Status of IBM a11y
Hello all, Yesterday, IBM decided to change strategies with respect to GNOME accessibility: http://www-03.ibm.com/developerworks/blogs/page/schwer Under this new plan, IBM is no longer supporting development of LSR, Accerciser, pyatspi, AT-SPI::Collection, or Firefox/AT-SPI accessibility. These projects will not vanish, but the news does have an impact on each. == Accerciser Eitan Isaacson is busy preparing Accerciser for inclusion in GNOME 2.20 under a grant from the Mozilla Foundation. Its development and documentation is far enough along that it should only require minimal future maintenance (i.e. bug fixes, updates to stay in sync with at-spi). As far as I know, Eitan plans to stay on as maintainer of Accerciser after the grant concludes. Even if Eitan does decide to leave, someone from the accessibility or automated testing communities could step up and take ownership over the code. == pyatspi The Python bindings for AT-SPI are complete enough to power Accerciser today. Dogtail and LDTP are busy adopting them as well. Orca, as I understand it, plans to adopt them sometime in the GNOME 2.20 or 2.22 time frame. I will do my best to support pyatspi as problems arise until another member of the GNOME community is expert enough to own the binding. Since pyatspi is in the at-spi module, Li Yuan remains as the proper maintainer. == LSR Development on LSR as a screen reader for GNOME will cease. We will make one last release of LSR 0.5.3 on Monday in line with GNOME 2.19.3. After that, the project will go dormant until various groups decide whether the LSR core will be used to drive other open source AT projects or if it will be abandoned altogether. Over the next few weeks, I will be updating and writing documentation in case the LSR core goes on to live in other projects. I will also reorganize the LSR wiki to de-emphasize the screen reader user content, and put the focus more on developer documentation. Contact me directly if you wish to discuss LSR. == Firefox and the Mozilla platform Aaron Leventhal will remain the maintainer of accessibility for the Mozilla core. His priorities will now be: 1) ARIA support -- Windows and Linux , 2) Firefox 3 accessibility regressions, 3) IAccessible2 and cross-platform issues Aaron will not be focusing on Linux accessibility support in the Firefox 3 timeframe unless it affects all platforms, API harmonization or ARIA support. The ATK/AT-SPI-specific support of XUL and HTML must now be via the existing community and module peers. Aaron will continue to be available to review bug fixes in those areas. Contact Aaron directly for details. == AT-SPI Collection Ariel Rios has (or will) post his outstanding work on implementing the AT-SPI Collection interface. I'm not sure of his immediate plans, but he has expressed an interest in completing the work on his personal time. Contact Ariel directly for details. Documentation about Collection can be found at http://live.gnome.org/GAP/Collection. --- Personally, I am still extremely interested in accessibility and the GNOME desktop. The IBM decision means that I will no longer contribute to GNOME through my daily work, but I certainly plan to make contributions to GNOME as a hobbyist. In addition, I will gladly help anyone who wishes to develop or reuse any of the projects I worked on for the past two years. Feel free to contact me about them at any time. Finally, I want to wish all the other accessibility developers on GNOME the best of luck. Keep fighting the good fight of making free software accessible to all those who want it. Best regards, Peter Parente -- Ubuntu-accessibility mailing list Ubuntu-accessibility@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-accessibility
Re: Orca, AT-SPI and the Compiz zoom project
Hi Kristian, Traditionally, screen reader ATs like gnopernicus originally and now Orca and LSR drive the gnome-magnifier. The magnifier itself is just a "dummy" component which is completely controller by the other ATs. They tell it where to look, how much to zoom, how big a zoom region should be on the desktop, how many zoom regions should exist, how big the cursor should be, etc. The purpose of this design, I believe, is so that magnification can be tied to speech and Braille output by the screen reader. At present, the screen readers communicate with gnome-mag through bonobo/CORBA. http://svn.gnome.org/viewcvs/gnome-mag/trunk/idl/ I hope this helps, Pete -- Ubuntu-accessibility mailing list Ubuntu-accessibility@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-accessibility
Fwd: Module Proposal: LSR
FYI. Please see the message on the desktop developers' list and post your comments to that list so they are all in one place. http://mail.gnome.org/archives/desktop-devel-list/2007-April/msg00148.html Thanks, Pete -- Ubuntu-accessibility mailing list Ubuntu-accessibility@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-accessibility
Accerciser 0.1.0 (stretch)
Accerciser is an interactive Python accessibility explorer for the GNOME desktop. It uses AT-SPI to inspect and control widgets, allowing you to check if an application is providing correct information to assistive technologies and automated test frameworks. Accerciser has a simple plugin framework which you can use to create custom views of accessibility information. In essence, Accerciser is a next generation at-poke tool. == Features * ORBit, not cspi, based Like the modern LSR and Orca screen readers, Accerciser uses pyORBit to talk AT-SPI with other applications. The legacy cspi module is avoided. * Plugin architecture Create a Python module, drop it in a folder, and have it load as a plugin pane with full access to AT-SPI and the selected element in the accessibility tree view. * Interface browser and event monitor plugins All the features you've come to expect from a poke tool, and then some. * IPython console plugin A full, interactive Python shell with access to the accessible object selected in the tree view; all AT-SPI interfaces, methods and attributes; and any other Python modules. Supports autocompletion and