>Forwarded from nfb-talk list ...
>
>Greetings,
>
>Last month was the annual CSUN Conference on Technology and Persons with
>Disabilities. Sun Microsystems highlighted accessibility solutions for
>computers running UNIX (such as the Solaris operating environment,
>GNU/Linux, and other computer systems). There was a UNIX Accessibility
>series of conference sessions on Thursday, including demonstrations of
>StarOffice accessibility on Windows systems as well as those running UNIX.
>Sun's booth was an entire room at the conference hotel, and Sun held a
>series of hands-on guided tours of the accessible GNOME desktop for UNIX
>where attendees used the Gnopernicus screen reader/magnifier and the GOK
>dynamic on-screen keyboard to navigate the graphical desktop, create text
>documents, and even read the Los Angeles Times website in Braille. This
>year also saw the third annual Linux Accessibility Conference, which was
>held on Thursday afternoon and part of Friday.
>
>
>This lengthy trip report describes in some detail all of the events relating
>to UNIX Accessibility at CSUN, as well as the demonstration of StarOffice
>accessibility on Windows and UNIX systems.
>
>
>The key messages from Sun and the UNIX Accessibility community at CSUN were:
>
> 1. That the UNIX environment, with the GNOME 2 graphical desktop, is
> becoming a very accessible alternative desktop for users with
> disabilities. GNOME 2 is a a free, open source graphical desktop for
> UNIX, with accessibility support built in as a forethought (vs. bolted
> on as an afterthought). GNOME 2 provides full keyboard access to
> the desktop and applications, rich themeing support with
> pre-configured options like high-contrast and large-print, and a
> comprehensive and extensible accessibility architecture implemented in
> the core of graphical user interface.
>
> 2. The development of a fundamentally different approach to
> accessibility, where assistive technologies get all of the information
> they need from supported programming interfaces - no more patching the
> operating system or building off-screen-models for screen access.
>
> 3. The development of Gnopernicus - a free, open source screen reader
> and magnifier for GNOME by BAUM Retec AG. Gnopernicus was
> demonstrated on both an Intel RedHat Linux system as well as the
> Sun SunRay network terminal running Solaris. Many attendees
> participated in a guided tour of the GNOME 2 desktop using
> Gnopernicus - some with speech, some with Braille, and some with
> full-screen magnification - at the Sun booth.
>
> 4. The development of GOK - a free, open source, dynamic on-screen
> keyboard for GNOME by the University of Toronto Adaptive Technology
> Resource Centre. GOK was demonstrated on both a Sun Solaris system
> and an Intel RedHat Linux system, with both single switch access
> and support for the Madentec Tracker head-mouse.
>
> 5. A demonstration of accessibility support built into both StarOffice
> and the open source OpenOffice.org office productivity suite of
> applications (word processor, spreadsheet, presentation package, and
> drawing package - with full support for reading and writing Microsoft
> Office file formats). The demonstration showed how a user can
> fully interact with StarOffice applications without using the mouse,
> how StarOffice respects the user's desktop theme settings, and
> highlighted a number of specific accessibility preference settings
> in StarOffice. StarOffice support for assistive technologies was
> shown on both the UNIX and Windows platform - the latter in
> conjunction with ZoomText Xtra for Windows.
>
> 6. A demonstration of accessibility support built into the open source
> Mozilla web browser (which also includes applications for web page
> creation, and electronic mail). The demonstration showed how a user
> can fully interact with Mozilla without using the mouse, how Mozilla
> respects the user's desktop theme settings, and highlighted a number
> of specific accessibility features in Mozilla. During the guided
> tour sessions, several attendees used Mozilla on UNIX with the
> Gnopernicus screen reader/magnifier, including one user who used
> the time to catch up on current events through the Los Angeles Times
> web site.
>
>
>Below is a fairly detailed summary of each of the three sessions relating
>to GNOME and UNIX Accessibility:
>
>
> o The first session in the UNIX Accessibility series was "UNIX and
> GNOME Accessibility overview" - highlighting the Accessible GNOME 2
> desktop by Gary Little and Peter Korn of Sun Microsystems.
