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Domain: baum.ro

Stories and comments across the archive that link to baum.ro.

Comments · 8

  1. Re:"Disabled Activists" = Corporate Activists by jejones · · Score: 1 · on OpenDocument Plans Questioned by Disabled

    Not to pick on the parent poster, but for those interested...

    gnopernicus
    the GNOME Accessibility Project
    britty (sorry, couldn't find a web site for it)
    speechd-el for emacs users
    the KDE Accessibility Project (to be ecumenical)
    the Mozilla Accessibility Project

    Found the first four on Ubuntu using synaptic and searching for "blind" and "gnopernicus" (OK, I remembered the name on that one); about a minute's worth of Googling turned up the URLs.

    Now...that's not to say that those are perfect or meet everyone's needs; I wouldn't know, because I've never used them.

    From TFA, it looks like the generic GIMP UI rant all over again; "[fill in blank] sucks, but I won't bother to tell you in particular what needs fixing." That's a great way to get the "code it yourself, then" response, but not particularly useful as far as getting what one wants.

  2. Re:Gimme, Gimme, Gimme by ccn · · Score: 1 · on FOSS and Disabled Communities Out of Touch
    Can a blind person install and configure windows, iis, SQL server, exchange, and active directory?

    Once your favorite OSS tool is installed can a blind person use them?


    Some type of assistive technology (AT) is generally present which helps in providing access to the UI (Speakup for the Linux console, JAWS for the Windows GUI, Gnopernicus for Gnome (which is still in development as far as I know), etc.) If the appropriate AT is installed and working properly, tasks such as those listed above aren't an issue.

    Interestingly enough, speaking as someone who is blind, it was much easier to install Linux given that Speakup can be made available as a part of the kernel providing speech almost from the moment it loads. Windows screen reading packages such as JAWS must be installed after the OS, and Narrator (a minimal screen reading tool built into Windows XP) isn't actually made available until 95% of the installation process has completed.
  3. OS dedicated for the blind or a blind-friendly OS? by peterkorn · · Score: 1 · on Designing an OS for Blind/Deaf Users?
    If you are looking to design an OS specifically for the blind (vs. legally blind/low-vision), look to http://emacspeak.sourceforge.net/. This was design by a blind person for himself and other blind users - a complete speech/audio environment within emacs. It isn't an OS, but is a fine example of a UI to consider in making a blind persons' OS.

    On the other hand, if you are looking to make a blind-friendly general OS, then look to the "3rd generation approach" to accessibility in GNOME, Mac OS X v10.4, and Longhorn. All of these are doing API-based accessibility, where every object on the screen implements a rich accessibility API which is taken together and then re-presented to the blind (or others with other disabilities). In GNOME this is with the open source Gnopernicus screen reader (see http://www.baum.ro/gnopernicus.html). In Mac OS X v10.4 this is VoiceOver. Longhorn hasn't declared itself fully on this topic yet.

    A final thing to look at is the work my co-worker Willie Walker and the University of Toronto Adaptive Technology Resource Centre did with the a speech Look and Feel for Swing.

  4. Re:OS X and Linux are great alternatives. by bhaneman · · Score: 2, Informative · on PC Accessibility Options for the Blind?
    As well as SpeakUp (http://www.linux-speakup.org/) and EmacsSpeak (http://emacspeak.sourceforge.net/) which give voice access to the Linux console and console applications, newer Linux releases include api-based assistive technology support for applications that use gtk+, mozilla, or Java... via an interface called "AT-SPI" (http://developer.gnome.org/doc/API/2.0/at-spi/ind ex.html) which very much resembles (but predates) the accessibility APIs used in OSX.
    Support for AT-SPI in Qt is slated for a future release of KDE/Qt.

    New versions of the Gnome desktop include the built-in gnopernicus screenreader and magnifier, which supports speech, braille, and magnification (http://www.baum.ro/gnopernicus.html), and the gok suite of dynamic onscreen keyboards too (http://www.gok.ca./ There's also another free (as in freedom) screenreader available from ftp.gnome.org, called "orca" - it's a less full-featured offering, but it has scripting capabilities that make it interesting to hackers, and it's written in python.

