
Accessible Login working by default |
|
|
Approachable Documentation for end Users |
|
Joe Lazzaro agreed to work on this |
"orphan software" support - for folks with multiple disabilities |
|
(the 1% of the 1% of need) |
Accessibility "wizard" |
|
|
Accessible install |
|
|
Terminal services |
|
(thin client support through AT). A note on the Ubuntu 6.10 press release says that in LTSP-5: "Support for locally attached devices on thin clients allowing users to access cameras, ipods or USB sticks on the thin client." That may be what we need. |
Stuff just below the level of "adaptive technology" |
|
- any number of smallish stuff on the desktop |
Developer needs:
Project |
Description |
Notes |
Shared set of tools to help AT do their job |
|
(e.g., common utilities, testing tools, etc.) |
Accessibility lint test tool |
|
(to work with Glade, maybe others); Shane and WebAIM agreed to work on this |
Accessibility run-time test tools |
|
(Rodney Dawes has some stuff for this); can also cooperate with i18n tools; Rodney, Nags, Dave said agreed to work on this |
Common test framework |
|
(we have two good ones, but they are different) |
Best practices documentation for AT-SPI implementations (on a wiki?) |
|
Peter Parente and George Kraft agreed to work on this |
Approachable Documentation for Programmers |
|
Bill Haneman agreed to work on this |
Code authoring assistance, that encourages good accessibility programming |
|
(Forte, NetBeans, Eclipse, etc.) |
More accessible bugzilla |
|
|
Prioritized list of hot bugs, trivial bugs, for folks to start in on |
|
Willie Walker agreed to work on this |
Performance testing, evaluation of accessibility framework |
|
David Zeuthen agreed to work on this |
Misc. needs
Project |
Description |
Notes |
|
The Windows state of the art here is Read & Write Gold from TextHelp Systems, Inc. |
|
Document authoring assistance, that encourages good authoring practices (ODF, PDF, etc.) - "This document is inaccessible. You can't save it until you make it accessible." |
|
Shane of WebAIM wanting to get involved here; Want this incorporated directly into the authoring tool, not as a separate test app |
5,000' view presentation to policy-makers (white paper) |
|
Peter Korn agreed to work on this |
Public wiki list of accessibility projects to work on (cf. http://mozilla.org/access/projects) |
that would be this list |
Peter Korn put this together |
Fixing broken audio on UNIX |
|
Janina Sajka and Leon Shiman agreed to work on this |
Disability organizations focusing their members, programmers into open source accessibility work |
|
|
Multimedia authoring tools for accessibility (to add captions) |
|
|
Software that makes use of tactile graphics to convey information to people with visual disabilities |
(cf. John Gardner's Resource Guide |
|
Using Haptics as user input |
|
|
Grant/funding system for this work, and for open source accessibility in general |
|
(Joe: what about NIDRR for this? Dept. of Edu?) |
A way for contributers to ramp up -> for new interested folks to get involved in development |
|
Mentoring as a way to do this - to grow our community and spread the knowledge |
People who have expertise in accessibility who can be hired to work on open source accessibility |
|
connections into Universities |
Description of what an office user w/a disability needs to be functional, efficient |
|
Barbara Lybarger agreed to work on this |
Usability testing of GNOME accessibility by PWD |
|
Brette Luck w/Novell & Dave w/ITD agreed to work on this |
Mozilla Projects
For Mozilla projects please see http://www.mozilla.org/access/projects
