People with disabilities are your users too. Why not spend 20 minutes to learn accessible web design today. Watch Katie Cunningham talk about disabilities and making websites for everyone. I'll also recommend reading her Accessibility Handbook to learn more about making your website accessible to people with disabilities.
Katie Cunningham's talk: Making Websites for Everyone at jQuery Conference Portland 2013. View it on Youtube.
The city of Hong Kong hosted the Gnome Asia Summit this year. GNOME is a popular open source desktop environment for gnu/Linux Operating System. This annual event attracts people from diverse open source communities across Asia.
GNOME Asia Summit kicked off with the pre-event GNOME Design Workshop. The workshop helped GNOME contributors and developers understand GNOME environment design process. The workshop was intended for novice and experience UX designers, graphic artists and experienced desktop users.
The usability of the Open Source desktop environments has always left something to be desired. The keynote talks at the event delivered by GNOME Developers were very interesting. The GNOME community which was mired by conversation and dissent. Recently the developers revamping the software under the 'Every Detail Matters' initiative. Efforts to bring new UX paradigms into GNOME are also in full swing. Check out the GNOME team mock-ups here.
3D software used to create eye-popping prototypes. Don't believe me, check out this YouTube video Channel.
In the last few years, Javascript programming language had become very popular. Today applications written in Javascript are just as fast as native applications. Gnome-shell window manager is written using Javascript, thanks to GObject Introspection libraries such as Gjs and Seed. This means you can use your web development skills to enhance and extend your GNOME Desktop functionality.
The Gnome-shell add-ons is integrated closely with the Gnome Extensions service. It lets you share your extensions easily, search and enabling new features is a breeze.
The summit also featured talks related to teaching Open Hardware concepts, Gnome Accessibility, Community development and Gender equality in Open Source communities and Localization tools and GNOME predictive text input system
AEGIS project organizing its final Workshop and 2nd International Conference entitled “Accessibility Reaching Everywhere” on 30 November – 2 December 2011 in Brussels, bringing together both end-users (people with disabilities) as well as platform and application accessibility developers, representative organisations, the Assistive Technology industry, and policy makers. Since 2008, the AEGIS consortium (comprising companies such as Vodafone Foundation, Research in Motion, Oracle, and research groups from Cambridge University and Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, etc.) has been developing an Open Accessibility Framework – comprising open accessibility interfaces, user interface components, developer tools, end-user applications and prototype accessibility solutions for desktops, rich Internet applications and mobile devices.
The workshop on 30 November will focus on the realisations of the AEGIS (Open Accessibility Everywhere: Groundwork, Infrastructure, Standards) project and provide attendees the opportunity to try out all outcomes of the project. The demonstrated products offer barrier-free access to desktop, mobile and web applications, are open source based and will be freely available.
The conference on 1-2 December will gather a wide array of experts and users in the area of Assistive Technology to discuss scientific and policy developments in accessible technology; showcase relevant projects and initiatives in the area of assistive technology.
Access to both events will be free, but places will be limited.
This event comes ahead of the European Day of People with Disabilities that is marked by the European Commission via a policy conference in the first week of December each year, in close cooperation with the European Disability Forum (EDF).
Invitations for registration, scientific papers and exhibitors will be issued soon.
Both events take place at the Diamant Conference and Business Centre, Boulevard A. Reyerslaan 80, 1030 Brussels. More information is available under www.aegis-project.eu, or contact Ms. Julie Buttier at julie.buttier@epr.eu.
AEGIS is an Integrated Project (IP) within the ICT programme of FP7 and aims, through user research and prototype development with current and next-generation ICT, to develop and validate the necessary infrastructure and accessibility frameworks needed for deeply embedding accessibility into the desktop, smart phones and rich Internet applications; with a focus on the needs of users with mild, severe or complex disabilities served via assistive technologies; and to propose these results to the appropriate standards organisations for adoption, as well as to make them available through open source as much as possible.
You can now view the AEGIS project video online here.
AEGIS is an EC-funded FP7 project that seeks to determine whether 3rd generation access techniques will provide a more accessible, more
exploitable and deeply embeddable approach in mainstream ICT (desktop, rich
Internet and mobile applications).
You can now view the AEGIS project video online here.
During last few months Yelp Gnome help viewer had few hiccups. The ever vigilant users quickly posted "Yelp in Ubuntu Lucid is currently not accessible" messages to various mailing-lists. I am quite happy to report that Yelp (2.29.5.x) is now fully accessible with gnome orca screen reader once again. The accessibility testing was done on Ubuntu 10.04 Lucid with Orca screen reader (2.30.0pre) and Accerciser.