    There are also some speech and magnification utilities included with KDE, thanks to the "KDE Accessibility Project", though they are currently more limited in scope. When support for the AT-SPI is available for KDE apps, all the assistive technologies written to this api should interoperate nicely. I believe that there may be a talking version of konqueror already. There are also projects that provide talking plugins for Mozilla.

    Since the GUI-based Linux [and Solaris :-)] accessibility technologies are still in their early days, end users are still likely to have a somewhat bumpier ride than users of established screenreaders like JAWS for Windows - but at last blind and low-vision users have significant access to the graphical Linux desktop. In particular, the web browsing experience requires a patched Mozilla for best results - Sun has produced such a version and makes periodic tarballs available.

    Provided the distros recognize the value in all this, we can expect improved testing and support in upcoming Linux distributions.

    There is a mailing list available for early adopters of this technology: http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/gnome-acces sibility-list

    Bill Haneman
    Gnome Accessibility Project
    FSG Accessibility Work Group
    Sun Microsystems Inc.
  5. Adobe Reader for Linux is also accessible! by peterkorn · · Score: 4, Interesting · on Adobe Reader 7.0 Coming to Linux

    I just returned from the CSUN Conference on Technology and Persons with Disabilities where Pete DeVasto of Adobe was demoing a beta build of Adobe Reader for Linux using the Gnopernicus screen reader. Speech output, Braille output, working navigation of the PDF documents he showed (including forms), all accessible to him on the Sun Opteron box he was using, running the forthcoming edition of Sun's Java Desktop System Release 3 (GNOME 2.6 with GNOME 2.8 accessibility bits). Even as someone very much involved in this work (I'm Sun's Accessibility Architect), it was really cool to see this, and to see the reactions from folks at the conference to what Adobe was showing.

  6. Lots of blind-friend open source options by peterkorn · · Score: 1 · on New Technology for the Blind?
    There are a lot of open source tools for blind users. They fall into three groups:

    1. Console access. These include Speakup ftp://ftp.braille.uwo.ca/pub/speakup/, Screader http://www.euronet.nl/~acj/eng-screader.html, YASR http://yasr.sourceforge.net/, and many folks' favorite BrlTTY http://dave.mielke.cc/brltty/

    2. Specialized environment. The most obvious option here is emacspeak http://emacspeak.sourceforge.net/ but there are others.

    3. GUI Access. The only real option today is the Gnopernicus screen reader/magnifier http://www.baum.ro/gnopernicus.html that is part of the GNOME desktop http://www.gnome.org/start via the GNOME Accessibility Project http://developer.gnome.org/projects/gap/ (though other options are being explored). Note: my day job is as Sun's Accessibility Architect, working on the GNOME Accessibility Project and helping with the development of things like Gnopernicus, and another amazing product for people with physical impairments - GOK http://www.gok.ca/.

    A pretty complete list of F/OSS accessibility projects can be found at the Linux Accessibility Resource Site (LARS) http://lars.atrc.utoronto.ca/current.html. I maintain a blog on this stuff as well, which has lots more information: http://blogs.sun.com/korn.

  7. Linux has free screenreaders too by MooKore+2004 · · Score: 3, Informative · on Apple to Add Free Screen Reader to Mac OS X

    Checkout Gnpernicus. Free screenreader for GNOME and GNOME compatible desktops.

  8. Gnopernicus by Bistronaut · · Score: 2 · on Screen Readers for GNOME and KDE?

    The Gnome project seems to be doing a good job for the blind. See the Gnome Accessibility project and specifically Gnopernicus.

    Searches for KDE stuff only turned up the KDE Accessibility mailing list. Supposedly the new version of Qt (and by extention, KDE) has a good accessibility framework, but some more digging would be required to find out just what applications (if any) use it.