Joining the Ubuntu Accessibility Team

[Henrik]

If your reading this you are likely considering joining the team. Great! It's easy to join and there are no formal requirements or procedures. You only need an interest in the topic and a willingness to help out with improving access on Ubuntu.

You might want to register a launchpad account though so you can edit the wiki and sign up on the team page. This will also be useful if you want to file bugs or contribute to specifications.

Next I suggest you join the access mailing list and introduce yourself. The most difficult thing for new members of any team is figuring out where to start. We need help with coding, testing, documentation, and user support. If you let us know what general area you might be interested in the existing team members should be able to advise you on concrete items you can help with.

Welcome to the team!

[tgbrowning]

Am extremely new to Ubuntu (still getting set up) but have been a programmer for about twenty years working in DOS and Windows. Am eleven months away from retiring and at that point, will be dropping Windows completely, I expect. The release of Vista was the last straw.

Also, am deaf, and have some vision problems as well.

[Samhain13]

Hello. I just signed up in the mailing list and sent an introductory note. I hope I can help in the testing, especially in the area of web browsing.

[speeddemon8803]

Wow, never knew signing up for an Ubuntu team was so easy! Happy Ubuntuing everyone! I have been using Ubuntu since 6.06 boy that was rough...6.10...ok a little better...7.04 now were getting somewhere! If you guys want or need assistance with the accessibility aspects of Ubuntu...im here for ya folks!

[sniffcrisps]

Hi,

I've just submitted my request to join the team. I work as an accessibility architect for the UK Government, and also work for the Brithish Computer Society. I hope to assist with accessibility testing and development for Ubuntu.

Stuart

[DeafLinux]

I am an IT with the University of Florida and a network administrator for the disability network (irc.deepspace.org) and we have users who are converting to Ubuntu. I am assiting them on set up and I do a lot of testing. I would like to be on this team to test software and get feedbacks from users on how to improve the program. I have been using Ubuntu for 2 years after leaving suse. I am Deaf since birth.

Cordially,

DeafLinux

[drbongo]

I would be very keen to get involved with this. I currently work as the ICT Development Officer at the Royal National College for the Blind in Hereford, UK.

I am trying to introduce Linux at the College, but Linux has always lagged behind Windows accessibility software. I have been experimenting with the Orca screen-reader/magnifier in combination and alone. The Orca voices are reasonable, and they offer regional dialects not just American accents. However, even with Orca working you do not have access to all applications, and the full screen magnification is still a little jerky and the fonts pixillated.

In the short-term I want to remaster ubuntu using the remastersys gui with specific accessibility options activated at boot time in three flavours - speech, magnification and speech with magnification.

I am also exploring the development of talking applications which use either text to speech and/or recorded speech rather than trying to use a system wide screen-reader.

I will certainly register with the development team and would be happy to communicate with anyone who is interested in developing and/or using such software.

drbongo

[srividya]

I would be very keen to get involved with this. I currently work as the ICT Development Officer at the Royal National College for the Blind in Hereford, UK.

I am trying to introduce Linux at the College, but Linux has always lagged behind Windows accessibility software. I have been experimenting with the Orca screen-reader/magnifier in combination and alone. The Orca voices are reasonable, and they offer regional dialects not just American accents. However, even with Orca working you do not have access to all applications, and the full screen magnification is still a little jerky and the fonts pixillated.

In the short-term I want to remaster ubuntu using the remastersys gui with specific accessibility options activated at boot time in three flavours - speech, magnification and speech with magnification.

I am also exploring the development of talking applications which use either text to speech and/or recorded speech rather than trying to use a system wide screen-reader.

I will certainly register with the development team and would be happy to communicate with anyone who is interested in developing and/or using such software.

drbongo

Hi drbongo ..... This is Srividya from India... Am very glad to see u here and your post gave me a big hope that you would help me out with my problem...

Let me first introduce myself. Me doing my finaly year Engineering course and am doing an project for visually impaired persons and that includes developing an application say a calculator and am using an touch screen monitor with which the person needs to move his finger around the screen and the system will just read out the icons similar to ORCA and once the person reaches his desired number or icon he just need to click on it so that the click event will occur and similarly he can perform his operation. This is one module of my project

The next modules comes to be guiding the person say for example if the person wants to select the number 2 then he needs to tell that number then after processing that voice signal we will guide him through the screen, saying move left or right or whatever it is. I hope i made you understand my project, and here comes the problem

I have now setup my environment by loading ubuntu 8.10 and i have got one touch screen monitor and installed the driver for it. and now i need the driver code supporting my environment and that will be helpfull to me ... can u please help me out

[bitsnpcs]

Thank You