This morning I received a letter from Mr. Harris Sussman who passed along to me the text of a talk that he and his wife Svetlana gave a few weeks ago to the Russian American Medical Association. It speaks to me on quite a few levels. I was so moved by it, I just wanted to share it with all of you (with permission from Mr. Sussman).

SVETLANA:

Good morning! My name is Svetlana Sussman. I am delighted to be here with you.

I am not a medical doctor, or a dentist, or a nurse. I earned a degree in chemistry but in the 90s you could make a better living teaching English than doing research in chemistry. I learned English at school, and it enabled me to meet many interesting people, among them my present husband Harris Sussman. When we first met, I thought he was a typical American; I can assure you he is not.

I was born in the Soviet Union and lived all my life (before meeting Harris) in St. Petersburg, arguably the most beautiful city on Earth. I was the only child of very loving parents.

My father Moisey Naumovich Adamov was born in 1920 in the midst of the Civil War and famine to a Jewish couple. His father was a violinist at the Mariinsky Theater. His mother was taking care of him. At the age of two as a result of complications from measles my father lost his sight. He never regained it. He went on to live his life in the Soviet Union going through the historic nightmares of Soviet history and was able to reach the top of academic and scholarly excellence.

Little Mosya attended the first four grades of the special institute for the blind established in the early days after the Russian revolution of 1917 and set up as a boarding school for blind kids, where he learned to read and write Braille and got some primary education. His parents did not want Mosya to be raised away from home so he transferred to a public school within walking distance of his home. He finished school at the top of his class supported by his classmates, parents and teachers. He continued to study at the physics department of the Leningrad State University (two years during World War II), started as a mathematics instructor at another university. After a post-graduate program equivalent to a modern PhD program he defended his candidate of science thesis, worked as a mathematics professor for many years until he defended his doctoral thesis and fully focused on theoretical research in quantum mechanics. He lectured special courses in quantum chemistry and continued theoretical research until he passed away in 2005. He published alone and with co-authors over 100 scientific papers in major refereed journals in Russia and abroad.

He loved reading and learned foreign languages and read fluently in English and German. He used to receive boxes with volumes from the US Library of Congress, the Royal Library in the UK, from Leipzig. He loved traveling. He never missed a conference in quantum chemistry held in the USSR. Very often we traveled together as a family – we went to Kaliningrad, Kishinev, Tbilisi, Estonia and Latvia, Samarkand.

My father loved swimming and an anecdote tells of him floating in the open sea while swimming off Odessa beach. With his graduate students he climbed the steep slopes of the Northern Caucusus Mountains in Pyatigorsk and Kislovodsk.

He was the bread winner in our family; he was my friend and confidant. He was truly interested in music, poetry, philosophy, and politics (listening to the BBC and Voice of America and radio station Liberty through the buzz of radio waves jamming.

I never thought of my father as an “invalid,” the official designation for people with any physical handicap in Russia. He was able and performing at the highest level of human achievement.

When he died nearing his 85th birthday, I started to realize what a vast void I have to fill not having him in my life. To honor his life, my husband and I decided to start a project to support talented blind people in Russia.

It started with my writing his brief biography aboard the plane on the way back from the funeral. When my plane landed, I had a plan in hand. We decided to tap into numerous connections my father had with people at the helm of the blind community, his old-time colleagues and friends. Very quickly this circle expanded and began to include talented teachers who dedicated their life educating blind children from kindergarten through university. I have become friends and stayed in touch over the Internet or phone visiting every time I have gone back to Russia.

When in the winter of 2005, I brought up my idea to start the MN Adamov Memorial Fund to honor my father’s memory and support people I met through him with the resources we had used to support my father, Harris enthusiastically agreed.

I start conversations by asking about people’s dreams. And then we see if in any way we can bring this dream closer. We learn of courage, perseverance and tremendous drive in people who are considered by official Russian pedagogy “defective.” Most blind students get their education at the Boarding School for the Blind. I have not met anyone who was able to attend a public school.

We receive as much as we give at every turn with every effort, with every step. I live inspired by the people we’re trying to help. This is a tremendous opportunity of making a difference and living an inspired life.

