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. <div>
<br></div><div>According to the OLPC wiki<a href="http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Our_software#Accessibility" style=""><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0); text-decoration: none;"> </span></a><a href="http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Our_software#Accessibility">http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Our_software#Accessibility, "</a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial; line-height: 19px; ">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)" </span></div>
<div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 19px;"><br></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 19px;">This would seem to justify incorporating accessibility into the mission statement.</span></div>
<div><br></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 19px;">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.</span></div>
<div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 19px;"><br></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 19px;">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.</span></div>
<div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 19px;"><br></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 19px;">Thanks,</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 19px;">David</span></div>
<div><div><div><br><div class="gmail_quote">On Thu, Nov 27, 2008 at 11:41 AM, <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:tim.pennick@bt.com">tim.pennick@bt.com</a>></span> wrote:<br><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex;">
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<p><font size="2" face="Arial">Hi All,</font>
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<p><font size="2" face="Arial">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?</font></p>
<p><font size="2" face="Arial">Regards,</font>
</p>
<p><font size="2" face="Arial">Tim Pennick</font>
</p>
<p><font face="Times New Roman">Tim Pennick<br>
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