[Kde-accessibility] AT-SPI, to ATK or not to ATK...

Peter Korn peter.korn@sun.com
Wed, 27 Nov 2002 10:32:19 -0800


Hi Philippe,

> One question about AT-SPI: is it actually used ?
> 
> I mean, are there already devices or accessbility applications that take
> advantage of it ?

Yes and yes.

Practically the entire GNOME 2 desktop (as presently in CVS) supports AT-SPI
via ATK and GAIL.  A few pioneering blind hackers have built this from CVS,
and also built (or acquired) Festival or ViaVoice TTS, and build
Gnopernicus, and are getting speech and Braille access to their Linux
desktops today.  Roughly once a week the Mozilla team uploads a new pair of
builds of their accessible Mozilla to:
ftp://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/mozilla/accessibility/ (both for Solaris and
RedHat 7.2).  More information is at:
http://www.mozilla.org/projects/ui/accessibility/unix/index.html  The
StarOffice/OpenOffice team are making good progress with their AT-SPI
support via their UNO Accessibility architecture.  StarOffice Early Access
testing for accessibility has begun.  More information is at:
http://ui.openoffice.org/accessibility/index.html  Finally, courtesy a
Java<->GNOME accessibility bridge, virtually all Java Swing applications
support the AT-SPI.

On the assistive technology side, the University of Toronto Adaptive
Technology Resource Centre is nearing completion of the first edition of
GOK, their sophisticated, dynamic on-screen keyboard.  Folks in the
disability community of have seen and played with it are very impressed, as
it offers features and functionality beyond anything in the commercial world
- including the most sophisticated products for Windows.  This
sophistication is there precisely because of the AT-SPI and the level of
support provided for it on the GNOME desktop (specifically the support for
dynamic capture and display of menus, toolbars, and their "UI Grabber"
feature).  BAUM - one of the older and more respected names in blind and low
vision access in the commercial Windows world - has done tremendous work
with Gnopernicus, which in addition to supporting a variety of Braille
displays is now supporting screen magnification in GNU/Linux and Solaris.  

This architecture has a lot of momentum, and it continues to grow.  I
frankly wouldn't be surprised if several Linux distros bundle Gnopernicus
and GOK by the end of next year (along with Mozilla and OpenOffice).  When I
demonstrated Gnopernicus and GOK to members of the disability community and
a number of assistive technology vendors last month at the Closing the Gap
conference in Minneapolis, those seeing it were uniformly impressed with the
quality and functionality.


Regards,

Peter Korn
Sun Accessibility team