Re: Gnome Accessibility and OpenMoko

[Jason White <jason jasonjgw net>]

On Fri, Jan 04, 2008 at 02:21:55PM -0500, Willie Walker wrote:
 
> I'm fairly interested in the OpenMoko for a variety of personal reasons 
> and would definitely like to see accessibility support on it.  One of 
> the bigger barriers I see to the platform is that there is no keyboard. 
>   As such, the touch-screen-only approach can prove to be a significant 
> barrier to people with visual and milder physical impairments.  Users 
> who use switches (e.g., GOK users) and possibly even users who use 
> eye/head tracking devices, however, might benefit from an accessible 
> mobile platform.
> 

Agreed. However, the touch screen only approach might be a limitation of the
current hardware rather than of the project itself; it may only be a matter of
time before they have access to devices with proper keyboards.
> As an alternative route, we might consider looking at getting GNOME a11y 
> working on the OLPC project.  With that, we should get considerable 
> experience with what is needed to get GNOME a11y going on a small device 
> with memory and CPU constraints.  That should then hopefully overlap or 
> fall over into work for OpenMoko accessibility.

This is an excellent idea, and one which I have been thinking about ever since
reading details of the OLPC project. Ideally, the accessibility would support
the existing OLPC custom user interface. Espeak would probably be the best
route to speech output; braille support should be possible, though I can't
remember whether the device has a USB port. Obviously, children who face
socio-economic limitations (as in the large parts of the world for which the
OLPC is intended) are almost guaranteed not to to have access to braille
displays, so this last point becomes somewhat irrelevant, though perhaps
useful from a purely technical development perspective.