[laptop-accessibility] OLPC accessibility for Visually Impaired users

[David K Parker]

In reading more about accessibility and OLPC project, it seems to me that
designing accessibility features into the laptops wasn't a priority. I would
suggest that accessibility needs to be added to the mission statement. Once
this happens I feel that accessibility would be give the proper attention an
resources it deserves.
According to the OLPC wiki
<http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Our_software#Accessibility>http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Our_software#Accessibility,
" <http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Our_software#Accessibility>We've heard that 10%
of the world's population, or more than 600 million people, live with life
altering disabilities, and two thirds of those persons are in developing
countries (UN statistics)"

This would seem to justify incorporating accessibility into the mission
statement.

Again, screen readers are a proven technology. It shouldn't be difficult to
add this functionality. There are more than enough blind kids in the world
to justify this.

I don't mean to offend those working on accessibility for this project. I
think this is a great project but more attention should be given to make the
laptops more accessible.

Thanks,
David

On Thu, Nov 27, 2008 at 11:41 AM, <tim.pennick at bt.com> wrote:

>  Hi All,
>
> I have an OLPC machine on loan.  I'm blind, and am wondering about the
> current state of play regarding facilities such as screen readers which
> would allow me to access this machine.  Can anyone tell me if there are
> features currently built into the OLPC machines which will give me screen
> reader functionality, and if so how to access them.  Alternatively, is it
> possible to load an application such as Orca onto the oLPC machine and is
> there documentation about how this works?
>
> Regards,
>
> Tim Pennick
>
> Tim Pennick
> Senior Researcher
> BT Innovate
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