New developer

[Willie Walker]

+1 from me - we definitely need to increase our support and maintenance 
for mouse-only and switch-only users.  Any help in this area would be 
greatly welcomed.

Will

Francesco Fumanti wrote:
> Hello Tom,
> 
> 
> There is another accessibility area that lags behind what is already
> available for years on Windows and Macs: a good accessibility tool for
> people that can only use the pointer.
> 
> - There is the gnome onscreen keyboard gok, but it is more geared
> towards switch users. Several modifications would be necessary to
> improve it for pointer only users. Other improvements have been noted on
> this page: http://live.gnome.org/Gok
> The current maintainer of gok only has very little time to devote to it,
> so that only the most urgent problems have been looked after.
> 
> - There is the onscreen keyboard onboard: onboard, which has been mostly
> programed in python, is probably the most usable onscreen keyboard
> available on GNOME for pointer only users. However, it is still a basic
> onscreen keyboard that lacks efficiency features like word prediction
> and autoponctuation. Moreover, it does not support switch input yet. I 
> suppose that not only the accessibility users, but also the tabletpc 
> users would appropriate having somebody that takes onboard to the next 
> level.
> https://edge.launchpad.net/onboard
> https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Accessibility/Projects/onBoard
> 
> - Another starting point to build an efficient onscreen keyboard could 
> be the matchbox-keyboard, but as it is not originally geared towards 
> GNOME. http://matchbox-project.org/overview.html
> 
> - There is kvkbd for KDE, that I have not really look into yet.
> 
> - There is dasher with its unusual input method that looks more like a 
> game than an accessibility (this is not intended in a negative way). 
> dasher is said to have a good word prediction, but it completely lacks 
> desktop control and the written text goes into a pane in dasher instead 
> of going into the front window. I don't know whether the word prediction 
> of dasher can be used in a "classic" onscreen keyboard.
> 
> 
> As you see, there is also much left to do for pointer only users. It is 
> not the area that you talked about in your mail, but one can never know; 
> therefore this reply.
> 
> 
> Anyway, if you are going to pick up one of these to take it to the next 
> level, please contact me and I will help with what I can (ideas, 
> testing, documentation,...).
> 
> 
> Cheers
> 
> Francesco
> 
> 
> 
> Luke Yelavich wrote:
>> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1
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>> On Tue, Oct 28, 2008 at 10:23:43AM EST, Tom Lloyd wrote:
>>> Hello All,
>>>
>>>
>>> Just wanted to say Hi and to get myself known. I have been using
>>> Ubuntu for= three or so years. I am a 26 year old developer from
>>> the UK trained in Emb= edded / Realtime systems. As a side project
>>> I am intergrating SAPI into Ubu= ntu to gives access to the MS
>>> speech engines using speech dispatcher.
>> This is awesome news, and depending on how far along your work is,
>> may be enough of a reason to push for using speech-dispatcher as the
>> speech backend for orca in the next Ubuntu release.
>>
>>> I use compiz for zoon, so i could be intrested in working to
>>> improve speech= and magnification under ubuntu, suggestions for
>>> projects welcome.=20
>> We certainly need help in improving the state of magnification in
>> Ubuntu. It works, but badly. What really needs doing is integrating
>> the eZoom compiz plugin with Orca, as well as cleaning up Orca's
>> speech-dispatcher support to be of similar quality to its support for
>> gnome-speech. I plan to more tightly integrate speech-dispatcher for
>> Ubuntu next cycle, due to its more flexible nature compared to
>> gnome-speech.
>>
>> In short, integration is what we lack for accessibility in Ubuntu.
>> The tools are there, but they need to be tied to gether in a way that
>> makes them work seemlessly with each other, i.e eZoom/gnome-mag and
>> orca, speech-dispatcher and orca, etc.
>>
>> Thanks for your offer of assistance, it would be much appreciated.
>>
>> Luke -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.4.9 (GNU/Linux)
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> 
>