Re: Accessibility in Debconf BoF
Hello,
To save you digging in gobby, here are the notes we had put there for
the BoF.
Samuel
Note: previous talk on
http://brl.thefreecat.org/fosdem.odp
http://meetings-archive.debian.net/pub/debian-meetings/2008/fosdem/
What is accessibility?
aka a11y
Making Software usable by all people
including disabled: blind, low vision, deaf, colorblind, one-handed, finger-handed, "eye-handed", speech impaired, cognition, elderly, ...
See Accessibility HOWTOs
Technologies
Braille input/output
Speech synthesis
Joysticks
Press button
Don't focus on one technology
Braille is not perfect (expensive, not everybody can read it, ...)
Speech synthesis is not perfect (noisy environment, accurateness, deaf, ...)
Dedicated software
firevox, self-voicing apps, ...
Generally a bad idea
lack of manpower: javascript support, OOo document support, ...
Better use the same software
In particular to get help & work with others.
Better make existing applications accessible
State of the Art
Text mode apps usually accessible
Particularly when the cursor automatically goes to a sensible place.
Gnome being accessible (since about 2004)
OpenOffice being accessible, still cumbersome, but some people use it in everyday work
KDE should get accessible Real Soon Now
We're late compared to Windows
What you developer can do
Design your application without gui in mind first
Logical order, just like CSS ☺
Provide text equivalents, based on shared libraries or backend daemons (wicd!!!)
For text application, put the cursor in a sensible place
To guide screen readers
Take users suggestions into consideration
E.g. bracketed links in text web browsers
Try to test it yourself!
gnome-terminal+brltty / accerciser / gnome-orca
How about Debian?
=================
Debian Installer
Braille & speech work!
Adding AT-SPI to the debian installer
Add zoom/gok/... support?
Debian Distribution
Text-based distribution
Installation, configuration, ...
Please maintain this alternative!
A plethora of software, often text equivalents
Mpg321, mc, o3tohtml...
Please continue packaging those!
How to test?
============
Debian Installer
http://wiki.debian.org/DebianInstaller/Accessibility
basically, install kvm and brltty, wget http://d-i.debian.org/daily-images/i386/daily/netboot/gtk/mini.iso and run
$ /sbin/brltty -b xw -x no -A auth=none,host=127.0.0.1:1
$ BRLAPI_HOST=127.0.0.1:1 kvm -usbdevice braille -cdrom mini.iso
Also give a try to the speech synthesis boot option (just enable soundcard in kvm command line to test it in a VM).
Graphical applications
note: will be temporarily broken in testing/unstable with gnome3/at-spi2 transition
easy way is to enable the braille monitor
Please mute your sound card before proceeding, so it's not a mess
install gnome-orca, run it in a terminal (run orca), use gnome-speech and espeak for simplicity, enable braille and braille monitor. It will prompt you to re-login your whole gnome session to enable accessibility
Note: if you chose the laptop layout, the orcakey will be capslock; if you chose the desktop layout, the orcakey will be insert
in new gnome session, re-start orca
browse into your application (try gobby-0.5 for instance, there are a few shortcomings)
just with the standard keybindings
with flat review mode: press orcakey+p, then use orcakey+j or l and orcakey+ctrl+j or l to move around.
start accerciser to access the exact information that orca has access to.
(possibility for automated GUI testing)
Text applications
See http://brl.thefreecat.org/text-apps-a11y-test.html
Projects
========
Some ideas: packaging
Tag your packages: interface::text-mode, uitoolkit::gtk
Add package tags?
accessible-with::{at-spi,tty-screen-reader}
accessible-with::{braille,speech}
accessible-with::{gnome-orca,brltty,speakup}
Install "required" accessibility package by default
those that some people can't use a computer without
way to enable them
More general ideas
Getting more people involved
Subscribe to debian-accessibility
Keep debian.org accessible
It is great atm, without us even having had to ask! (even mentioned in their talk)
Add an “accessibility” chapter to the New Maintainers' guide
Add “accessibility” questions to the NM process (*after* adding the documentation above of course :) )
Add an "accessibility" section to Derivatives Guidelines
Add an “accessibility” tag to bugs
Cc-ed to debian-accessibility
archive Accessibility section?
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