You will find few accessibility and usability suggestions from the evaluation listed below. Willie Walker and Shaun McCance helped by offering sage advice on Gnome #a11y IRC channel and Gnome Bugzilla. You can track these issues by subscribing to bugs.
Please do let me know if you find more issues with Yelp. I'll promise to look at them once I return from the easter vacation.
Dots is braille typesetting program for gnu/Linux, it can translate XML and MS DOC files and displays it both ASCII and braille dot notation. Dots is in very early stage of development and not as feature rich as commercial braille editors like WinBraille and Duxbury DBT.
The Dots braille editor is available on Debian Sid and Ubuntu Lucid, however it has loads of bugs. I patched few bugs and managed to get it working and save the translated document in .brl format. (see LP: #541721). You can view the screenshots of the program in action below.
Accelerate your Gnome keyboard navigation with these shortcuts. You should master these if you are orca screen reader user along with Orca keyboard shortcuts.
Perhaps the most common request from Orca screen reader users is the documentation. Few months ago Orca developers started rewriting most of the existing documentation. The Orca keyboard shortcut cheat sheet is part of this effort, it is now part of new orca man page.
Desktop Mode
Flat review commands
Numpad-7 move the flat review cursor to the previous line and read it.
Numpad-8 read the current line.
Numpad-9 move the flat review cursor to the next line and read it.
Numpad-4 move the flat review cursor to the previous word and read it.
Numpad-5 read the current word.
Numpad-6 move the flat review cursor to the next word and read it.
Numpad-1 move the flat review cursor to the previous character and read it.
Numpad-2 read the current character.
Numpad-3 move the flat review cursor to the next character and read it.
Numpad-slash perform a left mouse click at the location of the flat review cursor.
Numpad-star perform a right mouse click at the location of the flat review cursor.
Bookmark commands
Alt+Insert+[1-6] assign a bookmark to a numbered slot.
Insert+[1-6] go to the position pointed to by the bookmark bound to this numbered slot.
Alt+Shift+[1-6]
Insert+B and Insert+Shift+B move between the given bookmarks for the given application or page.
Alt+Insert+B save the defined bookmarks for the current application or page.
Miscellaneous functions
Numpad+Plus
'say all' command; reads from the current position of the caret to the end of the document.
Numpad+Enter 'Where am I' command; speaks information such as the title of the current application
Insert+H enter into orca's 'learn mode'; press Escape to exit.
Insert+Shift+Backslash toggle live regions monitoring on and off.
Insert+F speak font and attribute information for the current character.
Insert+Space Launch the orca Configuration dialog.
Insert+Ctrl+Space reload user settings and reinitialize services as necessary.
Also launches the orca Configuration dialog for the current application.
Insert+S toggle speech on and off.
Insert+F11 toggle the reading of tables, either by single cell or whole row.
Insert+Q quit orca.
Debugging
Ctrl+Alt+Insert+Home report information on the currently active script.
Ctrl+Alt+Insert+End print a debug listing of all known applications
to the console where orca is running.
Ctrl+Alt+Insert+Page_Up print debug information about the ancestry of the object with focus.
Ctrl+Alt+Insert+Page_Down print debug information about the hierarchy of the application with focus.
Laptop Mode
Flat review commands
Caps_Lock+U move the flat review cursor to the previous line and read it.
Double-click to move flat review to the top of the current window.
Caps_Lock+I read the current line.
Double-click to read the current line along with
formatting and capitalization details.
Caps_Lock+O move the flat review cursor to the next line and read it.
Double-click to move flat review to the bottom of the current window.
Caps_Lock+J move the flat review cursor to the previous word and read it.
Double-click to move flat review to the word above the current word.
Caps_Lock+K read the current word.
Double-click to spell the word. Triple-click to hear the word spelled phonetically.
Caps_Lock+L move the flat review cursor to the next word and read it.
Double-click to move flat review to the word below the current word.
Caps_Lock+M move the flat review cursor to the previous character and read it.
Double-click to move flat review to the end of the current line.
Caps_Lock+Comma read the current character.
Double-click to pronounce the character phonetically if it is a letter.
Caps_Lock+Period move the flat review cursor to the next character and read it.
Caps_Lock+7 perform a left mouse click at the location of the flat review cursor.
Caps_Lock+8 perform a right mouse click at the location of the flat review cursor.
Caps_Lock+8 perform a right mouse click at the location of the flat review cursor.
Bookmark commands
Alt+Caps_Lock+[1-6] add a bookmark to the numbered slot.
If a bookmark already exists for the slot it will be replaced with the new one.