>
> Peter Korn began the session with an overview of this session and the
> two that would follow, as well as the other events relating to
> UNIX Accessibility at the conference. He outlined Sun's goals and
> vision for accessibility ("Anyone. Anywhere. Any time. on Any device"),
> and then briefly described UNIX, GNOME, and outlined the accessibility
> functionality in GNOME.
>
> Next up was Gary Little, who talked about GNOME in more detail. Gary
> talked about the goals for the GNOME project, and described many of
> the features of the GNOME 2 desktop. Gary noted that Sun and others
> have released "Phase I" of the accessible GNOME desktop already, with
> full keyboard navigation and theme support, and it can be downloaded
> for free from Sun for Solaris at http://www.sun.com/gnome/ and also
> ships with a number of Linux distributions. Finally, Gary noted
> that the "Phase II" release of GNOME accessibility will include
> two open source assistive technologies: Gnopernicus and GOK (which
> were the subject of the third presentation in the UNIX Accessibility
> series - see below).
>
> Peter Korn then returned to the stage, and spent the rest of the
> presentation demonstrating the accessibility features that are
> in the shipping "Phase I" GNOME desktop, as well as those coming in
> "Phase II". Specially, Peter demonstrated keyboard navigation of the
> desktop, the high-contrast large print theme (and the themeing engine
> in general), and several special features of the Nautilus file manager
> which is part of GNOME - the ability to "zoom" the content region to
> see things up to 400% larger, and they way that Nautilus knows about
> a variety of file types and will render them in the file view or in
> the case of sound files play them when the user selects one.
>
> Peter then launched the Gnopernicus screen reader/magnifier, and
> showed how Gnopernicus tracks the user focus and reads the item the
> user is interacting with as well as pertinent information about it
> (e.g. telling the user that they have activated a menu, the name of
> that menu, and the number of items in that menu). He explained that
> Gnopernicus treats speech and Braille as different modalities, and
> the information rendered in speech is different than what is rendered
> in Braille (using as an example items in a menu, where the information
> about what the item is and the accelerator keys for invoking it
> is spoken in a particular order in particular voices, while it is
> rendered very differently in Braille with accelerator keys set off
> from the text of the menu item by placing them in parenthesis). Peter
> also demonstrated Gnopernicus' support for Braille, including the
> built-in Braille Monitor which displays the characters being rendered
> to the attached Braille display. Peter further showed the
> magnification features of Gnopernicus, including multiple zoom levels,
> picture smoothing functionality, and optional inverse video. Peter
> demonstrated Gnopernicus with a variety of applications on the
> desktop, including the Nautilus file manager, the simple text editor
> application, and the gnome menu panel.
>
>
> Peter then launched the GOK dynamic on-screen keyboard, and explained
> how GOK differs from traditional on-screen keyboards. He showed
> the main keyboard - which has the keys "Compose", "Window", "Pointer",
> "Launcher", "Activate", "Settings", "Menus", "Toolbars", and "UI Grab".
> As GOK is really a complete user interface and user interaction model
> for users with significant physical disabilities (such as single
> switch users, and people using head-tracking devices or eye-gaze
> technology), it provides much more functionality than any other
> on-screen keyboard.
>
> Peter showed how the GOK "Launcher" keyboard provides a programmable
> set of applications buttons that a user can configure to directly
> launch applications that a user commonly wants to use. Peter used GOK
> configured for single-switch access to select the Launcher keyboard
> and launch the GNOME Text Editor application. He then went to the
> "Menus" keyboard to directly interact with the menus in the Text Editor
> application, and GOK dynamically built a special keyboard showing
> the Text Editor menu bar, and then when Peter selected the "File"
> menu, GOK built and presented a second special keyboard showing the
> menu items inside the "File" menu. The traditional on-screen keyboard
> can be found under the "Compose" button, which provides the ability to
> simply insert keystrokes into the topmost application, and is how
> a GOK user would enter text into the Text Editor application, or any
> other application on the desktop.
>
> Peter noted that while neither Gnopernicus nor GOK were shipping yet,
> Sun planned to being a beta testing program in the near future, and
> is soliciting volunteers who would be interested in beta testing the
> accessibility GNOME desktop with Gnopernicus and GOK. Peter then
> opened the floor for questions.
