CSUN trip report - UNIX Accessibility series & Java stuff
Peter Korn
Last month was the annual CSUN Conference on Technology and Persons with
Disabilities. This year accessibility to computers running UNIX (such as
the Solaris operating environment, GNU/Linux, and other computer systems)
was a conference theme. There was a UNIX Accessibility series of
conference sessions all day Thursday, and demonstrations of open source
assistive technologies for UNIX systems in the Sun Microsystems booth on
the show floor. This year also saw the second annual Linux Accessibility
Conference, which was held on Friday in the LAX Hilton conference hotel.
This lengthy trip report describes in some detail all of the events
relating to UNIX Accessibility at CSUN, and touches on some events relating
to Java Accessibility as well.
The key messages relating to UNIX (and Java) Accessibility at CSUN were:
1. The development of a free, open source graphical desktop for UNIX
systems called GNOME 2, with accessibility support built in as a
forethought (vs. bolted on as an afterthought). GNOME 2 will be the
future desktop of the Sun Solaris operating environment, and of
numerous GNU/Linux systems.
2. The development of the free, open source GNU Accessibility
architecture (also known as the GNOME Accessibility architecture), a
comprehensive API-based mechanism for exposing accessibility
information by applications to assistive technologies.
2. The development of Gnopernicus - a free, open source screen reader
and magnifier for GNOME by BAUM Retec AG. Gnopernicus was
demonstrated on an Intel RedHat Linux system, with both speech and
Braille, at CSUN. Gnopernicus fully supports the GNU Accessibility
architecture.
3. The development of GOK - a free, open source dynamic on-screen
keyboard for GNOME by the University of Toronto Adaptive Technology
Resource Centre. GOK was demonstrated on both a Sun Solaris system
and an Intel RedHat Linux system, with both single switch access
and support for the Madentec Tracker head-mouse. GOK fully supports
the GNU Accessibility architecture.
4. Sun's announcement that StarOffice and the open source OpenOffice.org
office productivity suite of applications (word processor,
spreadsheet, presentation package, and drawing package - with full
support for reading and writing Microsoft Office file formats) will
become accessible with full support for the GNU Accessibility
architecture, as well as support for accessibility under the Microsoft
Windows desktop via the Java Access Bridge. Sun demonstrated an
early version of StarOffice with (early) accessibility support,
showing how the accessibility information was being made available
via the Java Accessibility test tools.
5. Sun's announcement of the formation of the Sun Netscape/Mozilla
Accessibility Task Force. This task force of Sun engineers is
focused on building support for the GNU Accessibility architecture
directly into the open source Mozilla web browser, to be released
in a future version of Netscape for UNIX systems, and to also be
available in applications that embed the Mozilla gecko HTML rendering
engine in other applications (such as the Galeon GNOME web browser,
and the Nautilus file and document browser).
6. Sun's release of FreeTTS - a free, open source text-to-speech engine
and voices for the Java platform. Sun demonstrated FreeTTS on the
Solaris operating environment - a UNIX platform - with emacspeak,
the Emacs speech environment developed by T.V. Raman. Sun also
provided information on how to download FreeTTS and get involved
with the project.
7. Ai Squared's demonstration of support for access to the Java platform
in the shipping ZoomText for Windows version 7.1. ZoomText was
demonstrated providing access to the ICEMail free open source e-mail
client for the Java platform.
8. Benetech's demonstration of Sonorus - a prototype Personal Accessor
for the blind that is designed to provide wireless access to a new
generation of things like ATM machines, vending machines, elevators,
etc. The Sonorus prototype is a Compaq iPAQ running the SavaJe
Java platform. Benetech demonstrated how a user with Sonorus could
interact with an otherwise inaccessible vending machine to purchase
soft drinks and candy.
Below is a fairly detailed summary of each of the seven sessions relating
to UNIX Accessibility (and Java accessibility), as well events at the 2nd
Linux Accessibility conference.
o The first session in the UNIX Accessibility series was the "UNIX
Accessibility overview" by Dr. Gregg Vanderheiden of TRACE (and CSUN
keynote speaker), J.P. Schnapper-Casteras of project Ocularis (and
organizer of the 2nd Linux Accessibility Conference), and Marc Mulcahy,
Rich Burridge, and Peter Korn of Sun Microsystems.
