Wednesday September 19, 2007 
The collected occasional commentary by Peter Korn, Accessibility Architect at Sun Microsystems, Inc.
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Peter Korn's Weblog The collected occasional commentary by Peter Korn, Accessibility Architect at Sun Microsystems, Inc. |
Wednesday September 19, 2007 GNOME turns 10 and 2.20, at the same time!On the 10th anniversary of the GNOME project, the GNOME community has released version 2.20 of the GNOME desktop. Like the previous releases (that have been happening pretty much like clockwork [calender-work?] every 6 months), this release includes a number of accessibility improvements, making the accessible GNOME desktop even better! These changes include:
GNOME 2.20 is already available in binary form from the GNOME Live Media site - in LiveCD, VMware, and QEMU/Parallels forms. If you are playing with the latest test release of Ubuntu 7.10 ("Gutsy Gibbon"), you can "apt-get update" to the GNOME 2.20 bits. Alternately, you can expect refreshes of OpenSolaris, Fedora, and other UNIX and GNU/Linux releases to include GNOME 2.20 in short order. (2007-09-19 20:03:01.0) Permalink
Monday September 17, 2007 Bloor Analyst Peter Abrahams on ODF & OOXML AccessibilityPeter Abrahams, the Practice Leader for Accessibility and Usability at Bloor Research, just published an interesting article today, titled "Document formats and accessibility". In the article he discusses some of the history leading to the ODF and OOXML formats and standards, and some of the accessibility issues around them. In particular, he notes the work IBM has done in the development of IAccessible2, and notes that support for IAccessible2 is coming to OpenOffice.org. What struck me most about his article is the argument he makes for the strengths of ODF and OOXML, based on their history and where they come from. He notes:
So we now have two competing standards: Office OpenXML which is not yet, and may never become, a standard driven by Microsoft, and ODF which is a standard and which now has IBM support. How will this effect accessibility? The answer, I am afraid, is that having two standards is not good. The problem is that creating assistive technologies is a specialised task and the market is relatively small. Supporting both standards is going to be expensive and likely to lead to delays in implementing and supporting new functions.
And in service of accessibility, he makes the following observations, and then gives the following advice:
ODF is already a standard and has shown that it is robust and extensive enough to support the creation and distribution of new documents. ODF has not attempted to support all the 'archived' documents that OpenXML is designed to support. OpenXML will provide a mechanism for the long term archiving of old documents but it appears not to have any benefits over ODF for the creation and storage of new documents. This is not surprising given the background of each. For AT developers in particular, and many other tool creators in general, it would be a great benefit if there was just one format for new documents. This would enable all the effort being used in the creation of robust and function rich tools rather than having to support two competing standards. Given the support ODF is now getting it would be sensible if the OpenXML committee decided to align the standard with ODF so that OpenXML concentrated on the archiving issue rather than defining a new standard for all documents. (2007-09-17 21:13:36.0) Permalink
Monday September 10, 2007 IBM joins OpenOffice.org community - will contribute IAccessible2 supportIn a press release today, IBM has announced it will be joining the OpenOffice.org community, with an initial staff of 35 developers joining the team of Sun and other community developers in ongoing development of OpenOffice.org. Particularly notable for us is the second sentence of the press release (emphasis added): "IBM will be making initial code contributions that it has been developing as part of its Lotus Notes product, including accessibility enhancements, and will be making ongoing contributions to the feature richness and code quality of OpenOffice.org." As noted in the accompanying FAQ to the press release, the initial accessibility code contribution is IBM's work to support IAccessible2, an open source accessibility framework being standardized as part of the Open Accessibility Group of the Linux Foundation (and which is essentially a port of the original OpenOffice.org UNO Accessibility API to Microsoft Windows). As both the JAWS and WindowEyes screen readers are supporting IAccessible2 (and have been testing that support with IBM Lotus Notes 8 - itself a derivative of OpenOffice.org), this contribution brings with it the support of two key Windows assistive technologies for the blind to OpenOffice.org. As there have been nearly 100 million downloads of OpenOffice.org, and certainly tens of millions of users, this contribution also significantly adds to the momentum behind the IAccessible2 framework on Windows - encouraging further adoption and use of it by additional Windows AT vendors and mainstream products. (2007-09-10 16:28:15.0) Permalink
Saturday September 01, 2007 Too Much Fun at ThunderHillOne of the things I like to go is go fast (at least in controlled, safe places...). Last weekend, going fast was accomplished (with our own cars) at Thunderhill, a racetrack owned by the San Francisco chapter of the Sports Car Club of America. I went there with my 18 year old step-son, as part of a High Performance Driving Event put on by the Golden Gate Chapter of the BMW Car Club of America. We spent an entire weekend at Thunderhill - getting nearly 4 hours of actual "track time" (and 3 hours of classroom instruction). There were around 120 of us, divided into 4 "run groups". Group A is made up of the "nearly ready to start racing" folks. Group B is for folks who think they are hot stuff but really still have a bunch to learn. Group C folks have some experience (and retain a sense of humility). Group D is where folks new to racetracks go. With about 30 folks at a time on a nearly 3 mile track, there is plenty of room to find an empty area and focus on honing your skills (vs. working on passing/being passed techniques). This was something like my 8th weekend of going fast at a race track (in addition to Thunderhill, I've been to Sears Point [er, Infineon] and Laguna Seca). The first half of the first day was about getting reacquainted with the track, its turns, and how to handle my car on them. Just after lunch turn 2 became my friend again. Also around that time I got back into a good groove with turns 10 & 11. Sunday morning I got a new instructor, and he helped me dial in turns 14 & 15 (the most important on the track, because they lead into the longest straight on the track). I also found his suggestions for 7 and 8 to be very helpful. Finally, his turn-in point for 5 made sense to me, and I found it very comfortable (it is almost an early apex, but since the left is immediately followed by an off-camber, downhill right, it makes sense). In the A group they had been operating with a set of "relaxed passing rules" - with the exception of turns 1, 5, 8, 9, 14, and 15, you could pass at any time (with a point by from the car you were passing). On the second day they extended this to the B group, and after a little concern, I found it worked quite well (and was passing & being passed in turns 2, 3, and 5a quite comfortably, in addition to the "normal" parts of the track). With good speed carried through turns 14 & 15, I found myself heading into turn 1 at nearly 110mph. I was approaching 100 at turn 14, and just over 90 going into turn 9 (which is up a hill). Toward the end of the day, I had demonstrated enough consistency and prudence at speed (and good awareness when folks were approaching me from behind and wanting to pass), that I was "signed off". I drove the final 30 minute session solo. A glorious ~13 laps at an average of around 70mph. I brought a video camera with me, mounted inside the car, to help review how I did (and remind myself of things if I return to Thunderhill sometime in the future). I've uploaded a video of that first solo lap for your viewing (and listening) pleasure. [you can also watch the Thunderhill official in-car video and their official on-motorcycle video]. (2007-09-01 18:46:51.0) Permalink |
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