>
>
> For more information about the GNOME accessibility architecture,
> see the following web pages:
>
> http://www.sun.com/gnome
> http://www.gnome.org/start
> http://developer.gnome.org/projects/gap
>
>
> o The second session in the UNIX Accessibility series was "Accessible
> UNIX Applications: StarOffice and Mozilla" - showcasing the
> accessibility features of these important applications, presented
> by Peter Korn of Sun Microsystems with Malte Timmermann of the
> Sun StarOffice development team on hand to answer questions.
>
> Peter first highlighted the main features of StarOffice: that it
> is a complete office suite with a full-featured word processor,
> a powerful spreadsheet, and a very flexible presentation package,
> as well as a database and equation editor; that StarOffice uses
> XML as its native file format but can read and write Microsoft Office
> files; and that there is an open source edition: OpenOffice.org,
> which has been ported to the Macintosh in addition to running on
> same Linux, Solaris, and Windows platforms that StarOffice runs on.
> Peter noted that a large and growing number of people are using
> StarOffice - 15% of Windows office users use StarOffice according
> to a poll by Windows Magazine. Peter further noted that Sun has
> donated ~$6 Billion worth of StarOffice software to schools worldwide,
> and that virtually every Linux distribution ships with either
> StarOffice or OpenOffice.org included, as do a growing number of
> Windows PCs.
>
> Peter then talked about the accessibility features available in
> StarOffice version 6.1 beta 1, which is now available on the web
> for download for Windows, Solaris, and Linux. These features include
> full mouseless operation (everything can be done from the keyboard);
> full theme support for things like high-contrast and large print;
> and support for cross-platform accessibility APIs which support
> the Gnopernicus screen reader/magnifier and the GOK dynamic on-screen
> keyboard under UNIX, as well as early JAWS and ZoomText support under
> Microsoft Windows. He then proceeded to demonstrate these features,
> launching StarOffice on the GNOME desktop with the high-contrast
> large print theme set which StarOffice respected. Peter showed the
> StarOffice "Zoom" feature, that allows a user to have StarOffice
> render the content portion of the document larger (the user can enter
> a zoom percentage). Peter navigated through the user interface via
> the keyboard (which follows the GNOME desktop keyboard navigation
> conventions). Peter brought up the Accessibility preferences dialog
> in StarOffice, and showed the various special settings for supporting
> accessibility in StarOffice, including things like a special text
> selection cursor for read-only text, configurability of the tool
> tip time-out, and whether to allow animation in graphics and text.
>
> Peter then moved to a PC running Windows, ZoomText, and StarOffice
> version 6.1 beta 1 for Windows. Peter demonstrated how ZoomText
> tracks the user's keyboard interaction with menus - reading them
> and moving the magnifier to magnify the item the user interacting
> with. When Peter opened a spreadsheet and moved between the cells,
> ZoomText read the name and contents of the current cell (speaking
> "Cell A2", "Cell B2", etc.), and the magnifier tracked the cell
> selection as well.
>
> Peter noted that the first public beta release of StarOffice
> accessibility was recently posted to the web and is available for
> download. He then opened the floor for a few minutes for StarOffice
> accessibility questions prior to giving a demonstration of Mozilla
> accessibility. Malte Timmermann of the Sun StarOffice engineering
> team also answered questions.
>
>
> For more information about StarOffice accessibility, see the following
> web pages:
>
> http://www.sun.com/staroffice/accessibility
> http://ui.openoffice.org/accessibility
> http://www.sun.com/software/star/staroffice/beta/
>
>
> The second half of the presentation was focused on Mozilla
> accessibility. Peter highlighted the key features of Mozilla: that
> it is a full featured, cross-platform browser; it is a web page
> editor; a powerful electronic mail client supporting IMAP and
> POP3 mail; and a netnews client. Peter then talked about the
> accessibility features being built into Mozilla. These features
> include full mouseless operation (everything can be done from the
> keyboard); full theme support for things like high-contrast and large
> print; and support for cross-platform accessibility APIs which support
> the Gnopernicus screen reader/magnifier and the GOK dynamic on-screen
> keyboard under UNIX. He then proceeded to demonstrate these features,
> launching Mozilla on the GNOME desktop with the high-contrast
> large print theme set which Mozilla respected. Peter showed the
> Mozilla "Zoom" feature, that allows a user to have web page content
> rendered larger (the user can enter a zoom percentage). He navigated
> through the user interface via the keyboard (which follows the GNOME
> desktop keyboard navigation conventions).