In this session, Dr. Vanderheiden spoke of the importance of the UNIX
Accessibility work, looking at the trends in society, trends in
technology, and the fact that this work is defining the next set of
accessibility standards in the industry.
JP Schnapper-Casteras gave an overview of the present UNIX
accessibility efforts, including work on the UNIX desktops,
console-related work, tools, and the overall accessible use experience.
Marc Mulcahy gave a demonstration of Speakup, the console screen reader
that can be built into the GNU/Linux kernel that Marc uses every day as
part of his work in building the GNU Accessibility architecture. Rich
Burridge explained what the Sun Solaris Operating Environment was, and
gave an overview of the accessibility options available today for it.
Finally, Peter Korn presented Sun’s vision of UNIX Accessibility.
Peter talked about Sun's long-held computing principle: "Anyone,
Anywhere, Any time, Any device" - with "anyone" including people with
disabilities, "any device" including talking and Braille notetakers as
well as cell phones, PDAs, and desktop computers. Peter also spoke
about the four big themes behind the UNIX Accessibility work:
1. Built-in vs. Bolt-on; 2. Evolution of screen access approaches;
3. Formal division of responsibility; and 4. Open source accessibility.
These four themes were referred to again and again throughout the rest
of the UNIX Accessibility series, and were also the topics of the panel
discussion later in the afternoon.
o The second session in the UNIX Accessibility series was titled "The
Accessible GNOME 2 desktop: An Introduction." Gary Little and Peter
Korn of Sun Microsystems gave this presentation.
Gary Little gave a guided tour of the GNOME desktop - using the
shipping GNOME 1.4 edition for his demonstrations. Gary showed
features that will be familiar to existing Windows users - the
"GNOME Foot" menu (like the Windows "Start" menu), the GNOME Panel
(similar to the Windows System Tray). Gary also demonstrated features
that will be new to many users and provide functionality not available
on existing PC systems - the ability to have multiple "desktop"
workspaces, that applications on the GNOME panel are live and can be
manipulated directly (rather than just icon-based menu items), the
powerful theme engine in GNOME that does a lot more than simply change
the colors and sizes of the standard user interface elements, and some
of the powerful built-in applications of the network-based GNOME
desktop (such as the Weather application, which gives weather
forecasts and satellite weather animations for locations worldwide).
Peter Korn then spent a few minutes talking about the new accessibility
features in the forthcoming GNOME 2 platform. He briefly demonstrated
Gnopernicus and GOK - the two free, open source assistive technologies
being developed for GNOME. And he demonstrated Sun's SunRay network
appliance, an inexpensive network terminal that displays a GNOME
desktop (or other Solaris session) that is generated on a central Sun
server - and can be redirected to any SunRay terminal on the network.
Using this network terminal in an accessibility setting, a user need
not use a specially modified workstation (as is presently typically
the case with PCs), but can walk up to any SunRay appliance, insert
his or her smart card, and have delivered an accessible GNOME desktop
session with whatever assistive technologies are needed. Then, when
the user moves to a different room, s/he simply removes the card and
inserts it into a new SunRay appliance in the new room, and the
accessible GNOME desktop session is redirected to the new SunRay.
o The third session in the UNIX Accessibility series, "Gnopernicus:
Screen Reading & Magnification for GNOME", was a presented by Thomas
Friehoff of BAUM Retec AG. Thomas talked about BAUM and the work they
do, and also discussed why they were investing in the GNOME platform
and building an open source screen reader/magnifier. Thomas talked
about BAUM's frustrations with the current situation of blind desktop
accessibility - with Windows dominating the market and little room for
competition in the Windows AT marketplace. BAUM and their customers
are interested in alternatives. Thomas noted that much of the business
for blind access in Germany is a service business - with companies
like BAUM providing much of the value through customization of the
accommodation. Thomas also noted at BAUM that software sales drive
hardware sales (BAUM is a major manufacturer of Braille displays).
