Ang: Re: Montreal Summit

[Mats Lundälv <mats lundalv vgregion se>]

Hi Cesar and Meg,

 

Sorry to be a little late in finding this thread. Great initiative Cesar, thanks!

 

I'd like to give you a little update about what's going on within the AEGIS project concerning AAC and graphic symbol support:

 

We now have a working prototype in second alpha stage of graphic symbol support within Open/LibreOffice Writer, currently supporting English and Swedish with Bliss and ARASAAC symbols, and with the ambition to have at least basic support for Spanish and Dutch next spring. You can get a glimpse of what we are up to in this presentation for a Nordic ISAAC research seminar in June this year - http://www.isaac-sverige.se/Symbol_Supported%20_Accessibility_ISAAC_seminar_2011-05-24.pdf. We hope to go more public with this very soon this autumn.

 

The technology beind this is what we call the Concept Coding Framework (CCF). We now have a CCF HTTP server application (developed in Java) that is providing the CCF Symbol Support extension for OO/LO Writer with the needed lexicon and symbol look-up service. The CCF Symbol Server is running locally for this desktop application, but we are already using it online to serve an upcoming AAC app for Android mobile devices with an extended vocabulary to allow local set-up of symbol selection charts etc. This will be further presented at the AEGIS conference in Brussels in late November - http://aegis-conference.eu/. Another opportunity to discuss future advancements in this area will be the ICCHP 2012 conference in Linz July 11-13, where there is an AAC theme planned, including a workshop about Content management in AAC: content repositories and interoperability.

 

Moreover, we will be working within AEGIS this autumn and winter with an update of SAW (Special Access to Windows) and WindowCatcher to make them compliant with current Windows versions, as well as with the IAccessible 2 accessibility API (in addition to MSAA and UI Automation), and to provide support in SAW for the CCF API for another level of graphic symbol support, and hopefully some more enhancements.

 

A special note on graphic symbol support in standard environments: In OO/LO Writer - and in web environments - we are using the Ruby Annotation format for alligning text and symbols. I would strongly encourage full support for Ruby Annotation in IM too. This will bring full support for Chinese and Japanese etc, as well as for graphic symbols in general based on a wide-spread standard.

In Writer and ODF there is currently a limitation in the Ruby Annotation implementation in that only plain text is allowed in the annotation part of the Ruby (above the base text). This has forced us to convert our Blissymbol and ARASAAC symbol libs to private area Unicode fonts to be able to have them displayed in the Ruby Annotation - which is OK for Bliss, but not so good for ARASAAC and other pictorials, as it will only allow black and white but not colour graphics.

 

We are of course very interested in keeping in touch with you about further cooperation in this area. Our long term goal should be to move towards a situation where multilingual and multi-modal lexicon resources (including graphic symbol and sign language support etc) will be generally and freely available in the standard ICT environments - for those who need it as AAC (augmentative and alternative communication), but also for language and literacy development in general. Only in this way can we have a more inclusive environment for communication and learning - including also people with cognitive difficulties - and beneficial for all.

 

Let's keep in touch!

Mats

-----gnome-accessibility-list-bounces gnome org skrev: -----

Till: meg ford <meg387 gmail com>
Från: Cesar Mauri <cesar crea-si com>
Sänt av: gnome-accessibility-list-bounces gnome org
Datum: 2011-10-14 14:38
Kopia: gnome-accessibility-list gnome org
Ärende: Re: Montreal Summit

Hi Meg,

El 13/10/2011 1:56, meg ford escribió:
        Thinking in people with language and communication disorders
>         (i.e. people not able to read/write due to cognitive/mental
>         disorders), it would be interesting to have a IM client able to
>         compose, send and display messages made up pictograms + text.
>         So, messages would look like this:
>
>         http://1.bp.blogspot.com/___h4z60kN9fAk/TBnOIM61kUI/__AAAAAAAAAQ8/TM0fBXcTvyA/s1600/__cumplea%C3%B1os.png
>         <http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_h4z60kN9fAk/TBnOIM61kUI/AAAAAAAAAQ8/TM0fBXcTvyA/s1600/cumplea%C3%B1os.png>
>
>         Also, it would be useful to add TTS support in order to hear
>         messages written in plain text (which could be also useful for
>         blind people).
>
>         There had been some efforts in that way:
>
>         http://www.fundmaresme.com/messengervisual/
>
>
>     I will bring this up with the IM developers when they meet, and tell
>     them that it was your suggestion. It sounds like a very promising
>     idea to me, and if there is interest, I will be willing to help with
>     it, as well. It could also be a useful tool for Sugar to have, so
>     that children who are learning to read could communicate easily.
>
>
>         but unfortunately only designed to work on an intranet and now
>         abandoned :-(
>
>         Furthermore, am I the author of a11y projects. If you have
>         interest I would provide further details.
>
>
>     Certainly! I will contact you and let you know what the  IM
>     developers have to say.
>
>   I spoke to one of the developers of Telepathy about this, and here is
> what he said:
>
> Currently Telepathy does not support this type of feature. For example,
> users cannot send emoticons that they have drawn themselves. Therefore,
> you would need to write a library for this. If you are willing to write
> a library, they would be happy to have this feature.
>
> Secondly, they recommend that you write a seperate app for this feature,
> but use the Empathy contact list. They recommend that the feature be
> accessed through the accessibility menu.
>
> Lastly, if you would like to discuss this, please contact the developers
> on the mailing list: telepathy lists freedesktop org
> <mailto:telepathy lists freedesktop org>.
>
> I hope that this is helpful. Please let me know if you have any
> questions, and if you do begin work on this, I will be happy to be of
> assistance if I can
>
> Sincerely,
> Meg Ford

Thanks for this feedback and for your assistance offer, but now we're
not in the position to start a new development front. Anyway I'll
contact the developers mailing list to, a least, leave the request and
ask whether the backends support this feature.

Regards,

César


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