>
> Peter then launched the Gnopernicus screen reader, and showed how
> Mozilla supports the GNOME accessibility architecture, through which
> Gnopernicus is able to provide blind and low vision access to web
> browsing in UNIX environments. Peter used Gnopernicus to track
> keyboard interaction with the Mozilla user interface (reading menus
> and dialog boxes), and then opened the CSUN conference web page and
> used Gnopernicus to read the the information on that web site. Peter
> explained that HTML accessibility information as detailed by the
> Web Accessibility Initiative is being exposed through the GNOME
> Accessibility Framework, making it available to screen access
> technologies such as Gnopernicus. Peter noted specifically the
> AccessibleHypertext interface, that provides a list of all of the
> hyperlinks on a web page for alternate presentation by an assistive
> technology.
>
> Next, Peter launched the GOK dynamic on-screen keyboard. GOK
> enumerated all of the menus in Mozilla and presented a dynamic
> keyboard giving a single switch or head-tracker user direct access
> to all of the items on all of the Mozilla menus. Likewise, he
> showed the "Toolbar" keyboard of GOK, which listed all of the
> buttons on the Mozilla toolbar - including the special buttons for
> directly launching the Mozilla e-mail client, and address book.
> Peter noted that only those toolbar buttons which are active in
> Mozilla are shown as available in GOK.
>
> Peter then took questions about Mozilla accessibility.
>
>
> For more information about Mozilla accessibility, see the following
> web pages:
>
> http://www.mozilla.org/projects/ui/accessibility
> http://www.mozilla.org/projects/ui/accessibility/unix
> http://www.mozilla.org/docs/end-user/moz_shortcuts.html
>
>
> o The third session in the UNIX Accessibility series was "Assistive
> Technology for UNIX: The Gnopernicus Screen Reader/Mangifer and
> The GNOME On-screen Keyboard" by Thomas Friehoff of BAUM and
> Simon Bates of the University of Toronto Adaptive Technology Resource
> Centre. Peter Korn of Sun Microsystems briefly introduced the
> session, and then introduced Thomas Friehoff - the Vice President
> of R&D at BAUM Retec A.G. and the person in charge of Gnopernicus
> screen reader/mangifier development.
>
> Thomas gave an overview of his talk: that he would describe BAUM's
> motivation for doing Gnopernicus; talk about the architecture and
> targeted platforms of Gnopernicus; show the user interface design of
> Gnopernicus; and talk about BAUM's development plans going forward.
>
> Thomas described the core Gnopernicus development team: 4 engineers
> working in Romania full time for the last 18 months (with some of
> that time devoted to learning about UNIX/Linux development). He
> gave the BAUM mission statement: "To offer Products and Services to
> Blind and Visually impaired persons, to make them more successful in
> their business and private life!" BAUM achieves this mission through
> a focus on development, distribution & service of products,
> installation & training. Thomas noted that as Gnopernicus is open
> source, BAUM expects to make money from their development efforts
> through Gnopernicus distribution, installation, and training.
>
> Thomas noted BAUM's motivation for developing Gnopernicus: that today
> Windows dominates the market, that they and their customers are
> looking for alternatives, and that they want to be early adopters
> of new technologies. Further, Linux systems are popular in BAUM's
> home in Germany. BAUM is getting many questions from users seeking
> access to graphical environments in Linux. Recently the German
> Parliament decided to standardize on Linux for their workstations, and
> a town near BAUM's home in Heidelberg plans to have all desktops
> running Linux by 2004. Finally, Thomas noted that BAUM's development
> staff has frankly gotten tired of Windows development - they wanted
> to do something new. So, when Sun introduced the GNOME Accessibility
> architecture to BAUM, they decided to "go for it" and develop an
> open source screen reader for UNIX systems.
