I would love to work on a system wide "screen reader" for people with learning disabilities. Something like K3000 (KESI) or WYNN from FS. Using the Gnome accessibility features along with visual effects should be able to do something really innovative.
Christian, it's great to hear there is interest in this area! But remember, most people with a reading difficulty do not have a general learning disability. So both groups need to be well supported.
The important thing is to be able to give access to a tool that gives *just the right level of reading support* - not too little, and not too much. This will be different between individuals, and will differ for each individual over time and between different kinds of reading/writing tasks. So it must be really easy to set up and change.
For the basic reading support for most people with reading difficulties (non-VI) one could actually imagine a stripped version or mode of Orca (where most of the needed functionality exists) which only speaks text content according to what's set in a small battery of user preferenses, and where all unnecessary complexity of Orca's context reading etc is hidden. What's missing in Orca functionality for these user needs is primarily just GUI based reading - text under the mouse pointer etc.
I was discussing this with Joanmarie some time ago, and she was very positive to take a look at it. But I do understand that it's very difficult for the Orca developing team to divert any interest and time, as they have so much to do constantly to cover the urgent needs of the main target VI users of Orca.
So probably there is a need for a special task force for this?
Anyway, it would be great if this is really making it to the Gnome campaign for accessibility agenda in one way or the other.
On Jan 7, 2012, at 9:42 PM, Bill Cox wrote:
> So, if people like me are the largest group, where the heck are they?
> I just want to use software to make my life easier, and I find that
> much of it does not exist.
>
> Thanks,
> Bill
Cheers,
Mats