Caps_Lock+[1-6] go to the position pointed to by the bookmark bound to this numbered slot.
Alt+Shift+[1-6]
Caps_Lock+B and Caps_Lock+Shift+B move between the given bookmarks
for the given application or page.
Alt+Caps_Lock+B save the defined bookmarks for the current application or page.
Miscellaneous functions
Caps_Lock+Semicolon Caps_Lock+Enter
Caps_Lock+H enter learn mode (press Escape to exit).
Caps_Lock+Shift+Backslash toggle live regions monitoring on and off.
Caps_Lock+F speak font and attribute information for the current character.
Caps_Lock+Space launch the orca Configuration dialog.
Caps_Lock+Ctrl+Space reload user settings and reinitialize
services as necessary; also launches the orca Configuration dialog
for the current application.
Caps_Lock+S toggle speech on and off.
Caps_Lock+F11 toggle the reading of tables, either by single cell or whole row.
Caps_Lock+Q quit orca.
Debugging
Caps_Lock+Alt+Ctrl+Home report information on the currently active script.
Caps_Lock+Alt+Ctrl+End prints a debug listing of all known applications
to the console where orca is running.
Caps_Lock+Alt+Ctrl+Page_Up prints debug information about the ancestry
of the object with focus.
Caps_Lock+Alt+Ctrl+Page_Down prints debug information about the
object hierarchy of the application with focus.
Joanie's post sparked more conversations on gnu/Linux Accessibility. Here are some of the views expressed some of members of gnu/linux community.
Over the years, great progress has been made in the accessibility of GNOME. Using Orca, I am able to navigate around GNOME applications and Firefox. This has been made possible through a collaboration between engineers at Sun and dedicated volunteers (or perhaps "a dedicated volunteer" would be more apt). Engineers working on Firefox have also spent significant amounts of time ensuring that Gecko exposes the information that access technologies such as Orca need to represent web pages. This collaboration has been a blessing for the community and has allowed people with disabilities to productively use GNOME. On January 29, however, Will Walker, the lead Orca developer, was laid off by Oracle, and so now there are no more paid Orca developers. This was a continuation of what has been an over-all trend over the last couple of years in which companies have pulled funding from open source accessibility projects. I am concerned about the potential implications for the future if some sort of funding structure is not established.
on the state of open-source accessibility by Mike
As many of you may have heard, from blogs by Eitan, Mike and Joanie, as well as an e-mail to the gnome-foundation-lists by Fernando, the Gnome a11y community is having a tough time.
I have been interacting with the a11y community for over two years now, and in that time the funding situation has never looked good. I do not wish to insult or demean companies that are no-longer involved in funding Gnome a11y. Companies and individuals have their own priorities that they must follow. Work they have done in the past on Gnome is very much appreciated by me, even if they cannot continue that work in-to the future.
Funding Gnome a11y by Mark Doffmans
I have been on the road for the last two weeks. Headed back to Seattle tomorrow after a great FOSDEM in Brussels.
While on the road I have heard all sorts of news regarding GNOME accessibility, none of it good. I am angry, I feel like blaming somebody or something, but I am not sure what. Right now I am directing my frustration towards academics who still have funding to continue various assistive technology research that will probably never see the light of day as a usable application while the real bread and butter of an accessible platform is being taken away. It’s reflexive, I know it. Maybe later I will have a clearer picture of how we move forward.
GNOME accessibility, don’t take it for granted by Eitan
As you all probably know, Oracle recently bought Sun. Sun has been one
of the largest contributors to the GNOME project during the last
years.
Probably is too early to know how this is going to affect GNOME
project. However this last week we have seen some relevant events:
Oracle laid off two members of the Sun's Accessibility Program Office.
e-mail to the gnome-foundation-lists by Fernando
Dear Oracle:
You don't know me, so please permit me a brief introduction: I'm Joanie. By day, I'm an assistive technology specialist working with individuals who are blind or visually impaired. By night, weekend, and holiday for almost four years now, I've been a GNOME community contributor working primarily on the Orca screen reader, a project led by Sun's Accessibility Program Office.
Working with the engineers at Sun, both inside and outside of the APO, has been an honor for a variety of reasons, not least of which is our shared common belief: Access isn't a privilege; it's a right. Towards that end, Sun Microsystems strived to ensure that ALL users have access to software and information.
Read More
Delivered a lecture about Ubuntu accessibility features and Orca screen reader at the National Workshop on Web Accessibility here in Trivandrum. I had to wrap up the usually hour long talk quickly so that I can catch the train to Bangalore to be at the Pycon India 2009 the next day.
