• How accessible is Debian?

  • Samuel Thibault

  • http://brl.thefreecat.org/

    Quite well!

    Could do even better!

    Outline

  • Introduction to Accessibility

  • State of the Art

  • What about Debian?

  • (more a debate than final solutions)

  • What can you do?

    Please ask questions / debate

    What is accessibility?

  • AKA a11y

  • Making Software usable by disabled people

  • Blind

  • Low-sighted

  • Deaf

  • Colorblind

  • One-handed

  • Finger-handed

  • Eye-handed (dasher)

  • Elderly

  • Cognition, ...

    See Accessibility HOWTOs

    Technologies

  • Braille input/output

  • Speech synthesis

  • Joysticks

  • Press button

    Braille devices

    Picture that shows some physical braille cells

  • Serial, USB, bluetooth connection

  • 12 / 20 / 40 / 80 cells

    Picture of a PocketVario

    3600 EUR

    24

    Picture of a SuperVario

    5500 EUR

    40

    Picture of an Iris

    9170 EUR

    40, Note taker

    Don?t focus on one technology

  • Braille is not perfect

  • A lot of people can?t read braille

  • Braille devices are expensive

  • Speech synthesis is not perfect

  • Noisy environments

  • Deaf...

    Dedicated software

  • e.g. emacspeak, firevox

  • Generally a bad idea!

  • Lack of manpower

  • Web browser

  • javascript/flash/table/CSS support?

  • An office suite

  • MSOffice/OpenOffice compatibility?

  • Etc.

  • Working together

  • Better use the same software

  • Better make existing applications accessible

  • State of the Art

    In a few words

  • Text mode is generally quite well accessible

  • But not so well suited to beginners

  • Gnome just starts being accessible

  • Still a long road to go

  • We?re late compared to the Windows world

  • We only really started a few years ago

  • They (JAWS, Window-Eyes, ...) started more than a decade ago

    Linux Console accessibility

    Figure showing details of relations between applications, Linux and brltty

    Linux Console accessibility

    Picture showing relations between a shell, YASR and the real TTY, through a pty

    X accessibility, Mercator 1.0

    Picture showing relations between xedit, Xserver and Mercator: text goes from xedit to X server through Mercator

    X accessibility, Mercator 1.0

    Figure showing relations between gedit, X server and Mercator: now Mercator gets pixmap, not text, because gedit uses gtk which uses pango to render fonts

    X accessibility, AT-SPI

    Figure showing how Orca plugs into gtk through AT-SPI, hence being able to get the text, and output it via braille, speech, ...

    Technically speaking

  • A lot of applications are already accessible

  • Console

  • GTK

  • KDE4

  • Acrobat Reader

  • A lot are not

  • KDE3

  • Xt

  • Self-drawn (e.g. xpdf)

    In practice

  • A lot of technically speaking accessible applications actually aren?t so much

  • Console (braille & speech): Demo

  • Graphical

  • A visually-minded mess of widgets...

  • "Script" for each application

    First name:Foo

    Last name:Bar

    Password:baz

    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

  • For text application, put the cursor in a sane place

  • To guide screen readers

  • Take users suggestions into consideration

  • E.g. bracketed links in text web browsers

  • If you?re crazy enough, test it yourself!

  • gnome-terminal+brltty / accerciser / gnome-orca

  • How about Debian?

    Debian Installer

  • Braille works!

  • Demo

  • To test, boot with install brltty=tt,ttyS0

  • (currently broken :/ you may use vs instead of tt)

  • Update: Fixed since 2008-03-27 in the daily build

  • Speech would need

  • Sound drivers

  • Hardware support (speakup kernel module)

  • Adding AT-SPI to the debian installer

  • Adds 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!

    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}

  • Add a tasksel element?

  • Selects gnome desktop, installs accessibility packages

  • Automatically selected

  • Or meta-packages?

  • Recommend gnome-orca, openoffice.org-gnome, etc.

    More general ideas

  • Getting more people involved

  • Subscribe to debian-accessibility

  • Make sure debian.org is accessible

  • Currently quite fine, test with lynx for instance

  • Add an "accessibility" chapter to the installation manual

  • Add an "accessibility" chapter to the New Maintainers? guide

  • Add an "accessibility" tag to bugs

  • Cc-ed to debian-accessibility

    Please

  • Be kind / patient / etc. with blind people

  • It?s not easy for them to use our software

  • It?s even more difficult for them to explain their problems in an understandable way

  • e.g. "braille doesn?t follow"

  • Discuss!

  • Try to keep in mind that they can?t see

  • Yes, they don?t care that the framebuffer doesn?t show up properly!

  • You could even contact your local "blind institute"

  • Even better: make friend with a blind guy ?

    Conclusion

  • Accessibility is important

  • For quite a lot of our users

  • Massachusetts episode

  • Debian is already quite well accessible

  • We can and should do even better

  • Slides, resources, docs: http://brl.thefreecat.org/