Maximizing Accessibility: Engaging People With Disabilities in the Linux Community

Spencer Hunley

State of Accessibility in Linux: Past

● CLIs

● Primitive GUIs

● Improvements with GNOME 2 and KDE enviroments

Linux State of Accessibility: Present

● Lots of apps, lots of abandoned/ deprecated projects

● and GNOME 3 okay, but far from ideal or optimal

● Accessibility largely an afterthought

Linux State of Accessibility: Future

● The Sonar Project ● Vinux ● Adriane

● Voice Control ● Speech-to-Text

The Confinement Cycle

Needs money to buy Assistive Technology device

Person with a disability

Needs a job to become independent and earn money Needs Assistive Needs job to earn Technology device money for purchase to do job

How Linux Can Break This Cycle

● Cost – Less expensive options for hardware and software

● Greater ability to customize and configure the system to person-centered specifics

● Grows with the person

Rollin' With The Changes: How To Improve Accessibility

● Simple changes build to substantial improvements

● Build upon what is already in the Linux ecosystem

● Accessibility benefits your entire user base

People With Disabilities: A Largely Untapped Linux Userbase

● Thorough bug finding and beta testing

● Real-world usability trials

● Growing pool of loyal users with fresh ideas and perspectives

Further Information

Americans with Disabilities Act: http://www.ada.gov/

Assistive Technology Industry Association: http://www.atia.org/

Rehabilitation Engineering and Assistive Technology Society of North America: http://resna.org/

GNOME Universal Access: https://help.gnome.org/users/gnome-help/stable/a11y.html

Fedora Accessibility Guide: http://docs.fedoraproject.org/en-US/Fedora/16/html/Accessibility_Guide/index.html

Vinux Project: http://vinuxproject.org/

Sonar Project: http://sonar-project.org/

Adriane Knoppix: Spencer Hunley http://www.knopper.net/knoppix-adriane/index-en.html [email protected]