I have a full time job at MIT, so for Harris this project has become a learning experience about philanthropy in the US, Russian-American relations, politics and attitudes, and also meeting many blind. For Harris working on the project has been an important activity. It could not work without him.

HARRIS

Good day. I don’t have any slides: I’m used to talking to blind people. I am American but I know more blind people in St. Petersburg than doctors in America….

Three and a half years ago we started by asking what is life like for a blind person in Russia?--not good. The state of social services, educational services, medical services and economic support--in some respects it was worse than it was for my father-in-law.

So this was the problem--how could a blind person in Russia today have the same chance to succeed and have a superior quality of life that Moisey Naumovich had 80 years ago or 40 years ago or when I met him 15 years ago? Because as you know the situation had gotten worse in terms of social infrastructure, the legal system, economics, government policy, medical care and public awareness.

And then we had to ask, what is the best way for someone in America to help some blind people in Russia? Given the political situation in both countries, the cultural differences, the logistics challenge of the distance, at least 8 time zones away, (and the problem that I don't speak Russian)--and the absence of a culture of philanthropy in Russia, the official attitude of Russia against international assistance, the falling value of the dollar, the difficulty in finding allies and supporters and couriers and people to talk to about this...

Now we are at a critical point--we have been able to help a few people a lot and a few hundred people a little and maybe that is enough. You know there are different ways to improve someone's condition. You know that small simple things can really make a difference—things like trust and caring.

We have helped some people use their capabilities and advance in their lives—to study, to play music, to use a computer, to dance, to teach...

I was writing to one blind man in Russia about sending white canes and he said: No, they are not canes! They are magic wands! I said: I hope so--I have told people that they will help people to walk. He said: They change life style dramatically! Not just walk but increase self-confidence and self-respect!

So I had a fantasy of 11,000 visually impaired people moving down Nevsky Prospekt with their white canes so nobody in St. Petersburg could say they never saw a blind person.

Our wish is to have people living a fulfilling productive creative life...and by the way they are blind.

We are the only group in America dedicated to helping talented blind people in the former Soviet Union. This is a strange place to be in, in both countries. We are guided by the example of Svetlana's father and by our concern for the people we know and care about now.

We have no bureaucracy, no staff, no paperwork, no third-party payments. Our administrative overhead is our kitchen table. We are reliable—when we say we will do something we do it, after many international institutions and organizations made promises they didn’t keep; no wonder blind people were skeptical of us. Many of them still wonder why we do it when they don’t know anyone in Russia who will help them.

We ask ourselves how we can help people who are being ignored, neglected, treated badly, punished because they have a difficult physical condition. Who would understand what we are dealing with? That's why this is our first public appearance--we think you understand that we are walking a fine line. We know there is more we could do if we had some help.

Thank you.

http://mnadamovfund.org/

Happy birthday GNOME Accessibility!

Tthe 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.

That shift has continued. This past year GNOME open source screen reader Orca was invited to a "dueling operating systems" talk at CSUN (and from multiple independent reports, acquitted itself quite well and as a result encouraged folks to try it out). More assistive technologies came to the GNOME desktop, and all that were already there continued to mature.

Announcing the AEGIS project - a €12.6m investment in open source accessibility

Today I am more than pleased to share with you news of the AEGIS project, a €12.6m investment in accessibility, with the vast majority of it focused on open source solutions.

What is AEGIS?

AEGIS stands for "open Accessibility Everywhere: Groundwork, Infrastructure, Standards". It is a major research and development investment in building accessibility into future mainstream Information & Communication Technologies.

Who is AEGIS?

The AEGIS project is made up of a consortium of 20 partners spanning 10 countries. They are drawn from industry (both large & small), disability organizations, and university & commercial research organizations; and they represent much of the leading expertise in accessibility from those sectors. The AEGIS consortium is:

When is AEGIS?

AEGIS is a 42 month project that just got underway with a kickoff meeting in Prague last month (posting pictures is on my to-do list...). Right now we are focused on refining our three and a half year plans, planning the initial user studies and requirements gathering, and working on our immediate deliverables (like getting the website up!).

What does AEGIS do?