>
> Thomas stated that BAUM is targeting two platforms: Linux with Intel
> PC hardware and Sun Solaris systems. The BAUM development team does
> almost all of their development under Linux, and has been delighted
> to find that with virtually no problems Gnopernicus compiles and runs
> on Solaris without modification - proving one of the values of having
> a defined accessibility architecture vs. the Windows approach of
> hacking into an undocumented system.
>
> Thomas showed a diagram of the Gnopernicus architecture: that it
> is simply another application on the desktop - like Mozilla or
> StarOffice or the Text Editor - and that Gnopernicus simply uses the
> standard GNOME Accessibility interfaces to communicate with these
> applications in order to provide an alternate presentation in speech,
> magnification, and/or Braille of these applications. Furthermore,
> there is a standard way for new and potentially novel applications to
> support the accessibility interfaces, so Gnopernicus need not be
> modified in order to provide access to them. The hope is that once
> the screen reader is done, all further energies will go toward
> improving the user interface, as opposed to their work in Windows
> where they are constantly having to re-engineer their screen
> reader in order to be able to get at what is on the screen.
>
> Thomas noted that the architecture of Gnopernicus is different from
> that of other screen readers - the core of the product contains no
> user interface code; rather that code lives in a separate series of
> modules (for speech, magnification, and Braille), making it very
> straightforward to build different products for other user needs
> (for example for people with learning disabilities or the elderly).
> Thomas described the two parts of the Gnopernicus user interface:
> the series of configuration dialog boxes (for output devices, for
> keyboard key assignment, and to load and save settings); and the
> direct keyboard access interface to the functions of Gnopernicus
> (using the numeric keypad, through the use of the standard keyboard
> keys with special modifiers a user might define, and through the
> buttons of an attached Braille display). With the configuration
> dialogs, everything is done through the graphical display. The
> direct keyboard interface includes a set of "immediate" commands
> (speak the contents of the status bar, read the items on the menu
> bar, make the speech faster/slower, etc.), and there is generally
> no graphical visual feedback.
>
> Thomas then showed a series of slides containing all of the graphical
> configuration dialogs of Gnopernicus. He also showed the Braille
> Monitor - a window showing visually on screen what is being sent
> to the Braille display. One of the graphical configuration dialogs
> Thomas talked about was for magnification settings: Gnopernicus
> supports a range of magnification features including separate mouse
> cursor magnification, differential (x,y) coordinate magnification up
> to 16x, full-screen crosshairs (in a user-selectable color), a
> variety of picture smoothing options, several mouse tracking options,
> panning and inversion options, and a number of "zoom" regions so that
> the user can have one portion of their screen dedicated to magnifying
> one source while other portions of their screen are magnifying other
> sources. Thomas also noted that all of these specific settings can be
> invoked directly from the direct keyboard interface commands.
>
> Another series of graphical dialogs Thomas talked about were the
> Braille settings dialogs. Options Thomas highlighted included the
> a choice of Braille devices connected to the serial ports (currently
> the BAUM Vario and ALVA lines of displays are supported), a choice
> of Braille translation table (currently English, German, Spanish,
> and Swedish are supported), and a choice of action to be taken
> when one of up to two rows of touch cursors is selected (including
> mouse movement/click/double-click, moving the text caret, and
> presenting various sorts of information about the object/character
> at that Braille cell). Thomas also demonstrated how a user can
> map specific commands to various other buttons on a Braille display.
>
> Thomas then showed how the Gnopernicus direct keyboard interface
> can be configured - where each command can be mapped to various
> keys on the numeric keypad, or to user-defined key combinations.
> Gnopernicus uses the concept of "layered" keypads which a user
> can toggle between, thereby making a much larger set of keys available
> for the direct keyboard interface, and grouping related commands
> onto the same layer (e.g. all magnification commands on one layer)
> for more logical use. The user can choose a specific named command
> and map it to a particular key on a particular layer on the numeric
> keypad.
>
> Thomas talked about Gnopernicus' flexible presentation of information.
