Friday November 09, 2007

Corporate Social Responsiblity update on Accessibility

Working my way through my blog-topics backlog, another overdue item to note is the new 2007 Sun Corporate Social Responsibility Report, hosted by the Sun Corporate Social Responsibility site. In this edition of the report, we have shifted to web-based layout (vs. a large PDF or printed report), and there is a special Accessibility section.

The Accessibility section isn't too long, so I won't quote sections of it here. It contains a nice, concise description of Sun's approach to accessibility, and then highlights our performance on accessibility in two key areas: OpenDocument Format, and the open source Orca screen reader. You may want to browse through other parts of the report as well. Reading through it reinforces the price I feel in the company that has been my home for nearly 11 years. (2007-11-09 18:57:59.0) Permalink

Thursday November 08, 2007

Microsoft, welcome to the UNIX accessibility neighborhood!

Toward the end of the press release celebrating the 1 year anniversary of the Microsoft/Novell "Collaboration Agreement", comes word that the two plan companies to support the GNOME accessibility project - calling out the open source GNOME Accessibility Toolkit (ATK) by name. Under the heading "New Collaboration to Improve Computer Access for People With Disabilities", the release notes that Microsoft & Novell plan to build an open source "adapter" to allow a number of Windows applications that utilize the proprietary Microsoft UI Automation API for accessibility to expose that information via ATK when those applications are ported to run on UNIX systems. Though they don't call out the open source Orca screen reader by name, the release makes it clear that access by the blind is a key motivator for this work (and the National Federation of the Blind quote underscores this).

From my own conversations with engineers at both Microsoft and Novell in the past weeks, I understand that in particular this work will leverage the existing Mono project led by Novell which forms the basis of allowing C# and other Microsoft .NET applications to run in the UNIX environment. With this announcement, we look forward to such ported applications being accessible in UNIX environments.

I read this announcement as a clear endorsement of:

• the GNOME accessibility framework and the fine work that Sun and many others have been doing for just slightly more than 7 years
• programmatic accessibility in general (what we've been calling "3rd generation access" or "access by contract" for about a decade now at Sun)
• the importance of interoperability on accessibility, and collaboration with other IT companies to deliver access solutions (what we've been doing in an open standards process with the Open Accessibility Work Group of the Linux Foundation; with folks like IBM also for more than a decade; and for more than 15 years with our involvement in the AccessX specification for the X Windowing system.)

Microsoft, welcome to the neighborhood! (2007-11-08 15:59:55.0) Permalink

Wednesday November 07, 2007

Another (belated) GNOME Accessibility birthday

Since I started blogging, I have been recognizing the anniversary of the GNOME accessibility project. The first one, for the 4 year anniversary, was a lengthy post, cataloging all of the great stuff that had happened in the past four years. Year 5 was somewhat shorter, though with year 6 we had a bunch to talk about - Orca 1.0 shipping, a bunch of new energy with the then new Ubuntu accessibility effort and IBM's screen reader effort, as well as along list of conferences with sizable accessibility presences.

As both a father, and as someone who has celebrated his 39th birthday at least a couple of times now, I feel that birthdays are really most important for the young, while the "more mature" feel less of a need to make a big deal out of them. That's my excuse for being late with this recognition anyway (it couldn't have been the massive deadline I had in October that kept me from blogging, or all the work heading into the seventh TEITAC meeting...).

Still, it is high time to recognize that last month, on October 19th, GNOME Accessibility officially turned 7 years old. And at 7 years old, GNOME accessibility is growing up nicely...

Rather than producing yet another bulleted list (after all, those are sooo six years old), I'll do this paragraph style. The biggest change for me is that at 7 years old, the discussion has shifted. It is assumed that UNIX and GNU/Linux systems with GNOME are accessible - and that the access is built-in and free. After all, RedHat Enterprise Linux ships with blind & Braille access, as do several Fedoras and a bunch of Ubuntus, and of course OpenSolaris and Solaris Express Developer's Edition.

No longer is the discussion around the "if" of accessibility in UNIX and GNOME, it is around "how much" and "how efficient" is the access. Folks are asking about the best accessible developer tools, and the best music management app to use with their AT, and how to configure their open source software PBX with their AT. It seems every few weeks we get more languages supported by the AT tools, and every few months more speech voices. Some folks with disabilities say "it is coming along, but I'd rather stay in Windows, thanks just the same"; while others are finding that for what they do, the accessible UNIX environment suits them better.

So, please raise a glass with me and toast to the maturing 7 year old GNOME accessibility project (just don't let anyone see you offering your glass to the tyke; after all, 7 is still underage for alcohol most places...). (2007-11-07 22:32:34.0) Permalink