<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN"> <html> <head> <meta http-equiv="content-type" content="text/html; charset=ISO-8859-1"> </head> <body text="#000000" bgcolor="#ffffff"> One of the projects kicked off by the accessibility team at the Ubuntu Developer Summit was to create a set of personas or fictional characters with accessibility needs. The design team have a set of personas already, each with different skills and life experiences and it is these people they think about when designing the user interface. One of their personas (Lola, a 29 year old PhD student living in Paris) is partially sighted and uses assistive technology. This is a great start, but we want to provide the design team and all those working on Ubuntu with some more detailed personas with an assortment of needs. The aim is to educate and motivate all those working on Ubuntu, accessibility isn't just a technical feature, it is about people and if some part of the system isn't available for everyone then it is broken. In order to write a series of fictional, but believable characters we have put together a survey asking people to tell us about themselves and the issues they find when interacting with computers. We collaborated on the questions that should be asked here <a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://pad.ubuntu-uk.org/Access">http://pad.ubuntu-uk.org/Access</a> and now we have taken the results of that work and built an online form <a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://">http://</a><a href="http://access.libertus.co.uk/">access.libertus.co.uk</a> and an alternative text version  <a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Accessibility/Personas/Survey">https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Accessibility/Personas/Survey</a> which can be emailed to  <a class="moz-txt-link-abbreviated" href="mailto:ubuntu.accessibility.survey@gmail.com">ubuntu.accessibility.survey@gmail.com</a> Please take a few minutes to fill out the survey and pass it on to friends and relatives who may be able to provide interesting and useful answers. When the results are in (by August 8th or thereabouts) we will start the process of writing up the personas using the survey answers as inspiration.This will generate our realistic, but fictional, characters who will help make Ubuntu better for everyone. Thanks to all those who helped get the survey this far. Alan </body> </html>