[laptop-accessibility] Announcing AEGIS - a €12.6m investment in open source accessibility

[Jim Gettys]

Congratulations, Peter, and all who have worked so long and hard to get
to this point!
                - Jim

On Thu, 2008-10-16 at 20:33 -0700, Peter Korn wrote:
> I am *very* pleased to share with you news about the AEGIS project, a 
> €12.6m investment in accessibility, with the vast majority of it focused 
> on open source solutions.
> 
> Rather than repeat here all that I have written about AEGIS already, I 
> will instead invite you to read about it in my blog:  
> http://blogs.sun.com/korn/ or check out the AEGIS website at: 
> http://www.aegis-project.eu/
> 
> I have worked in the field of accessibility for nearly 17 years, and on 
> open source accessibility almost a dozen of those years.  In that time, 
> open source accessibility has become a deep and abiding passion. 
> 
> I'm very proud that the techniques we have pioneered in the open source 
> community have since been adopted by Apple with the Macintosh & 
> VoiceOver, and are being adopted by Microsoft with UI Automation.  These 
> same techniques are enshrined in the report a 42 member committee 
> delivered to the U.S. Access Board earlier this year (and which at this 
> very moment being reviewed by them as they work on their refresh of the 
> Section 508 accessibility standard).  And these techniques are at the 
> core of the AEGIS project.
> 
> With AEGIS, over the next 3.5 years we will attempt to bring 
> programmatic accessibility more fully to the web, and to the mobile 
> world.  With AEGIS we will also address a number of issues that still 
> remain in accessibility on the open desktop.  And while we're at it, we 
> will bring a bunch of new and talented people into the open source 
> accessibility community (you should start seeing them showing up on our 
> mailing lists and wikis in the coming months).  We will also fund a 
> number of the experts who have already made tremendous open source 
> accessibility contributions - to enable to them to continue and to do 
> even more.  I'm sure they will shortly make their voices heard on these 
> lists and in the blogosphere.  And we will explicitly fund a number of 
> European disability organizations.  These organizations and many dozens 
> of their members will be providing their expert input on our work, and 
> thoughtfully evaluating our prototypes, and perhaps adopting the 
> solutions we come up with because they do a great job of meeting their 
> needs.
> 
> Oh, and we'll also write a bunch of open source accessibility code.
> 
> 
> By the way - this Sunday the 19th of October marks the 8th anniversary 
> of the GNOME Accessibility Project.  AEGIS helps bring a fantastic 8th 
> year to a close, and also serves to inaugurate the next 3.5 years!
> 
> 
> Regards,
> 
> Peter Korn
> Accessibility Architect & Principal Engineer,
> Sun Microsystems, Inc.
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-- 
Jim Gettys <jg at laptop.org>
One Laptop Per Child