The AEGIS project objectives are to take the early successes of API-based accessibility solutions (also known as "programmatic" or "engineered" accessibility), and expand upon them in three key areas:

#1 - AEGIS on the desktop

#2 - AEGIS work on rich Internet applications ("Web 2.0")

For the web, AEGIS takes the programmatic accessibility ideas already proven in the open desktop, and brings them to the Web 2.0 world of rich Internet applications. Programmatic accessibility is significantly more complex in the web world - even more so with the rich visual interfaces enabled by technologies like AJAX and DHTML and Flash and JavaFX Script.

Instead of the typical three components of the desktop that have to work together - the application (component #1) which exposes accessibility API information as defined by the desktop/operating system (component #2) to assistive technologies (component #3) in order to achieve accessibility - you now have the fourth component of the web browser/web user agent, which sits between the application and the desktop/operating system.

Not only does this web user agent have to convey all of the rich programmatic/API information back and forth between the application and the assistive technology, it also has to play the role of translator - taking some canonical "web accessibility API" and expressing it potentially differently on each operating system it is running on.

In addition to these significant challenges, there is a multiplicity of technologies for creating and deploying rich Internet applications (such as those mentioned above - AJAX, JavaFX Script, etc. - and many others). Emerging specifications from the W3C's Web Accessibility Initiative - the Accessible Rich Internet Applications (WAI-ARIA) - are critical, but aren't by themselves a complete solution.

Web browsers must support these standards, and translate them to the appropriate accessibility interfaces of the underlying operating system, and from there on to assistive technologies. But since web applications are commonly built with user interface component sets, it is critical to build support for these accessibility APIs and standards into those components, so applications built with them don't have to re-implement that support each time.

And to finish the job, developer tools used to create these rich Internet applications should explicitly aid developers in utilizing the accessibility APIs and standards provided by those component sets. And of course, the highly dynamic and visual user interfaces that we see in things like Flash and JavaFX use there own runtimes/user agents, where WAI-ARIA isn't as good a fit.

The AEGIS research and development work for rich Internet applications will be addressing all of these challenges, and doing so for a variety of user agents and user interface component sets on a variety of operating systems. And to the greatest extent possible, doing so utilizing open source technologies.

#3 - AEGIS research into mobile device accessibility

For the past few years, mobile devices have grown in capability and complexity and power such that they now rival yesterday's desktop computers. Yet while most of the desktop computing work is moving to (or in the case of the open source UNIX and GNU/Linux desktop have already moved to) API-based accessibility, what solutions exist for the mobile world today are still stuck in the previous generation approach to accessibility. What assistive technologies exist for mobile are bolt-on, reverse-engineered, and ultimately unsatisfying solutions with limited ability to work with downloaded/3rd party applications - the very place where mobile device capabilities are most rapidly expanding.

In AEGIS we will apply the same proven concepts and approaches of the open desktop to develop research prototypes for accessible mobile devices. Specifically we will work on accessibility frameworks and APIs, user interface component sets, developer tools, and sample applications to enable assistive technologies to work in a supported framework on mobile devices - without the need to reverse-engineer applications.

AEGIS' focus on economic disparities

In the United States where I live, people with disabilities endure a 70% unemployment rate. A 2004 labour market report for Europe notes an average 60% unemployment rate among the blind in Europe - with countries such as Hungary rising to 77% rate. As we move from the West to the Majority World, we starting running into situations such as I commented on recently in Afghanistan, and which Jim Fruchterman so eloquently discusses regularly in his blog. As difficult as it is for unemployed people with disabilities to obtain expensive, reverse-engineered assistive technologies in the West, in much of the rest of the world that isn't even a distant possibility.

We believe that we can dramatically reduce the cost of accessible technology by doing three key things:

AEGIS' focus on open source

Open source is at the heart of AEGIS. It is the engine that pumps the blood into realizing the widest possible dissemination of the results of AEGIS' research, to enable the broadest possible adoption of AEGIS' techniques and solutions. While not everything done by consortium members under AEGIS will carry an open source license, the vast majority will.