a million other niceties thanks to IPython. * API browser plugin Shows the interfaces, methods, and attributes available on the selected accessible object. * Global hotkeys Move the tree view quickly to the last focused accessible or the one under the mouse pointer. Insert a marker into the event monitor log for easy identification at a later time. * Customizable UI layout Move plugin tabs to different panels or even separate windows to view them concurrently. * Accessibility! Accerciser does not disable its own accessibility. * Yelp documentation Included in the package. * Python powered Brits, not serpents. == Authors Eitan Isaascon ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) is responsible for taking a mock-up from Peter Parente ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) and turning it into the wonderful, useful tool that it is today. == For more information Visit the Accerciser web site at http://live.gnome.org/Accerciser. -- Ubuntu-accessibility mailing list Ubuntu-accessibility@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-accessibility
Re: Screen Magnifier
Hi, I know that the Orca screen reader has support for driving the gnome-magnifier at present. I'm not sure what options are available for configuring it today. The next release of Linux Sreen Reader will also have support for using the gnome-magnifier by itself and with speech and/or Braille. We have mouse, focus, selection, and caret tracking working. We also have nearly all of the settings supported by the magnifier exposed in our configuration dialog, including color inversion. Pete -- Ubuntu-accessibility mailing list Ubuntu-accessibility@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-accessibility
LSR 0.3.2 - BSD Licensed!
== * What is it ? == Linux Screen Reader (LSR) is an extensible assistive technology for people with disabilities. The design philosophy behind LSR is to provide a core platform that enables the development of LSR extensions for improving desktop application accessibility and usability and shields extension developers from the intricacies of the desktop accessibility architecture. The primary use of the LSR platform is to give people with visual impairments access to the GNOME desktop and its business applications (e.g. Firefox, OpenOffice, Eclipse) using speech, Braille, and screen magnification. The extensions packaged with the LSR core are intended to meet this end. However, LSR's rich support for extensions can be used for a variety of other purposes such as supporting novel input and output devices, improving accessibility for users with other disabilities, enabling multi-modal access to the GNOME desktop, and so forth. == * What's changed ? == The purpose of this release is to publicly announce the change of license on the LSR code base from the Common Public License to the New Berkeley Software Distribution License (BSD) official and public. The BSD license is GPL-compatible but has no copyleft restriction. This change helps LSR better fit into the GNOME ecosystem and allows other projects to build on it with few restrictions. Some of the features planned for 0.4.0 are present in this release. A full record of those features will appear in the announcement for that version and are available in the ChangeLog in the meantime. Translations * ar (Djihed Afifi) == * Where can I get it ? == Source code release: http://live.gnome.org/LSR#downloads For more information, visit the LSR home page: http://live.gnome.org/LSR -- Ubuntu-accessibility mailing list Ubuntu-accessibility@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-accessibility
Re: Crash on red squiggly line (was Re: Orca/Magnifier Issues)
Hi Will, Thanks for opening the OOo bug. You're right that the crash isn't caused by the red underline attribute. But there is a problem with using getAttributeRun versus the older getAttributes in the Text interface. Here's a bug report with stack trace of the crash in gedit. http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=372172 We've reverted back to using getAttributes until the newer method is fixed. Pete On 11/13/06, Willie Walker <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > Hi Peter et al: > > I was just doing some testing with this on Ubuntu Edgy with gedit 2.16.1 > and OOo 2.0.4-0ubuntu2. > > I've got good news and bad news. The bad news is that I was able to > confirm that OOo crashes when doing a spell check while Orca is running. > Bummer. The good news is that inspecting the text attributes of a word > with a red squiggly line doesn't seem to cause a crash. > > I'll file a bug with the OOo folks regarding the crash. > > Thanks! > > Will > > On Tue, 2006-11-07 at 09:25 -0500, Peter Parente wrote: > > Hi Robert and Will, > > > > > 1) I noticed that doing spell-checking in OpenOffice Writer while > > > using ORca/Magnifier (without speech) caused OpenOffice to crash. > > > > At one point I noticed that inspecting the text attributes on a word > > with a red squiggly line under it in ANY application appears to crash > > that application (e.g. OOo writer, gedit with auto spell checking > > enabled). I chalked it up to a GNOME 2.14 bug, but I just now > > reproduced it in 2.16 as well. Perhaps it has something to do with the > > crash? > > > > Pete > > -- Ubuntu-accessibility mailing list Ubuntu-accessibility@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-accessibility
Re: Orca/Magnifier Issues
Hi Robert and Will, > 1) I noticed that doing spell-checking in OpenOffice Writer while > using ORca/Magnifier (without speech) caused OpenOffice to crash. At one point I noticed that inspecting the text attributes on a word with a red squiggly line under it in ANY application appears to crash that application (e.g. OOo writer, gedit with auto spell checking enabled). I chalked it up to a GNOME 2.14 bug, but I just now reproduced it in 2.16 as well. Perhaps it has something to do with the crash? Pete -- Ubuntu-accessibility mailing list Ubuntu-accessibility@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-accessibility
Re: eSpeak and Screen Readers?