> Through the Presentation dialog box, a user can configure precisely
> what information is rendered in speech, Braille, or magnification for
> each type of event in the user interface. For example, a Braille user
> might want menu items to be rendered with a three character
> abbreviation of the role of the object ("MNU"), followed by the text
> of the menu item, followed by any accelerator keys associated with
> that menu item shown within parenthesis (so the user would immediately
> know that that text isn't actually visually character-for-character
> on the screen). Likewise a speech user might want to have menu items
> rendered with the role of the object ("Menu") spoken in a high-pitched
> "menu" voice, the text of the menu item spoken after it in a
> medium-pitched "text" voice, and any accelerator keys spoken in a
> low-pitched "accelerator" voice. Thomas also noted that these named
> "Gnopernicus voices" are completely configurable by the user, who can
> collect a particular set of speech parameters for a particular
> text-to-speech engine together into a named "Gnopernicus voice" (such
> as "accelerator"), and then have Gnopernicus use that voice for
> presenting specific things in the user interface, in response to
> specific events on the desktop.
>
> Running out of time, Thomas skipped over many of his slides, only
> briefly mentioning the Gnopernicus Find command (which allows a
> user to search not only for text, but named graphics, as well as
> for attribute runs such as "find the next bit of italicized text",
> or "find the next bit of underlined text that is selected"). Thomas
> then briefly showed on his slides the complete default configuration
> of the keyboard interface - all of the commands on each layer of the
> keypad. Finally, Thomas gave a brief report on the state of the
> project and the plans going forward. As of February 20th, Gnopernicus
> is "feature complete", and BAUM is now in the "application testing
> phase". BAUM hopes to have "product quality" by the middle of this
> year.
>
>
> For more information about Gnopernicus and BAUM, see the following
> web pages:
>
> http://www.baum.de
> http://www.baum.ro/gnopenricus.html
>
>
> Peter Korn briefly returned to the stage, and introduced Simon
> Bates of the University of Toronto Adaptive Technology Resource
> Center and one of the developers of the GOK dynamic on-screen keyboard.
> Simon passed along regrets from Jutta Treviranus, who had intended
> to be at CSUN and give this presentation.
>
> Simon introduced GOK and the GOK project - an open source on-screen
> keyboard that uses the GNOME Accessibility architecture to provide
> a richer set of functions than the traditional on-screen keyboards
> of other platforms. Like all on-screen keyboards, GOK displays
> a set of keys in a window that is always top-most. GOK supports
> multiple input devices (single switch with delay, head-tracker, and
> eye-gaze devices), and multiple access methods (direct selection,
> scanning and inverse scanning, and dwell selection). Simon explained
> how these access methods work: direct selection activates keys on
> the keyboard by moving a pointing device over a key and clicking
> it; dwell selection activates keys by moving the pointing device over
> a key and letting it "dwell" there for a specified duration; and
> scanning and inverse scanning activates keys through the press of
> a single switch (or pair of switches) to activate in sequence a row
> of keys and then when the desired row is selected individual keys
> within that row with the user pressing their switch to then choose
> the specific key on that row.
>
> While GOK can of course replace the physical keyboard, Simon explained
> that GOK goes beyond these basic on-screen keyboard functions,
> providing direct access to applications, and supporting desktop
> interaction from the GOK dynamic keyboards. Further, GOK is very
> extensible and customizable. With GOK, a user with a significant
> physical disability has complete and efficient access to their
> entire desktop and application suite, via the GNOME Accessibility
> architecture.
>
> Simon then went into some detail on the various access methods,
> showing how they work, and how they can be configured. For example,
> GOK can be configured to flash the keys when selected, and/or play a
> brief sound when a key is selected. In dwell and automatic scanning
> modes, the user can specify the dwell timeout and the scanning
> interval. The user can also configure the number of times the
> automatic scanning will cycle through the keys before resetting.
>
> After this general introduction, Simon gave a tour of GOK, starting
> with the keys on the main GOK keyboard. Simon first showed the
> GOK Compose keyboard (which replaces the user's physical alphanumeric
> keyboard). The Compose keyboard supports word completion, works with
> the AccessX Sticky Keys functionality (for latching modifier keys like
> Shift, Ctrl, and Alt), provides visual feedback of the latched modifier
> state, and is dynamically created when launched to match the actual
> physical keyboard on the user's computer.