To the greatest extent possible AEGIS work will build on top of existing open source environments and applications and tools and user interface libraries and assistive technologies. This is particularly true of AEGIS' work on the open desktop, but also in AEGIS' work on rich Internet applications.

By leveraging popular (and cross-platform) open source applications like OpenOffice.org and Firefox we enable large numbers of end users to benefit from our research and development work (and to do so on multiple desktop operating systems).

Likewise by leveraging popular open source developer tools like NetBeans, we enable large numbers of developers to utilize tools for creating accessible applications. And even when the open source technologies aren't part of wildly popular applications that have been downloaded more than 500 million times and are approaching 20% market share, the very fact that so much of AEGIS research and prototypes will be released under open source licenses means that others can incorporate them royalty-free.

And it greatly increases the chances that people with disabilities can get those results at little to no cost. Which bring us to...

AEGIS' focus on people with disabilities

If open source is the heart of AEGIS, then people with disabilities must be its soul. Everything we do in AEGIS starts with them. Some of the strongest disability organizations in Europe are part of AEGIS. Their contributions begin with requirements gathering, continue through their working in partnership with the research & industrial members by participating in development of specifications, and concludes with their critical role in user trials.

It is people with disabilities who have the most to gain from AEGIS research results - and the most to loose if we don't get it right. Technology - so full of promise and potential to help - is at the same time so very capable of leaving them behind. Every second that passes, 4 people are born into this world. In that same second, 36 mobile devices are activated, and 411 web pages are created. Globally we are on track to purchase 1.3 billion mobile devices in 2008. Create 12.8 billion new web pages. Google already indexes 1 trillion web pages! If we don't take care to build accessibility into these now, we run the grave risk of leaving far too many people behind.

AEGIS' focus on developer

It is precisely because of the staggering numbers in the paragraph above that we must also focus on the developer. The easier it is for a developer to create an accessible application or website or mobile device, the more likely it is that she will do so. The cheaper we make it - both in terms of the cost of the tools as well as the cost of developer's time - the more likely we'll see accessible results.

This is why, in addition to having the disability community help us set our requirements and provide input to our specifications and feedback in trials of our prototypes, we will have developers playing exactly those same roles with respect to the developer tools and user interface component sets and accessibility frameworks. Developers from AEGIS consortium industrial partners, and drawn from the computer science departments of University partners, as well as those who join our work in the open source community, will play a vital role in helping us make the process of building accessibility easy and inexpensive.

Sun's role(s) in AEGIS

Sun plays a number of critical roles in the AEGIS project. Sun - in the person of yours truly (and too many long nights) - wrote the bulk of the AEGIS grant proposal. And Sun - again in the person of yours truly - is the Technical Manager of the AEGIS project. But it is other qualities and attributes of Sun Microsystems that will play the biggest role in AEGIS as we carry out this very major undertaking:

#1 - Sun brought the API-based approach to the market

Sun has been the first and most consistent champion of programmatic & built-in accessibility approaches:

#2 - Sun is the single biggest contributor to open source

According to the UNU-MERIT study in 2006, Sun Microsystems is the single biggest contributor of free and open source software in the world - both by lines of code and by person-months of contribution and by value. Number 2 by ranking isn't even close. In fact, according to this study Sun's contributions are greater than those of thee next 7 largest contributors combined! And with our recent acquisitions of MySQL and Innotek, you'd have to combine the next 10 contributors contributions to exceed Sun's. Since open source is at the heart of so much of AEGIS - including both those places where we have spearheaded much of the existing open source accessibility work and in the less accessible domains of rich Internet applications and mobile devices - Sun's incredible knowledge and expertise an standing within these communities will be critical to AEGIS' open source accessibility success.

#3 - Sun is tied into accessibility standards and regulatory efforts

As we move into a future of converged devices (cell phones that are web browsers and handle our e-mail, Blu-ray movies that include video games and get supplemented with new content all playing on the TV in your living room, and of course the desktop software you can use to make phone calls), there is an increasing push for accessibility regulations that cover these and future emerging technologies. As we move away from software built using a small number of platform-defined programming interfaces of Windows & Macintosh & UNIX, to the "wild west" of anything goes so long as it can send pixels over a the Internet to your screen, there is an obvious need for standards to help define how to make those interfaces accessible.

