FLOSS and Accessibility

One of the myths about FLOSS is that it is less accessible but, in reality, the reverse is often the case. Open standards in FLOSS development mean that much higher accessibility standards can be achieved.

There's a lot of work already going on to build accessibility into FLOSS frameworks, particularly in the development of desktop environments, accessible softwares and the incorporation of assistive technologies.

A Linux distribution, or 'distro', is a Linux project which 'packages' the basic linux system (which is a text-based command-line system) with useful stuff like the kind of graphical desktop Windows users are used to with graphical tools to let you configure stuff like networking and installing new software easily. Some distros, such as Ubuntu, Suse, Mandriva etc, are aimed at the 'general' computer user and provide a nice, easy, CD-ROM or DVD which will install your system from scratch more or less automatically with a graphical interface and recommended choices. Popular distros will automatically install their preferred desktop environment and these will have inbuilt accessibility features. The GNOME desktop offers particularly good integrated accessibility features which work well with software such as Open Office and Mozilla.

More work needs to be done, however, and there needs to be a much better interface between FLOSS developers and people who can offer a lot of experience with assistive technologies. If you feel you could contribute to developers' knowledge of user needs, the | Debian accessibility mailing list is open to all Debian users. The | Open Office accessibility project mailing list and the | Mozilla Accessibility Project mailing list and live chat facilities are also open to all users.

Linux accessibility projects:

Overview:

| The Linux Accessiblity Resource Site provides an excellent overview of current development projects and frameworks. | SchoolsForge has an assistive technologies development project and you can also find a very useful overview of open source assistive technology projects on their wiki.

GNOME is the free software open source desktop project which avoids incorporating proprietary elements in its build. Whilst you can install any desktop you want on any Linux system, some 'distros' offer one or other of them as a default. GNOME is the default desktop automatically installed by the popular Ubuntu distribution. It is usually favoured by more community-orientated distros.

| GNOME Accessibility is the suite of software services and support in | GNOME allowing people with disabilities to utilise all of the functionality of the GNOME user environment. There is also a free | GNOME Desktop Accessibility Guide to support users of GNOME's accessibilty features. There's a basic overview of Gnome's inbuilt accessibility features on the | Cambridge University Unix support pages

| The KDE Desktop is GNOME's main competitor. Some industry experts argue that KDE's commercial formula produces higher quality accessibility features but this is by no means accepted across open source development communities. Champions of GNOME's community-based approach argue that openness and community engagement produces more effective use of assistive technologies. KDE is disliked by free software 'purists' because it incorporates some proprietary elements. KDE is the default desktop installation on the Suse distro which offers a paid-for support package which many beginners find useful. | More information about KDE's acessibility project.

Distro projects:

The more community-orientated distributions usually have their own assistive technology projects. The | Ubuntu Project is working on an | Accessibility Aware Installer for the | Ubuntu distribution (which includes GNOME desktop) because | GNOME's accessibility features are not much help if you can't install GNOME and turn on the relevant features. Ubuntu is also supporting governmental work on developing | Orca on | Ubuntu. | Debian's accessibility project is aiming for a completely free system which is accessible to all users. Debian runs a | accessibility mailing list open to all Debian users whether technical or not.

Some open source assistive technology and software projects:

| Speakup is "a bunch of blind people who like messing around with Linux and writing cool and, hopefully useful, software". It's the home of the | Speakup Screenreader Project and a growing list of Linux accessibility tools including a command-line media player, | TRPlayer, and | Speak Freely, a real-time audio IRC client. There is also a | GNOME screenreader project. | Blinux is another group working to to improve usability of Linux for the user who is blind.

| Skipper is an accessibility package for Linux which enables severely physically disabled people with many different conditions to make full use of applications that normally require good mouse and keyboard control.

| EdBrowse is a command-line application combining text editor. browser and mail client which does away with the need to manipulate the cursor using a screenreader.

| Dasher is a text entry system using a language model to offer predictions to the user without constraining the range of words which can be written. Dasher can be driven using a mouse or any two-dimensional pointing device that can take over the role of a mouse including footmouse or headmouse. | GNOME comes with Dasher integrated.

Software projects:

The | OpenOffice.org Accessibility Project is working to make Open Office usable by people regardless of their disabilities.

The | Mozilla Accessibility Project is working on ways to make dynamic web content more accessible and offers advice on customisation and keyboard tips. Their Accessibility site offers lots of information and interactive content.

There's a list of accessibility features for | Star Office at the | Star Office Accessibility Project | Mozilla, | Star Office from 6.1 and | Open Office from 1.1 work well with | GNOME Accessibility | see GUADEC's paper. On Windows, according to the | Open University's accessibility guide, accessibility can be added to Star Office 7 using Java API but the Java Access Bridge has to be installed by the user and the Bridge must match the Java Environment. There is a limited range of assistive softwares supported. | Jaws will work with the Bridge but slowly and not all features are supported. Open Office is based on Star Office and has the same problems.

The FLOSS community as a whole is committed to making operating systems and applications accessible to everyone. Progress is being made on wider integration of assistive technologies and softwares with FLOSS frameworks but this could always be faster. What is needed is more collaboration between people with disabilities and the FLOSS developer communities. If you'd like to see the full potential for greater accessibility in Open Source development realised then why not get involved! FLOSS is a community and depends on active participation.