>
> Simon then described the functionality of three of the keys on the main
> GOK keyboard that provide direct access to the general desktop and
> applications: the "Menus" key, the "Toolbars" key, and the "UI Grab"
> key. These functions work by using the support for the GNOME
> Accessibility architecture built into the GNOME desktop and
> applications - including applications like StarOffice, Mozilla, and
> those Java applications which implement the Java Accessibility API.
> The Menus keyboard is a dynamic keyboard whose keys are the items
> of the menu bar. When a key on the Menus keyboard is selected, a
> new Menus keyboard appears whose keys are the contents of that
> menu (e.g. the Menu keyboard for the File menu of the GNOME Text
> Editor applications would be "New", "Open...", "Open Location...",
> "Save", "Save As...", "Revert", "Print Preview...", "Print...",
> "Close", and "Quit"). This provides a user with direct access to
> all of the menus in their applications. Likewise, the Toolbars
> keyboard is a window of keys showing all of the toolbar elements of
> a GNOME application. Finally, the UI Grab dynamic keyboard presents
> a set of keys for all of the user-interface elements in the active
> window that can be directly activated (the buttons, radio buttons,
> and check boxes) - particularly useful for direct interaction with
> dialog boxes like the Save dialog of an application.
>
> Simon continued the tour of GOK with another set of three keys on
> the main GOK keyboard: "Launcher", "Activate", and "Pointer", which
> provide access to the general desktop (rather than access within
> a particular application the user is running). Launcher is a
> customizable keyboard whose buttons will launch any application that
> the user placed there - so that commonly used applications like
> web browsers and e-mail can be rapidly launched by the GOK user.
> The Activate keyboard is a dynamic set of keys representing all of
> the running applications on the user's desktop. Selecting one of
> these will bring the application it represents to the front and
> ready to accept keyboard focus. Finally, the Pointer button is
> used to release the mouse pointing device (if it is being used for
> direct or dwell selection) for use on the desktop - important if
> the system is being shared by a GOK and non-GOK user (for example
> in a training situation).
>
> Simon then talked about the final two keys on the main GOK keyboard:
> "Window" and "Settings". The Window keyboard is a set of keys for
> moving the visual GOK window around on the screen - for example to
> move it out of the way of a window underneath that the user is
> interacting with. The Settings button brings up the GOK configuration
> dialog box, which is where much of the configuration of GOK occurs.
> Simon didn't have time to go through all of the GOK Settings dialog,
> but showed briefly some of the settings, like the ability to configure
> the visual display of the GOK keyboards.
>
> Simon then invited Peter back onto the stage, and together they gave
> a brief demonstration of GOK on the GNOME desktop. Peter started
> GOK, used a Tash USB switch and automatic scanning to bring up the
> Launcher keyboard, and from there launched the Text Editor application.
> Peter then brought up the Menus keyboard, and choose first File and
> then Open to bring up the Open File dialog box for the Text Editor.
> Changing his mind, Peter decided he really wanted to write a new
> letter, and so he again used the USB switch to bring up the UI Grab
> keyboard and then choose the "Cancel" button in the Open File dialog.
> Peter continued to change his mind, deciding instead the he wanted to
> launch an application that hadn't been pre-installed on GOK's
> Launcher keyboard. He again used the USB switch to select the Activate
> keyboard, and from there activated the GNOME desktop menu panel.
> Then he selected the Menu keyboard, and from there the Applications
> menu which promptly displayed a new keyboard listing all of the
> accessible graphical applications on his GNOME desktop. Peter choose
> to launch the GNOME Help application. This concluded the GOK
> demonstration, and this third presentation of the day.
