Saturday March 25, 2006

ODF @ CSUN

The CSUN Conference on Technology and Persons with Disabilities came to a close today. While there were many fine sessions, presentations and events (including several by Sun), there was at least one in particular that is being watched very closely in Massachusetts: a panel discussion on Open Document Format Accessibility. In this nearly two hour session we explored the "who, what, where, when, and why" of OFD, the key accessibility issues in ODF use, had a discussion of the current state of things in Massachusetts around ODF Accessibility, looked at the current progress being made in identifying and closing accessibility gaps, and demonstrated the state of the art of accessibility provided by the two key ODF applications StarOffice and OpenOffice.org as used with assistive technologies on Windows and UNIX.

The panelists for this session were: Janina Sajka, principal of Capital Accessibility and chair of the Free Standards Group Accessibility Working Group; Myra Berloff, Director of the Massachusetts Office on Disability; Rich Schwerdtfeger, Distinguished Engineer, Accessibility Architect & Strategist at IBM; Malte Timmermann, Technical Architect for StarOffice and OpenOffice.org; and yours truly Peter Korn. Slides for the presentation are available in HTML and in ODF formats. Also, the good folks TV Worldwide - and most specifically their AT 508 channel - videotaped the session (along with a bunch of other videotaped CSUN sessions). The ODF Panel webcast is available currently only in Windows Media Format (the irony of which is painfully obvious, especially for anyone trying to view the video on a UNIX system...). Close captions, as well as non-proprietary formats for the video, are promised and should be up on the website "shortly". As that happens, and as audio-only recordings become available (there were at least one I was aware of), I'll update this blog entry to contain pointers to them. [Note also that the videos may not play behind some firewalls...]

I'll leave it to others to comment on the contents of the presentation. I thought the questions we received were insightful, and I believe all of the panelists had a number of thoughtful and engaging conversations afterward. As was clear from the demos we gave, an awful lot of accessibility support is there with at least StarOffice and OpenOffice.org, and we also still have a bunch of work to do.

[28June06 update: an audio recording [49 MB] for this Open document Format Accessibility panel is now available. Also, see this blog entry for links to other recordings from CSUN] (2006-03-25 23:49:59.0) Permalink

Friday March 03, 2006

See Sun at CSUN!

As we have for nearly the last decade, the Sun Accessibility Team is returning the CSUN Conference on Technology and Persons with Disabilities again this year. We have a few special events/highlights for this year in addition to our usual "what's new" presentations on Java and GNOME accessibility:

1. Public introduction of Orca, the open source, scripting screen reader we are developing. In addition to showing Orca in our booth, we'll be giving both an introductory Orca talk, as well as a talk on writing scripts in Orca at the conference.

2. A panel discussion on Open Document Format Accessibility. I'll be on this panel, along with my colleague and StarOffice/OpenOffice.org accessibility architect Malte Timmermann, IBM Accessibility expert Rich Schwerdtfeger, Free Standards Group Accessibility Workgroup chair Janina Sajka, and the Director of the Massachusetts Office on Disability Myra Berloff. In this extra-long session (nearly 2 hours) we hope to examine virtually every aspect of the Open Document Format accessibility issue, give demonstrations of the accessibility support that already exists (and note where it needs to be improved), and answer questions.

3. Product demonstrations of Fonix corporation's DECtalk software text-to-speech running on Solaris systems in our booth.

4. Demonstrations of the accessible features of Elluminate Live, a Java-based distance learning application.

So, if you are in the area March 21-25, please stop by the Los Angeles Airport Marriott hotel, and visit our booth in the Houston room, or see our presentations in the Atlanta room. (2006-03-03 17:24:34.0) Permalink Comments [1]