[laptop-accessibility] Introducing myself

[Andrea Mangiatordi]

Hi everybody,
I have been following this list for some months, now I have some things 
I want to share with you all. I'm an Italian PhD student doing research 
in the accessibility field, but I am also a fan of the OLPC project. 
Last month I reached Montevideo, Uruguay, to spend 5 months working and 
doing research in the Caibal plan, which is the local OLPC project, 
involving the whole country. I am currently working side by side with 
some young engineers at LATU (Laboratorio Tecnológico del Uruguay) in 
the field of Assistive Technology.

I have a software project on my own, which consist of a web based 
Assistive Technology tool (actually a virtual web browser) which can be 
adapted to the needs of people with hand mobility impairments and visual 
problems. It is still a prototype, but I want to take it to a stable 
state during the upcoming 4 months. The project website is at 
http://farfalla-project.org (ok, it's not often updated, but my work is 
continuous..). As a web application, it can be run on any machine with 
very low system requirements. I would love to optimize it to be used on 
the XO.

In these days I was asked to explain to some teachers how to use the XO 
and some of them showed interest in the ORCA accessibility suite. I 
managed to install it and to set up firefox with the firevox plugin and 
a Spanish voice using Festival. I wrote a guide about it for the LATU 
staff but I also put it on my blog (here: 
http://www.farfalla-project.it/blog/wp-content/uploads/2009/03/orca_installation_guide_on_767.pdf). 
Well, it doesn't solve the majority of XO accessibility problems, but I 
think it could be a good starting point.

Thanks for reading this email which is a bit long,
I hope we will find a way to share more!

Andrea


-- 
Andrea Mangiatordi

www.farfalla-project.org