Sun played a very significant role in the U.S. Section 508 regulatory process which is the framework for technology accessibility in America:

In conclusion...

To close this rather long post, I want to thank the European Commission e-Inclusion unit and my fellow consortium members. With AEGIS we are embarking on a very ambitious and challenging research and development program. I believe it will ultimately be an incredibly satisfying one. (2008-10-16 20:27:44.0) Permalink Comments [3]

Afghanistan's Disability Crisis - video on nytimes.com, thoughts on my blog...

One of the key reasons for pursing open source access solutions is to address the affordability problems many face with commercial/proprietary solutions. Another is to facilitate localization and whatever other modifications may be needed to make the access solution work best for a particular user or region. A recent video article "Afghanistan's Disability Crisis" on the New York Times website brought this into sharp focus.

While the accessibility challenges facing people with disabilities in Afghanistan are far greater than simply gaining access to technology - lack of funding for rehabilitation, lack of physical infrastructure accessibility, profound cultural problems attaching individual blame ("God's punishment") - at the heart of many of these issues is a lack of money and local expertise. While we can't eliminate the cost of creating wheelchair ramps, open source technology access solutions can eliminate the cost barriers preventing the use of screen readers and screen magnifiers and on-screen keyboards and other accessibility technologies. And while there is little profit motive for localizing most commercial software (and especially commercial assistive technologies) to the Farsi and Pashto languages, there is already an active Farsi translation team that has made great progress translating the open source GNOME desktop to Farsi (including translating the GNOME On-screen Keyboard), and likewise an active Pashto localization team that has gotten started more recently with GNOME.

Another key area is getting text-to-speech in the languages spoken in Afghanistan (important for screen readers and augmentative communication devices). One likely choice for this is the open source eSpeak text-to-speech engine, which has been localized to quite a few languages. While neither Pashto nor Farsi are among those, I daresay for the cost of a few copies of an American or European screen reader, you could work with someone like Mohammad Khalid Ameery (coordinator of the Pashto localization effort) or Amir Hedayaty (coordinator of the Farsi localization effort) and develop Pashto and Farsi voices for eSpeak. These could then be used with a localized GNOME desktop for any blind person in Afghanistan.

So, while we cannot quickly or cheaply make all buildings wheelchair accessible in Afghanistan, it wouldn't take much to start opening the Internet to people with disabilities in Afghanistan. (2008-10-08 16:11:50.0) Permalink Comments [2]

Economists' Voice on the U.S. Financial Crisis and the bailout proposal(s)

Like a lot of people, I've been reading the financial news and having a lot of conversations with friends about the troubles in the U.S. economy and financial sector, and the bailout proposal(s) being worked on in the U.S. Congress this week and last. Much of what is out there to read is punditry - professional columnists and pundits providing their opinions.

One place with a lot thoughtful and expert commentary is The Economists' Voice, and online Economics journal that is part of the Berkeley Electronic Press family of journals, started by my high school friend (and U.C. Berkeley economics professor) Aaron Edlin. If you are interested in a very thoughtful collection of articles from some of the best economists in the field on this topic (and many others), I highly recommend The Economists' Voice. They have covered many other key topics, including the Economic Costs of the Iraq War, Social Security and even E-mail SPAM. Highly recommended! (2008-10-02 15:44:54.0) Permalink

GNOME Outreach Program: Accessibility receives award: "Meilleure action communautaire menée"

I just received word that the GNOME Outreach Program: Accessibility was recognized & honored at the recent Paris Capitale du libre awards ceremony. Providing awards in 12 categories, the GNOME Foundation received the award for "Meilleure action communautaire menée" (best action led by the community) for the GNOME Outreach Program: Accessibility, a program which funds developers in making open source accessibility improvements in GNOME. Also worth noting is that the accessible open source office suite OpenOffice.org received an award for "Meilleur projet Libre réalisé au niveau mondial (hors France)" (best open source/free project worldwide).


	Peter Korn's Weblog The collected occasional commentary by Peter Korn, Accessibility Architect at Sun Microsystems, Inc.

From Russia with Heart