I recently met with Pierce Crowell who manages Section 508 compliance for Sun Federal. He arranged a demonstration for the Sun Federal leadership by Sun's Accessibility Program Office. I was very impressed with what the accessibility team and the open source community has done as far as adding features to Open Source Solaris and Open Office.
Even if you don't have an accessibility requirement, I believe you will be impressed with what these products can do. I don't think you can adequately describe the features without seeing them in action, so I asked the team to put together some short videos that would demonstrate the features. I would encourage everyone to take a look.
I believe from an accessibility feature point of view, the Solaris platform is becoming a leader in the software industry.
Pierce also helped me pull together all the information for this blog.
Sun has been contributing to accessibility and usability for decades, and is now leading an industry transition toward architectural support for accessibility – whereby support for people with disabilities and the assistive technologies they use is built directly into the computing platform.
Sun began this industry transition with the Java platform accessibility framework in 1997 and is doing the same with the OpenSolaris desktop (GNOME) and applications like OpenOffice.org and Firefox and Evolution. We likewise support and develop open source assistive technologies including the popular open source Orca screen reader. These are powerful and free alternatives to the traditional commercial accessibility model. Often software assistive technologies can cost many times more than the PC hardware on which they are installed.
Sun's just-released OpenSolaris 2008.11 is the pinnacle of open source accessibility, and is already receiving rave reviews from blind users. Josh Lambert, a blind user, summed up his first experiences with OpenSolaris: "congratulations to you all at Sun, and thank you so very much for making my boyhood dream come true. Ever since the early 90s when I used to dial into shell accounts, and would hear "unix r system v release, I have wanted to sit behind a Sun console. Now I and many others can."
Regarding the accessible installation experience in OpenSolaris 2008.11, Everett Zufelt responded: “I am overwhelmingly impressed with the 2008.11 accessible install.” He went on to say: “it was the smoothest operating system install that I have ever performed.”
The digital divide does not stop at mere access to IT and online information though; it is also about being able to afford access. Over 70% of blind and low vision citizens in the United States are unemployed. People with other severe disabilities have similar employment statistics. Assistive technology software costs as much as $1,095 for a screen reader that enables blind people to use their computers, which means that access to computing is out of reach for the majority of Americans with disabilities. OpenSolaris, open source and free, fosters digital inclusion that was economically impossible under the costly commercial model associated with Microsoft Windows.
Take a look at these demonstration videos to see for yourself how we are welcoming people with disabilities to the Solaris user community.
