Edgy Accessibility features

[Henrik]

Hi all,

The beta for 6.06 has just been released and the plans for the next 
version 'Edgy Eft' were announced just a few days ago. Edgy will take 
some risks, introducing new technologies like XGL rendering even if they 
are not completely mature. I think we in the accessibility team should 
think along the same lines and get to work on some exiting new assistive 
technology opportunities.

This is the time to start floating some ambitious new ideas. Let's do 
some brainstorming on this and get some of the doable things on the wiki 
as specifications. Let's think beyond what Windows or OS X has (each 
with it's proprietary add-ons) and think about what users really need.

So, some ideas:

Orca User Interface -- I've been talking a bit with the Orca team about 
working on the configuration UI. We in Ubuntu have a good community that 
can provide valuable ideas and testing for this and Orca seems to run 
quite happily on the Ubuntu platform. Orca has been put forward for 
inclusion in gnome 2.16, which IMO is the right move, but for that to 
happen it probably needs a config UI (be it GUI or not).

General AT config UI -- I feel that the AT settings in gnome are handled 
a bit awkwardly and could do with a rethink and some centralisation. 
This should be seen in context with the point above. I'd like to see an 
extensible config utility where different apps could plug in.

XGL-based screen magnifier -- The new desktop rendering technologies 
using the 3D rendering hardware hold great promise for screen 
magnification. We already see the zoom features demoed on XGL systems 
magnifying faster and smoother and with better clarity than the existing 
magnifiers like kmag or Gnopernicus. However, in order to be useful for 
low vision users features like cursor tracking will be needed along with 
general configuration tools.

Speech dispatcher -- According to their website the SD gnome-speech 
driver will soon be shipped with gnome-speech. How mature is this? 
Should we standardise on SD for speech output in Ubuntu? What else is 
needed, configuration interfaces? (as you can read I don't know very 
much about this technology, so others please fill in the blanks.)

KDE -- What's cooking in KDE 4? We have seen talk about gnome and KDE 
using the same AT infrastructure. What is the state of this and is there 
anything ubuntu/ubuntu can do to help? The idea is that KDE4 apps will 
use AT-SPI, right? So will they simply work with Orca and GOK or will 
new KDE AT apps be written?

On screen Keyboard -- My critical view of GOK is no secret [1]. I think 
we can do much better, but it will probably require a new approach. 
Perhaps it could be made more modular so that different use cases don't 
get in each other's way. [1]: http://www.osnews.com/story.php?news_id=12942

Mouse Tweaks - We have a large cursor set going into dapper now, but it 
could IMO be sharper and more complete. There are also gains to be made 
in tweaking the pointer motion, such as making it less sensitive to hand 
tremors (with adjustable settings of course).

Ubuntu will be participating in Google's Summer of Code project again 
this year which is generally a good place to start small new development 
projects. I've written up some basic abstracts for some possible 
projects, but I would also like to make some progress on fleshing out 
some specs. The more detail we can work out now, the quicker the 
students can get cracking on the code. Please suggest areas I might have 
overlooked where we should focus as well or instead. See: 
https://wiki.ubuntu.com/GoogleSoC2006

- Henrik