UNIX Accessibility at CSUN, hands-on sessions with assistive technologies

[Peter Korn <peter korn sun com>]

Sun Microsystems, Inc. is hosting a series of sessions on UNIX Accessibility
at the CSUN Conference on Technology and Persons with Disabilities at the
Los Angeles Airport Marriott Hotel next week, on March 20th.  This series of
three sessions begins Thursday morning at 8am on March 20th in the
Atlanta-Boston room, and is part of the general CSUN conference.  The
sessions will discuss the GNOME desktop accessibility features, examine the
upcoming versions of StarOffice and Mozilla and illustrate the support for
accessibility being developed for those products, and will detail the two
outstanding assistive technologies in development for GNOME: the Gnopernicus
screen reader/magnifier with rich Braille support, and the GOK dynamic
on-screen keyboard with support for single switch, scanning, and head
tracker input.

In addition, Sun is leading a series of "Accessibility Experience" sessions
in the Washington room for small groups of participants on Thursday
afternoon, all day Friday, and Saturday morning March 20th-22nd.  These
sessions will be hands-on guided tours of the GNOME desktop and applications
through the use of either the Gnopernicus screen reader/magnifier for GNOME,
or the GOK dynamic on-screen keyboard.  Participants will be shown the
highlights of the features of these two assistive technologies, and explore
their use on the GNOME desktop and with a variety of applications.  Make an
appointment to attend one of these sessions at Sun's booth in the Washington
room of the Marriott Hotel, or during the Thursday morning presentations in
the Atlanta-Boston room.

The Sun Accessibility team invites everyone who has an interest in finding
out the latest information about accessibility to UNIX systems, including
access to Solaris and GNU/Linux, to join us for these in-depth presentations
and hands-on sessions with the technologies.  Attached below is information
about this series of presentations.  We hope you can join us.

We also invite you to visit us at our booth in the Washington room of the
Marriott Hotel, and see the latest in Java technology accessibility and
access to Java applications from the Microsoft Windows desktop.

On behalf of Sun Microsystems,

Peter Korn
Sun Microsystems Accessibility team
access sun com
http://www.sun.com/access


==========================================================================

   CSUN Conference on Technology and Persons with Disabilities
      UNIX Accessibility sessions, Thursday March 20th, 2003
  Atlanta-Boston rooms of the Los Angeles Airport Marriott Hotel
                 hosted by Sun Microsystems, Inc.


 8:00am-9:00am
 UNIX and GNOME Accessibility overview
 -------------------------------------
 This presentation will provide a guided tour on the GNOME 2 desktop.  We
 will demonstrate the built-in accessibility features of GNOME on both
 the Sun Solaris(TM) Operating Environment and for GNU/Linux.  Highlights
 include the themeing support of the graphical GNOME desktop, the
 rich set of applications that are available and being made accessible
 for GNOME, and brief demonstrations of the two assistive technologies
 in development: the Gnopernicus screen reader/magnifier with rich Braille
 support, and the GOK dynamic on-screen keyboard supporting single 
 switch scanning and head trackers with dwell selection.

 Speakers: 
     - Peter Korn, Sun Microsystems, Inc.
     - Gary Little, Sun Microsystems, Inc.


 9:20am-10:20am
 Accessible UNIX Applications: StarOffice(TM) and Mozilla(TM)
 ------------------------------------------------------------
 In this presentation, we will give an overview of the forthcoming
 release of the StarOffice application suite, including the built-in
 accessibility features of the word processing, spreadsheet, and 
 presentation packages.  We will show how StarOffice supports the desktop
 theme, mouseless operation, and assistive technologies on both the GNOME
 desktop with the Solaris Operating Environment and GNU/Linux, and also 
 on the Microsoft Windows platform.  We will also give a an overview
 of the forthcoming release of the Mozilla browser, showing the built-in
 accessibility features and how they support browsing the web.  We will
 demonstrate support for the GNOME desktop theme and keyboard navigation,
 as well as inter operating with assistive technologies on the GNOME
 desktop.

 Speakers: 
     - Peter Korn, Sun Microsystems, Inc.
     - Malte Timmermann, Sun Microsystems, Inc.


 10:40am-11:40am
 Assistive Technology for UNIX: Gnopernicus Screen Reader/Magnifier
 and GOK, the GNOME On-screen Keyboard
 -----------------------------------------------------
 In this presentation, we will give a detailed demonstration of the open
 source Gnopernicus screen reader/magnifier for GNOME desktop, with full
 Braille support.  We will demonstrate the features and functions of
 Gnopernicus, and show how a blind or visually impaired user can be
 effective with the GNOME desktop on a UNIX system.  We will also
 demonstrate GOK, the open source GNOME on-screen keyboard, with support
 for single switch, scanning, dynamic keyboard functionality, and
 customizable displays.  We will demonstrate how users with severe
 physical impairments can be very effective and surprisingly efficient
 with the unique features of GOK that provide direct switch access to
 menus, toolbars, and the user interface elements in dialog boxes 
 utilizing the accessibility architecture in the GNOME platform.

 Speakers: 
     - Thomas Friehoff, BAUM Retec AG
     - Simon Bates, University of Toronto ATRC
     - Peter Korn, Sun Microsystems, Inc.