Accessibility means ensuring software and content is available to people with disabilities such as restricted movement, blindness or learning difficulties and also for those with age related deteriorations like low vision or arthritis. Accessibility also means good universal design so that access is not solely dependent on just screen and mouse for control and keyboard for text input; something that can benefit a wide audience and in circumstances other than at a desktop PC (e.g mobile, loud noise, poor visibility).
Accessibility is an important part of the open source world which offers the possibility of low cost alternatives to pricey proprietary equipment and a chance for users to get involved in contributing to the tools they use. The following is a whistle stop tour of the field and some of the projects and communities involved in open accessibility.
The Linux desktops and GNOME in particular include features that allow a user to customise their experience to better suit their individual needs. Common options include those to use the numeric key pad to control the pointer, mouse options such as reversing the buttons and automatic click on dwelling over an item, high contrast colour schemes and large font sizes.
Interface conventions also exist that improve the accessibility of programs when followed by developers. Simple attention to details such such as ensuring full keyboard access to a program or web site make it usable by more people but often get overlooked.
More complex features come under the banner of "assistive technology" which are specific programs created to convert between a program's graphical user interface and other ways of access. Amongst these are On Screen Keyboards like GOK and SAW which allow text entry with only pointer access or a couple of simple switches connected to the computer. Screen readers such as NVDA and Orca allow access with only a keyboard and speak the screen content using synthetic speech. Head and eye tracking using a web cam (MouseTrap) is being develop and highly innovative programs exist such as Dasher which allows text entry using only a couple of distinct input gestures through various input devices. Other useful technologies include magnification and speech input.
Technically the assisitive technologies need special access to program user interfaces so they can monitor the state and control it accordingly. This is the realm of the so called Accessibility APIs and GNOME has a well developed a solution which also happens to be very useful for automatically testing programs using a form of "remote control".
The so called "web 2.0" proliferation of rich internet applications, such as Moodle or Gmail, which behave like desktop applications, mean that web developer's and web browsers need to provide similar support to that available on desktops. Fortunately the W3C are adding new standards to their existing accessibility work that allows this to happen (i.e WAI ARIA). Open source projects like Firefox and screen readers such as NVDA are at the forefront of support for these breaking technologies.
Mozilla's Firefox browser has many accessibility features, extensions and themes that help make the web more accessible as described on the AccessFirefox.org community site. Amongst the interesting innovations is the webvisum extension which provides CAPTCHA solving and community tagging for visually impaired users. Various accessibility tools also enable web developers to ensure their sites and web applications are accessible.
While some open source accessibility programs are separate projects there are also a couple of larger communities actively working on the big picture. Most notable are the GNOME and Mozilla accessibility communities, both of which are actively participating with other projects and products to develop new accessibility solutions.
An interesting and easy way to sample open source accessibility programs is to download the AccessApps USB memory stick from RSC Scotland N & E which comes loaded with programs that can be run on a Windows PC without any installing (some of the best general open source programs are also included). This not only showcases the programs but allows user to evaluate the options as well as taking them from PC to PC.
You can find out more at the OATSoft community which includes many examples of open source and free accessibility programs and the Full Measure website provides some introductory articles and programs. Python Powered accessibility was written with developers in mind but provides a introduction to various disabilities and accessibility options. Finally Moodle, one of the most popular open source educational tools and communities, has its own accessibility forum which you can access as a 'guest'.
A couple of interesting items by J Blake on Becta's collaboration site:
The latter item is a press release from the Daisy Consortium:
DAISY Consortium Releases Open Source Multimedia Authoring Tool
Obi open source audio recording tool enables a broader audience to produce accessible, navigable information for people with print disabilities
Zurich, Switzerland, March 27, 2009 - The DAISY Consortium announces the release of Obi 1.0, a free, open source audio recording tool for the production of audio books which provide meaningful navigation. The output is fully conformant to the DAISY Standard (officially, the ANSI/NISO Z39.86 Specifications for the Digital Talking Book). Obi enables individual users with a minimal amount of training to produce digital content that is accessible to people with print disabilities such as blindness, dyslexia, or cognitive disabilities. Obi is released under the LGPL license and is available for download at http://daisy-trac.cvsdude.com/obi/wiki/downloads.
George Kerscher, PhD, Secretary General of the DAISY Consortium said, ?The release of Obi is an important step in achieving the DAISY Consortium's vision of a world where people with print disabilities have equal access to information and knowledge without delay or additional expense.?
DAISY audio books created with Obi can be produced with chapters, sections, sub-sections and pages, providing navigation to the content. Obi is fully accessible using assistive technologies such as screen readers. In addition, Obi reduces the time required to work with sophisticated production tools and significantly reduces tool costs that may create barriers for some. For example, teachers can use Obi to produce accessible materials for their students quickly and easily, and organizations in developing countries and smaller organizations everywhere can create synchronized multimedia without a large investment in new technology.
Sandeep Kaler, Project Manager for the National Association for the Blind in New Delhi, India, describes his experience with Obi, ?Obi functionality looks very similar to most Windows applications with familiar commands like Open, Save, Save as, Copy, Paste, etc. which reduces the learning curve. Obi is fully accessible with both open source and more sophisticated commercial screen readers which helps visually challenged users to be as effective as sighted users in most parts of the world. Another nice feature is unicode support in Obi; this enables users to produce DAISY books in different languages. I have produced Hindi DAISY books fluently with this software. And most important, Obi is an open source DAISY authoring tool which is easily available on DAISY website. User does not need to ask for permission and neither has to pay to utilize it.?
About the DAISY Consortium
The DAISY Standard (officially ANSI/NISO z39.86 Specifications for the Digital Talking Book) has revolutionized the reading experience for people with print disabilities around the globe. DAISY, the Digital Accessible Information SYstem, is the world's most widely used assistive technology for reading. Formed in 1996 by like-minded organizations around the world, today the DAISY Consortium consists of nearly 70 non-profit organizations representing 35 different countries and more than 20 for-profit companies which provide products and services to meet the needs of the DAISY community. These organizations are working together to develop and promote international standards and technologies which enable equal access to information and knowledge by all people with print disabilities and which also benefit the wider community. More information about the DAISY Consortium and the DAISY Standard is available at http://www.daisy.org/.
In an attempt to change the emoticon from a weep to a smile I have uploaded an .odt version of the document!
Keep the Source Open - and Free!
best regards,
jblake
PS My Tactile Graphics reports (http://collaboration.becta.org.uk/docs/DOC-1520 et al) were all written in OpenOffice.org 2.4 on Sabayon 3.5.1 and exported as pdf's!
Steve's just written a more comprehensive, up to date guide to "some of the projects and communities bringing open development to accessibility" for OSS-Watch. It's well worth a read.
This new article is at http://www.oss-watch.ac.uk/resources/openaccessibility.xml
Thanks.
Did you notce we attributed OSSP at the foot?
Cheers Steve.
Good article, by the way, and something I might make use of in the day job.
Any chance you could add a link in to the mention? All helps with Page rank, you understand
Miles.
Sure - it's done thanks to Elena our content editor.