The two day Web Accessibility workshop hosted by SPACE and Centre for Internet and Society concluded at Christ Nagar International School today. 43 participants from various Government departments and private firms took part in the workshop. The aim of the workshop was to educate web developers of Government and non Government agencies on how to develop websites that are equally accessible to people with disabilities.
During the last National Workshop on Web Accessibility in Bangalore I said to Nirmitha (Center of Internet and Society) "Let have the next workshop in Trivandrum".
Thanks to support of Society for Promotion of Alternative Computing and Employment (SPACE), Insight ICT Centre for the differently abled and Kerala State IT Mission this event comes to Trivandrum, Kerala.
We want to take this workshop to other cities in India. If you are interested leave a comment or email me.
The Centre for Internet and Society (CIS) and Society for Promotion of Alternative Computing and Employment (SPACE) are organizing a workshop on web accessibility for web developers from the public and private sector from September 25 to 26, 2009. The workshop will take place at Christ Nagar International School, Kowdiar, Thiruvananthapuram, between 09:30-17:30 hours each day.
The workshop seeks to bring together practitioners from Government Departments, as well as from small and medium enterprises across the country. The primary aim of this workshop is to demonstrate the importance of creating accessible web sites and to educate the developers of government and private web sites on how to incorporate accessibility features into new as well as existing web sites.
The training comprises both theory-oriented and practical sessions.The trainers are specialists in various aspects of web accessibility. The main focus will be on WCAG 2.0 guidelines. The workshop is for persons already involved in developing web sites with good knowledge of HTML, XML, CSS, etc. In addition to training web developers in accessibility, the workshop will also serve as a platform for capacity building by training potential accessibility trainers.
The programme is supported by Kerala State IT Mission, which runs INSIGHT - ICT Centre for the differently abled in association with SPACE.
Hurry! Interested persons are requested to register immediately as seats are limited.
Candidates may register directly on the website at http://c11.space-kerala.org/webw/
Enabling Compiz eZoom desktop plugin for our partially sighted and low vision users hit a snag. Compiz refused to work as Intel Mobile GM965/GL960 chipset is blacklisted in Ubuntu 8.10 Jaunty. This tutorial describes how to override and enable compiz on blacklisted hardware.
You need to add SKIP_CHECKS="yes" at the end /etc/xdg/compiz/compiz-manager. That should fix it.
$ SKIP_CHECKS=yes compiz
Checking for Xgl: not present.
xset q doesn't reveal the location of the log file. Using fallback /var/log/Xorg.0.log
Blacklisted PCIID '8086:2a02' found
aborting and using fallback: /usr/bin/metacity
# Edit the following file and add at the end of the 'SKIP_CHECKS=yes'
$ sudo nano /etc/xdg/compiz/compiz-manager
# restart compiz and try enabling compiz again.
$ compiz
Checking for Xgl: not present.
xset q doesn't reveal the location of the log file. Using fallback /var/log/Xorg.0.log
Blacklisted PCIID '8086:2a02' found
SKIP_CHECKS is yes, so continuing despite problems.
Checking for texture_from_pixmap: not present.
Trying again with indirect rendering:
Checking for texture_from_pixmap: present.
Checking for non power of two support: present.
Checking for Composite extension: present.
Checking screen 1Comparing resolution (1280x800) to maximum 3D texture size (2048): Passed.
Checking for Software Rasterizer: Not present.
Checking for nVidia: not present.
Checking for FBConfig: present.
running under gnome seesion, checking for gnomecompat
Checking for Xgl: not present.
/usr/bin/compiz.real (video) - Warn: No 8 bit GLX pixmap format, disabling YV12 image format
Starting gtk-window-decorator
The Gnome desktop provides magnification with gnome-mag. This program has very limited features and has quite a few performance issues. After upgrading to Ubuntu Jaunty, we had trouble using the full screen magnification. Ever since I have been searching for a better magnification for partially sighted, low vision Gnome desktop users.
The Compiz-Fusion's eZoom (Enhanced Zoom) desktop plugin steps in to fill the gap.
The zooming is quite smooth, but its appears very jerky in this video.
To use eZoom desktop plugin, first install the compiz-fusion-plugins-main package. This package is available in Ubuntu itself. Then open the Compiz Configuration Manager and enable "Enhanced Zoom Desktop" under Accessibility menu.
Next step is to assign the keyboard shortcuts to zoom in and out. I have assigned Super+1 (Windows Key+1) to zoom in and Super+2 to zoom out.
The Gnome Display Manager(GDM) is the graphical login program for Gnome Desktop environment. It is being completely rewritten, one of its goals is to provide better accessible login support.
