Re: 2.6 proposed module: dasher

[Peter Korn <Peter Korn Sun COM>]

Hi Murray, Bill,

> > If the GNOME accessibility team say that they need it, and that they 
> > plan to integrate it into the whole set of accessibilty tools, then the
> > release-team is likely to just say "OK, you're the experts". However,
>> as a sanity check, I would like to know that somebody is actually
> > getting some benefit from it already, so it's not just a theoretical
>> thing.

I don't disagree with anything Bill writes (below), but want to add a 
different perspective for consideration.

The GNOME integration may well be strong enough by the time 2.6 ships, but I 
think there are still some significant issues to work out to make that more 
useful.  As a standalone application for entering text via an alternate 
interface for people with severe physical disabilities, it is *very* 
interesting and the performance numbers from their studies are quite 
remarkable.  As an assistive technology that allows a someone with a severe 
physical disability to completely control their desktop, I think it has a 
good ways to go.

So - I have absolutely no objection to it being included with GNOME, and I 
can't think of a better place for it to live in the default menu structure 
other than in "Accessibility", but I personally would like to see much more 
functionality in the roadmap and active development before I would consider 
it a real alternate user interface for the desktop.  Until a user can 
navigate dialog boxes and toolbars and the like with Dasher, they will be 
unable to effectively use an application (navigating menus alone isn't enough).

> Well, the project has a long history - according to the homepage since 
> 1997. But dasher+GNOME open up lots of new possibilities for the
> technology, and the Dasher team has actively been pursuing better GNOME
> integration - in part as I understand it because GNOME makes it possible
> for Dasher to do more than other platforms.
>
> Unlike most assistive technologies, it works well with complex languages 
> like Japanese (GOK can theoretically work with Japanese but for some
> users  Dasher would be a much better option), and it and its documentation
> are available in  multiple languages already.  So it comes to GNOME
> as a well-formed, mature project with lots of translations and
> capabilities already.
>
> In terms of how it fits into our overall accessibility 'toolbox', it 
> fills an important gap.  It also
> has potential uses for non-disabled users.  I think its areas of overlap 
> with GOK are small, and it's distinctive enough in the way that it works 
> that I wouldn't worry about redundancy.  Unless there's something about 
> its footprint (in the
> packages) that I don't realize, I don't see why it doesn't merit 
> inclusion as one of our accessibility tools.


Regards,

Peter Korn
Sun Accessibility team