Also important in Germany is the growing interest in the GNU/Linux
environment, with the German parliament standardizing on GNU/Linux for
all of their desktop computer systems. Finally, the software
development team at BAUM wanted to do something different for a
change, and found a lot of promise and possibilities in the open
source model and the GNOME Accessibility architecture.
Thomas presented in some depth the architecture of Gnopernicus, noting
how Gnopernicus has three separate output modules (for speech, Braille,
and magnification), and that each bit of information output to the user
is sent as a marked up stream encoding all of the pertinent
information about that output - allowing for maximum flexibility in
how it is presented to the user (e.g. speech emphasis for text in
boldface; using dot-7 to indicate text in a button). Because
Gnopernicus is an open source project made up of a series of separate
modules, other companies and organizations could take these modules
and put together their own assistive technology products, with
potentially very different user interfaces. Thomas ended the
presentation with a demonstration of Gnopernicus running on an early
version of the GNOME 2 desktop - with access to the GNOME 2 panel,
calculator, Gedit text editor, and a few other applications. The
home page for the Gnopernicus project is:
http://developer.gnome.org/projects/gap/AT/Gnopernicus/
o The fourth session in the UNIX Accessibility series was a presentation
from Jutta Treviranus and Simon Bates of the University of Toronto
Assistive Technology Resource Centre titled "GOK: a full featured
on-screen keyboard for GNOME."
Jutta and Simon demonstrated a number of the features of the free and
open source GOK on-screen keyboard, and also showed how GOK provided
access to Glade, a GNOME development tool for building graphical
applications. They showed the scanning and direct selection features,
as well as word completion and the ability of GOK to dynamically
display menu and sub-menus. They also demonstrated how GOK presents
new dynamically created keyboards as the frontmost application changes,
illustrating this with their dynamic menu keyboard which provided
direct and scanning access to menus and menu bars.
The University of Toronto Assistive Technology Resource Centre does
a lot of research, and is using GOK as a vehicle for exploring ideas
for improving the efficiency and user experience of computer users
with physical impairments. To that end, Jutta presented some of
the more unusual on-screen keyboard layouts they are thinking about.
Finally, Jutta talked about their focus on clinicians, and on
their plans for making GOK a very flexible and configurable tool to
allow clinicians to adapt GOK to the specific capabilities and motor
functions of each individual user. Jutta and Simon's presentation
can be found at: http://www.gok.ca/csun2002/ The GOK home page is
at: http://www.gok.ca/
o After a break for lunch, Bill Haneman and Marc Mulcahy of Sun
Microsystems presented the fifth session in the UNIX Accessibility
series : "The GNOME Accessibility architecture in detail". Bill and
Marc are two of Sun's GNOME Accessibility engineers, and this "from
the source" presentation went into detail on the GNU Accessibility
architecture. The presentation provided two view of the architecture
- the services provided to the writers of accessible applications,
and the services provided to authors of assistive technologies.
Their presentation can be found at:
http://developer.gnome.org/projects/gap/presentations/CSUN-02/a-start.html
o The sixth session in the UNIX Accessibility series wasn't a
presentation per se, but a panel discussion on various topics
relating to UNIX Accessibility. Making up the panel were: J.P.
Schnapper-Casteras of project Ocularis and the Linux Accessibility
Resource Site maintainer; Jutta Treviranus of the Adaptive Technology
Resource Centre at the University of Toronto; Thomas Friehoff of BAUM
Retec AG; GNOME Accessibility engineers Bill Haneman and Marc Mulcahy
of Sun Microsystems; and Peter Korn of Sun Microsystems acting as panel
moderator. The panel revisited the four themes of Sun's UNIX
Accessibility work: 1. Built-in vs. Bolt-on; 2. Evolution of screen
access approaches; 3. Formal division of responsibility; and 4. Open
source accessibility. The panel also responded to questions from the
audience.
o The seventh and final session in the UNIX Accessibility series was
really a Java Accessibility session.
This "Topics in Java Accessibility" session began with a presentation
from Willie Walker of Sun Microsystems Labs on FreeTTS, a free, open
source text-to-speech engine his team made available for the Java
platform. FreeTTS is based on Flite (Festival Light) itself a free,
open source text-to-speech engine developed by Carnegie Mellon
University. FreeTTS can be downloaded from
http://freetts.sourceforge.net/.