The latest version of GDM has been uploaded into Ubuntu Karmic and is under active testing. There are few issues to be ironed out before we can have a fully accessible login with orca screen reader and magnifier. Until then I advice the blind gnu/Linux users to use GDM timed login.
Add the following lines to your /etc/gdm/custom.conf file to enable GDM timed login. Replace 'user' with your username.
[daemon]
AutomaticLoginEnable=true
AutomaticLogin=user
TimedLoginEnable=true
TimedLogin=user
TimedLoginDelay=10
Please note that the configuration of GDM has moved away from previously single configuration file /etc/gdm/gdm.conf . As of now you can't use the graphic gdmsetup to configure GDM.
Centre for Internet and Society (CIS) has been a forerunner in advocating for a national policy for electronic and web accessibility for persons with disabilities. In addition to seeking a policy reform in this matter, we are also bolstering our advocacy efforts by organising trainings and workshops at no cost for web developers across the country to spread awareness and build capacity in this area in both the public as well as the private sectors. Our first workshop, which was organised jointly with UN Solution Exchange and supported by the NIXI, took place in Ghaziabad earlier this year.
We are organising our second workshop on web accessibility for developers at Bangalore from June 5th-7th, 2009. The workshop will take place at the CIS office on Cunningham Road. Registration is free of charge. If you or any of your colleagues are involved in developing websites and are interested in making your websites accessible to all
groups in society, including persons with disabilities (approximately 71 million Indians and 6% of the total world population), please register for this workshop at the earliest.
The trainers are experts in this field from Delhi and Bangalore and have been working in the field of accessibility for many years.
For more information and registration, please mail Nirmita Narasimhan:nirmita@cis-india.org or call: 080 40926283.
http://cis-india.org/events/national-workshop-on-web-accessibility-june-2009
Here is one change in the latest Ubuntu release Jaunty (9.04) that is *really* not blind friendly. You can no longer use the Ctrl-Alt-Backspace key combination to restart the graphical (X) session by default. Most of the Orca screen reader users have to resort to using this key combination to start over when Orca screen reader stops or hangs for some unknown reason.
Its not very difficult to turn on this feature back on. To enable this Ctrl-Alt-Backspace key combination you have to use the dontzap program. You might want to install this package on your computer. They type this command in the terminal.
sudo dontzap -d
Reboot the computer and you are ready.
Update In Ubuntu Karmic the dontzap has been removed. You have use the keyboard preference tool.
One of the thing that's missing in the Gnome Desktop is an easy way of changing the default file associations. Especially for people with special needs like the blind and low-vision who access the Gnome Desktop using a Orca Screen reader. You can edit the mailcap file straight away to change the setting however that way for people who dabble in technical stuff.
The Davyd Madeley What's new in GNOME 2.8? page provides a nice preview of the changes in Gnome 2.8. The new MIME system looks the same as in the Gnome 2.24.1 . You still have to right click and use context menu, that a terrible idea for me. I rather like the accessible GUI like the Gnome Preferred Applications tool or the Nautilus File Management Preferences. I hope someone from the Gnome team can remedy this and provide single place to easily edit file associations.
The accessibility problem of the GNOME shutdown menu is perhaps the most frequently raised question on accessibility (a11y) and the Orca mailing-lists and chat rooms. Orca screen reader doesn't speak up the contents of the shutdown dialog and its a pain to wait for next 60 seconds for the computer to start the shutdown process. 
Here is a work around I use in Braille Without Borders IISE campus, the idea is to avoid the shutdown dialog prompting altogether. Here is how you turn it off. Go to System Menu and choose Preferences sub menu and scroll down to Power Management and select it (System > Preferences > Power Management). In the GNOME Power Management tool, select General Preference tab, change the "When power button is pressed is pressed" option to 'shutdown' instead of 'ask me'. 
Updated on 30 Jan 2009: Checked the shutdown dialog on Ubuntu Interpid Ibex 8.10, it is accessible with orca screen reader.
The accessibility problem of the GNOME shutdown menu is perhaps the most frequently raised question on accessibility (a11y) and the Orca mailing-lists and chat rooms. Orca screen reader doesn't speak up the contents of the shutdown dialog and its a pain to wait for next 60 seconds for the computer to start the shutdown process.
Here is a work around I use in Braille Without Borders IISE campus, the idea is to avoid the shutdown dialog prompting altogether. Here is how you turn it off. Go to System Menu and choose Preferences sub menu and scroll down to Power Management and select it (System > Preferences > Power Management). In the GNOME Power Management tool, select General Preference tab, change the "When power button is pressed is pressed" option to 'shutdown' instead of 'ask me'.
