Peter Korn's Weblog

NASA's Johnson Space Center Learning Technologies have been working for a while on making science accessible to people with vision impairments. In particular, Dr. Robert Shelton has developed the Math Description Engine for programatically describing (in text) and conveying (in audio) 2 dimensional mathematical equations. MDE consists of a set of reusable Java classes, and several embeddable Swing GUI elements (like the CartesianGraph component) that can be embedded in Java applications that want to render accessible 2D graphs. MDE will provide English descriptions of 2D equations in "math mode" or "visual mode", and will also generate and audio file to convey the graph (or specific tones to be played for specific points for folks who want to explore the graph).

In addition to this engine, Dr. Shelton and his team have put this engine into the MathTrax Java application, which you can download for Mac or PC. This app, as well as MDE itself, have been tested with screen readers on Windows, and are known to work with JAWS (and MathTrax for Windows itself includes a Java Runtime as well as a copy of the Java Access Bridge). (2006-08-29 20:27:12.0) Permalink

A new voice, with news - Henrik reports on Orca in Ubuntu

Massachusetts ODF mid-year Accessibility Statement

Starting not long after the Information Technology Division (ITD) of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts issued their Enterprise Technical Model version 3.5 that specified that starting January 1, 2007 all internal office documents within the Executive Branch of government would be in the open file format ODF (or in PDF), ITD realized that this would impact people with disabilities, and their needs must be taken into account in such a policy change. To that end they held a series of meetings with members of the disability community in Massachusetts (one of which I got to attend in person), and they promised two key things: (1) that the needs of people with disabilities were higher priority than this move - the move would be delayed as needed in order to ensure that any change met their needs at least as well as their existing solutions; and (2) that ITD wanted to keep the pressure on the companies making Open Document Format applications and accessibility solutions, and would do a mid-year assessment of the progress being made before deciding whether or not the date of implementation needed to slip.

This morning ITD issued their Mid-Year Statement Regarding ODF Implementation. This statement highlights the primacy of accessibility support for people with disabilities, and also states their belief that with ODF plug-in technology they will be able to both meet the needs of people with disabilities, and their January 1, 2007 planned move to ODF.

The law and simple justice require that people with disabilities have equal access to public sector information technology. By putting accessibility first among the priorities for ODF implementation, we are signaling a deeper commitment to accessibility for all future information technology projects undertaken by ITD and Executive Department agencies.

And these paragraphs summarize the results of their accessibility investigations:

Earlier this year, alternative ODF-supporting office suites were being considered by ITD. The accessibility of these applications, and their ability to work with assistive technology, has improved steadily. Over time these suites will improve the options available to people with disabilities. However, it is our judgment that they are unlikely to be fully supported by assistive technology vendors, or alternatively to include fully functional adaptations in the packaged product, by January 1, 2007, the original target date for ODF implementation.

But promising new projects are underway this year to create translator software that will enable the Microsoft Office suite to translate documents from Microsoft formats to ODF and vice versa. Upon public release and validation, these tools will enable Executive Department agencies to begin implementing ODF while leveraging the installed base of Microsoft Office and available assistive technologies. We anticipate one or more of these projects to allow ODF adoption to commence before January 1, 2007.

Specifically, we plan to implement ODF, using translator technology plugged in to Microsoft Office, in a group of early adopter agencies, including the Massachusetts Office on Disability, by January 1, 2007. Thereafter, we plan to migrate all Executive Department agencies to compliance with the standard, in phases, by June of 2007.

With this mid-year review, everything is on target for Massachusetts to go forward with their planned deployment of Open Document Format on January 1, 2007, while ensuring that the needs of people with disabilities are fully addressed. So long as one or more of the promising ODF plug-in options are delivered as expected, users of existing screen readers, magnifiers, voice recognition systems, and other assistive technologies on their existing Windows platform will be able to use ODF from within Microsoft Office, on January 1, 2007. (2006-08-24 12:18:16.0) Permalink

Massachusetts Accessibility Memorandum of Understanding

ITD’s (1) Research regarding Adoption of the Federal “Section 508” Standard with Respect to the Executive Department’s Acquisition of Information Technology, (2) Enforcement of its Current Web Accessibility Standards for Websites and Web-Based Applications, (3) Adoption of Standards Requiring Inclusion of Certain Contractual Provisions regarding Accessibility and Usability Testing and (4) Adoption of Standards Requiring Training of Developers in Accessible Design, and Provision of Such Training

The goals of the Commonwealth’s efforts in this area should be:
  a. Accessibility and usability of technology, regardless of disability;
  b. Maintenance of said technology; and
  c. Transitions to new or upgraded computer or telecommunication-based technologies that are as seamless for people with disabilities as they are for people without disabilities.

With this memorandum, Massachusetts Government demonstrates (again) their leadership on the issues of technology accessibility. (2006-08-23 17:12:18.0) Permalink

Mozilla accessibility funding available

Hot on the heels of the IBM ODF Accessibility Challenge comes an announcement that Mozilla accessibility grants are available. These financial grants are for developers interested to improve the accessibility of the core Mozilla codebase, or for accessiblity work on applications like Firefox and Thunderbird that are part of the Mozilla project, or for accessibility testing tools, or for improvements in how assistive technologies support Mozilla project applications. In fact, even accessibility work not formally part of the Mozilla project are potentially in scope for this funding!

ODF Accessibility coding contest

Our friends at IBM have come up with an interesting, fun, and useful contest for students: take up their ODF Accessibility Coding Challenge and make contributions to ODF Accessibility. Specifically undergraduate students in the U.S, Canada, China, and Japan at select colleges and Universities enter 'Phase 1' by filling out a questionaire, and then on to 'Phase 2' where they either submit a program to validate the accessibility of ODF text files, or submit a proposal for a program the student wants to write to work on some other ODF accessibility issue they have identified. Prizes include t-shirts, iPod Nanos, and two grand prizes of a laptop and a trip to the CSUN Conference on Technology and Persons with Disabilities in 2007. See contest rules for details.

Desktop accessibility - the [built-in] bar keeps rising

As I noted around a year ago, the quality and functionality of accessibility support being built-into our desktops continues to improve. Two recent events, and the ongoing strengh of an existing effort, underscore this argument.

First is the announcement earlier this week from Apple at their Worldwide Developer Conference: notable improvements in the accessibility support being built into Leopard, the next release of their operating system. With Leopard, the Macintosh will become the second commercial graphical desktop with Braille support built-in (the first being Sun Solaris 10). And in addition to Braille support, Leopoard should come with a number of other accessibility improvements, including a new text-to-speech voice, closed captioning improvements, and a number of VoiceOver screen reader improvements. While still likely not yet competitive with the commercial screen reader offerings for Windows (costing $750 to $1,200), these improvements bring increasing (and increasingly affordable) options to people with disabilities.

Computers are becoming accessible to an increasingly broad range of users with disabilities, right out of the box! (2006-08-09 15:07:58.0) Permalink