3600 EUR

24

5500 EUR

40

9170 EUR

40, Note taker

• 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

Linux Console accessibility

X accessibility, Mercator 1.0

X accessibility, Mercator 1.0

X accessibility, AT-SPI

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...

    First name:Foo

    Last name:Bar

    Password:baz

  • "Script" for each application

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/