[laptop-accessibility] How can the XO be made accessible to blind

[Duane King]

On Tuesday 08 January 2008 07:38:12 pm Peter Korn wrote:
> It is true that one of the goals of accessibility is to allow blind
> folks to "read or use this format or file", but there are a number of
> other goals.  For example, there is the goal of allowing legally blind
> folks who nonetheless have and use some vision to utilize a magnified
> (and focus tracking) GUI - same as folks who don't need magnification.
> There is also the goal of allowing completely blind and sighted folks to
> collaborate - in some cases by using the same computer.  And of course
> there are needs of folks with physical disabilities and cognitive
> disabilities - many (most? all?) of whom will want to use the same GUI
> as the bulk of the users of the computer.
All very true; We shuold not discriminate against people who are on both sides 
if the fence or are outside the 'norm' for accessability.  As I said, I think 
things should best be used by both extremes, letting the middle group use any 
of there own choosing.

> It makes a *ton* of sense to allow the wealth of approaches we have
> developed for command line access for the blind (using speech at a
> minimum, but also Braille where available) to flourish on the OLPC.
> There are great tools there, and they can likely provide access
> solutions more rapidly.
Yes, let us 'stand on the shoulders of giants', as it may be..

> As far as "feature creep" and "bloat" go, it is always worth reviewing
> implementations and approaches for this - especially in an environment
> as processor and RAM/flash constrained as the OLPC. 

I think more modularity would be good myself; If a system is not needed or 
used, lets turn it off and allow the user to not waste resources trying to 
use it.

> Folks are already 
> actively working on the areas that I  believe will be most fruitful in
> reducing RAM and processor requirements.  But an awful lot of the things
> in the GNOME accessibility API are there for good reasons, and are used
> by AT solutions that provide significant value.  The GNOME accessibility
> API is far from the first go-around at this problem, and a lot of
> lessons learned from the past are preserved in it.  We should not rush
> to throw it out, especially just because one subset of folks with one
> type of disability don't want to use it...
True, and the goal here is not to make things accessable for only the blind; I 
was using that as a sample of what could be done given my own perspective is 
all about comming from that - no pun intended - view point.

I think that 'accessable' really needs to be more defined, for each group, in 
ordrr for the goals to be clear.

- Duane King