Re: [Accessibilite] Fosdem

[theo <theocrite AT theocrite.org>]

On 07/02/2011 02:57, Jean-Philippe MENGUAL wrote:
> Salut,

Bonjour Jean-Philippe,


> Voilà mon "brouillon" de la conférence faite ce matin au FOSDEM.

Merci pour le brouillon. Et bravo pour la conférence. J'y ai encore
appris plein de choses.

Et puis malgré le fait que la salle ne soit pas vraiment accessible, il
y a quand même eu 25 personnes, un dimanche matin à 09:00, dans une
salle excentrée, ce qui est un joli score.

Je me permets de joindre les quelques notes que j'ai prises pendant la
conférence.

C'est succint et j'espère n'avoir pas fait trop de conférence.

-- 
librement,
theo
How does a blind perso see?

Background:
Not a devleopper. Only a user. Some scripts. Not very advanced.

There are blind people skilled with dev.

2004 1st linux experience. Accessibility was very poor.

Since 2008, the accessibility get better. Escpecially thanks to GNU & Orca 
project(s).

As soon as a gui is available, it's more accessible to the public.

A11y => Making software usable to everybody even impared people (blind, 
death, mobility, etc.) but also like cognitive impairements.



Freesoftware => various solutions. Even if everything is not perfectly 
covered. But the existing solutions are very advanced.


How a blind people can see a computer, especially with free softare?


It's useful for a dev to understand how blind people see. Otherwise, blind 
people are limited in their life (they can't become sysadmin, can't use 
Internet, read mail, chat, etc. by themselves).

Reading books is difficult, but can be assumed with ocr.


1/ How does a screen appear for a blind people

No mouse! Only the keyboard. Only the shortuts are useful.

On Internet, the job of the screen reader is to display everything (for the 
top to the bottom).

Best free screen reader = Orca. Redirects what appears on the screen 
(/dev/vcsa) => braille display (one driver per display).

=> When you write a document (LaTeX) => the reader can read only what is 
under the cursor
=> Can browse all the screen (not only near the cursor) to browse everything 
(like a menu etc.)

In braille, this is not quite the sime.

1 line, 40 cells (=40 caracters) => You can only see 40 caracters at the time.


2/ What are the best tools

emacspeeks => make it easy to read the screen in emacs.
speekup => In the kernel 2.6.36 => to send information to the hardware speech 
synthetiser
bilwy => read /dev/vcsa and send the information from the screen
GNU/Orca => read the API. Acces to the screen, the shortcuts, the labels etc. 
allows an acces to Firefox, libreoffice & most gtk applications.

No real speech synthetiser. Voice is really hard to understand.
=> pico is interresting. Unfortunately the phonems database isn't free.

3/ The callenges

Become more accessible and to provide more a11y tools.

Make the dev aware that they should make their applicaiton shinny, but also 
make it accessible.

The app shoulud be developped propretly with common sense. 

Make the job of the screen reader easier is better than to focus on a 
specific impairement and forget everything else.




Have a fully free synthetiser.

Have a real free OCR.

Have a better daisy reader.




4/ Solutions

There is a Debian team for a11y. That's a good thing to have a dialog between 
users, testers, developpers and make it possible that the tools improve 
faster. thanks to tests, bugreports, feedbacks, etc. And make the devs 
understand better the problematics. For instance the debian installer is full 
accessible.

Gnome is working on the future of the accessibility.

Libreoffice is also accessible.

Make documentation accessible.

Orca and gnome are supported by spanish gov?, mozilla etc. => It's easier 
with money



Conclusion :
Freesoftware is very credible.

Free solution allows acces to free software and free software are really 
helpfull.

Good thing cause commercial solutions are very expensive (~2000€ for a 
screen reader)

Good tools allow someone becoming impared to be less impacted.



Browsing => links2 most of the time, firefox+orca when js is mandatory. Flash 
is not accessible at all.

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