Thursday December 18, 2008 
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. |
Thursday December 18, 2008 Accessible OpenSolaris 2008.11A couple of weeks ago Sun released OpenSolaris 2008.11. For the last year or more, Sun's Willie Walker has led the OpenSolaris accessibility effort, and this recent release shows all of the tremendous work done by Willie and a host of engineers on the OpenSolaris team. Particular attention was paid to accessible install (leading one blind OpenSolaris user to say "it was the smoothest operating system install that I have ever performed"). Leveraging the Sun-led open source GNOME accessibility work, OpenSolaris includes the latest in assistive technologies like Orca and GOK and Dasher, as well as a host of other accessibility enhancements that have been developed in the open source GNOME community. Using the occasion of this release of OpenSolaris, Sun's Bill Vass wrote movingly about Dismantling the Digital Divide in his blog last week. In my meetings with Bill, I've always been impressed with his passion around technology accessibility, and the focus he brings to accessibility within Sun Federal which he leads. Willie put together a great set of videos which demonstrate the accessibility features available in OpenSolaris 2008.11. I encourage you to check them out! (2008-12-18 18:29:36.0) Permalink Nice words about AEGISSun's press release about AEGIS went out today. It includes thoughtful perspectives about the projects' importance from project coordinator CERTH, from the Royal National Institute of Blind People, from AOL, and from my own vice president at Sun. Speaking for Sun, Jeet Kaul (VP of the Client Software Group) said:
Every second of every day that passes, the number of new mobile devices and web sites grows at an astounding rate - with much of that growth bringing accessibility problems for people with disabilities. By building support for accessibility into the next generation of rich internet application frameworks and mobile devices, we can help ensure that people with disabilities can participate in the digital age.
Already the press has started to pick up on this. On behalf of International Data Group, writer Chris Kanaracus has already published the article "Sun, Consortium to Drive Tech Accessibility Project" (which can be found in The Industry Standard and PC World and Yahoo! tech among other places).
(2008-12-18 18:10:11.0)
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