Lorenzo T. indicated on the gnome accessibility mailing list that he managed to get eSpeak working in LSR via Speech Dispatcher. Here's a link to his post. http://mail.gnome.org/archives/gnome-accessibility-list/2006-October/msg00038.html Pete -- Ubuntu-accessibility mailing list Ubuntu-accessibility@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-accessibility
ANNOUNCE: Linux Screen Reader 0.3.0
== * What is it ? == The Linux Screen Reader (LSR) project is an open source effort to develop an extensible assistive technology for the GNOME desktop environment. The goal of the project is to create a reusable development platform for building alternative and supplemental user interfaces in support of people with diverse disabilities. The primary use of the LSR platform is to give people with visual impairments access to the GNOME desktop and its business applications (e.g. Firefox, OpenOffice, Eclipse) using speech, Braille, and screen magnification. The extensions packaged with the LSR core are intended to meet this end. However, LSR's rich support for extensions can be used for a variety of other purposes such as supporting novel input and output devices, improving accessibility for users with other disabilities, enabling multi-modal access to the GNOME desktop, and so forth. == * What's changed ? == A demonstration of LSR 0.3.0 will be presented at the GNOME Accessibility Summit. A screencast of the demo will be posted on the LSR homepage shortly thereafter. The demo will showcase the latest screen reading features of LSR as well as two prototype interfaces for people with cognitive decline and reading disabilities. For users * The new settings dialog allows for configuration of settings defined by a particular device or script as well as the current user profile. For instance, a user can change their speech synthesizer without restarting LSR. * Settings are now persistent across sessions. More settings will be added in future versions. * New keyboard commands are now available such as reading accessible descriptions, reporting text attributes, routing focus and caret, etc. See the list of defined commands at * The LSR review keys now function on web pages in Firefox 3.0. The FirefoxPerk will grow new commands for rich document navigation in future releases. * The Perk chooser dialog allows users to manually load and unload scripts for the current application. This allows users to dynamically load/unload tool scripts at runtime, kind of like Emacs modes. * DECtalk is now supported through gnome-speech. * SpeechDispatcher is now supported. * A script to better support accessible login has been added. Instructions for configuring Fedora Core to start LSR at login are now available in the LSR FAQ. (http://live.gnome.org/LSR/FrequentlyAskedQuestions) For developers * The developer scripting API has grown a tremendous number of new convenience methods. See the epydoc on the LSR homepage for details. * Three developer monitors now exist in LSR for watching raw accessibility events from at-spi, execution of LSR scripts, and I/O streams to devices. * User configurable settings may now be defined by LSR scripts. The settings dialog automatically generates an accessible user interface for changing their values. * Developers can now add new dialogs and debugging monitors to LSR just as they can add scripts and input/output devices. They're all just extensions to LSR. * The command line interface for managing extensions is now simpler. * Extensions may now be added by the root user and made available system-wide, or added by an unprivileged user and available for his/her use only. * The spec is updated to support the building of relocatable RPMs. Translations * en_GB(David Lodge) * vi(Clytie Siddall) * zh_CN(Funda Wang) * pt_BR(Raphael Higino) * sv(Daniel Nylander) For full details, please see the ChangeLog at http://cvs.gnome.org/viewcvs/lsr/ChangeLog?rev=1.29. For an idea of where LSR is headed next, visit http://live.gnome.org/LSR/Timeline == * Where can I get it ? == Source code release and contributed packages: http://live.gnome.org/LSR#downloads For more information, visit the LSR home page: http://live.gnome.org/LSR -- Ubuntu-accessibility mailing list Ubuntu-accessibility@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-accessibility
Re: problem with movie player and orca
Hi, I believe Rhythmbox and Totem both use ALSA to talk to the sound hardware on your machine. ALSA has the nice capability of mixing multiple streams of audio across applications. On the other hand, most (if not all) speech synthesizers use the older OSS sound library to talk to your sound card. A conflict occurs when an app using OSS and another using ALSA try to send output to the same device. Typically, one will block indefinitely until the other releases the device. SpeechDispatcher is looking to address this problem by routing output from OSS synthesizers through ALSA when possible. For instance, IBM TTS (ViaVoice) can return the raw speech waveform to an application instead of outputing it directly. An app can do whatever it wants with the waveform (e.g. send it to ALSA). I'm not sure how mature this support is in SpeechDispatcher at present. LSR 0.3.0 has support for routing IBM TTS speech through a free, but closed source third-party mixing library that output using ALSA. Directions on how to configure LSR to use this library will be available when 0.3.0 is released at the end of the month. Pete -- Ubuntu-accessibility mailing list Ubuntu-accessibility@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-accessibility