>
> For more information about GOK, see the following web page:
>
> http://www.gok.ca
> http://gok.ca/csun2003/ (slides from Simon's presentation)
>
>
>After these three presentations, Sun hosted a series of "Accessibility
>Experience" sessions in their booth. Up to six attendees at a time attended
>these hands-on hour-long sessions on either the Gnopernicus screen
>reader/magnifier, or the GOK dynamic on-screen keyboard. Several of the
>systems were set up with the BAUM Vario 40-cell Braille displays, some with
>the Madentec TrackerOne head-tracking device, and all with the Tash USB
>switch devices. Nearly 50 users signed up for these sessions, and several
>additional folks who hadn't signed up in advanced joined sessions just as
>they were starting. Attendees to these sessions were quite enthusiastic
>about the technology. We received many excellent suggestions for additional
>features to incorporate into GOK. One Gnopernicus user launched Mozilla and
>found the Los Angeles Times web site so he could read about the unfolding
>war in Iraq. Another Gnopernicus user was an accessibility consultant who
>had written custom Java applications adhering to the Java Accessibility
>API. We downloaded one of his Java applications and Gnopernicus had no
>problem reading it, magnifying it, and rendering the Java application's user
>interface in Braille.
>
>
>
>On Thursday afternoon and a few hours on Friday JP Schnapper-Casteras
>convened the third Linux Accessibility Conference in the La Jolla room of
>the Marriott hotel. Attendees included representatives from Sun's
>Accessibility team, Sun's StarOffice development team, RedHat, Adobe, the
>American Foundation for the Blind, and the Cincinnati Federation for the
>Blind attended, as well as number of other interested individuals. Sun
>Microsystems gave an update on the GNOME Accessibility architecture, and
>discussed hopes for seeing several additional applications supporting that
>architecture. Sun also gave an update on the state of
>StarOffice/OpenOffice.org accessibility. There was discussion about
>building an open source Daisy reader - so that users with print impairments
>on UNIX systems would be able to read electronic books such as those
>available from bookshare.org. JP gave an update on the KDE Accessibility
>effort - there is now a formal KDE Accessibility module where work is
>going. There was a lively discussion about Adobe PDF accessibility on UNIX
>environments, including discussions about authoring accessible PDF (perhaps
>from StarOffice/OpenOffice.org?). Finally there was a general and
>open-ended discussion about a variety of open issues - getting the word out,
>recruiting more volunteers to the effort, getting development versions of
>the GNOME assistive technologies into users hands for testing, etc.
>
>
>This was an exciting conference, with a dizzying series of demonstrations of
>accessibility on the UNIX platform and applications using the GNOME
>desktop. The features and flexibility of the assistive technologies being
>developed is very impressive. The promise from Sun that these assistive
>technologies will be bundled with their desktop computers, and the
>expectation that various Linux vendors will also bundles these technologies
>with their UNIX offerings, is particularly exciting!
>
>
>I would like to thank Tash Inc. for their loan of a dozen USB Switch Click
>and USB Mini Click single switch devices for use at CSUN. These switches
>work nicely with the GOK dynamic on-screen keyboard on both Intel Linux
>systems and Sun Solaris systems, as was demonstrated last month at the
>conference. Numerous people used these switches in Sun's booth and also as
>part of their hands-on Accessibility Experience sessions (see above). You
>can get information about these switches at: http://www.tashinc.com/
>
>I would also like to thank Madentec for their loan of several Tracker One
>head pointing devices. Like the Tash switches, these USB head trackers work
>very well with the GOK dynamic on-screen keyboard on both Intel Linux
>systems and Sun Solaris systems. Numerous people used the Tracker One at
>CSUN in Sun's booth and also as part of their hands-on Accessibility
>Experience sessions (see above). You can get more information about the
>Tracker line of head pointing devices at: http://www.madentec.com/
>
>Finally, I would like to thank BAUM for their loan of several Vario 40 cell
>Braille displays, which work flawlessly with the BAUM Gnopernicus screen
>reader/magnifier on both Intel Linux systems and Sun Solaris systems, as was
>demonstrated at CSUN. Attendees seemed particularly pleased by the degree
>to which Gnopernicus supported all of the features of these displays.
>
>Sun will be making the slides from the conference presentations available in
>the near future on the web, at: http://www.sun.com/access
>
>Regards,
>
>Peter Korn
>Sun Accessibility team
>
>Regards Steve
>mailto:
>MSN Messenger: 
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