Next, Mark Nelson of Ai Squared demonstrated the shipping ZoomText
Xtra version 7.1 providing access to the Java platform. Mark pointed
out that now screen magnifier and screen reader users of ZoomText would
have access to the thousands of Java applications that supported the
Java Accessibility architecture, including over 250 Oracle Java
applications that are part of Oracle 9i. Lynn Monsanto of Sun
Microsystems then gave an update on accessibility in the Java platform
and the Java Access Bridge, and presented Mark Nelson with a surprise
when he showed ZoomText Xtra providing access to ICEMail, a popular and
free e-mail client for the Java platform that Lynn had downloaded
earlier in the week from the Internet.
Peter Korn of Sun Microsystems gave a presentation on StarOffice - Sun's
cross platform, comprehensive office productivity suite that can read
and write Microsoft Office file formats, noting a Windows 2000 Magazine
poll concluding that 15% of respondents used StarOffice Suite as part
of their jobs. Peter noted that most of the functionality of StarOffice
is available in the free, open source OpenOffice.org edition of the
code, and that both StarOffice and OpenOffice.org would be accessible
in the future. He then gave a demonstration of programmatic access to
StarOffice - showing how the Java Accessibility test tools were able to
build a complete hierarchy of the StarOffice user interface, and
querying individual objects in that hierarchy showing the text he had
entered into the word processor. The StarOffice/OpenOffice.org
accessibility web site is: http://ui.openoffice.org/accessibility/
Finally, Jim Fructerman and Charles LaPierre of the Benetech
Initiative, along with Peter Korn, introduced the Personal Accessor
Initiative and Sonorus - Benetech's Personal Accessor work on the
Compaq iPAQ outfitted with the SavaJe Java platform. The idea behind
the Personal Accessor is that the problem of access to public systems
(like ATM machines, copiers, elevators, etc.) can be broken down into
two parts with one part in the public system and the other carried by
the user. Especially in those cases where the user needs accommodation
that may be near impossible to build into the public system - such as
Braille, eye-gaze, voice recognition, etc. - wireless access to systems
that transmit their user interface to a device the user carries with
them is a powerful and potentially inexpensive access solution. Using
Java and Jini technologies, a wirelessly accessible system can transmit
a program that implements a remote version of the system, and an
accessible user interface to that system, which would then be run on
the Personal Accessor carried by the user (regardless of the
microprocessor running the device or its underlying computing
architecture). This approach addresses issues of security of the
wireless connection because the transmitted program can contain an
encryption scheme of whatever strength the public system chooses to
implement, and users need not worry about receiving a virus sent from
a system they encounter because of the security model of the Java
virtual machine in which the downloaded program would run. An
additional benefit is that the Personal Accessors need have no
foreknowledge of the systems their users might want to interact with,
as all the functionality of any new system is downloaded the moment
they try to interact with it.
Charles LaPierre demonstrated Sonorus interacting with a simulated food
vending machine and also a soda machine, downloading a remote interface
to those simulated machines and providing the user with a downloaded
speech interface which the user navigated using the buttons on the
iPAQ - with speech provided by the aforementioned FreeTTS engine.
Charles choose a $0.60 can of Sprite, with his choice sent wirelessly
to the vending machine server on the desk in front of him.
o The Second Annual Linux Accessibility Conference was a forum for
more in-depth Linux accessibility community's direction. Presentations
were given on subjects such accessibility checklists and guides for
application developers, modifying the Linux kernel to speech-enable
console applications, and Linux accessibility in the United States
government. Among the most prominent parts of the conference was a
roundtable on interoperability and collaboration, which lead to the
formation of lengthy and detailed list of "to-do" items.
Notes from the Second Annual Linux Accessibility Conference can be
found at: http://ocularis.sourceforge.net/events/csun2002/notes.html
Detailed information about the GNOME Accessibility Project can be found at
the main page for the GNOME Accessibility Project. See:
http://developer.gnome.org/projects/gap/
Regards,
Peter Korn
Sun Accessibility team