[Kde-accessibility] Fwd: KDE Accessibility

Bill Haneman bill.haneman@sun.com
28 Nov 2002 13:36:40 +0000


Hi:

Thanks Peter for a great overview of where GAP/MSAA, University of
Toronto, BAUM, and our hopes for interoperability fit in to the larger
and historic accessibility picture(s).

As Peter says, we are very busy getting user-ready versions of our
existing support completed.  But we always hoped to include KDE in the
bigger picture, and certainly are eager to do all that we can to help,
with the end result being a fully-interoperable and full-featured
accessible desktop for everyone.  Certainly we think KDE users and the
KDE developer community will benefit as much as GNOME users (most of
whom are also KDE users, after all) from this work.  A
fully-interoperable accessibility framework for KDE will mean that GNOME
users, including those with disabilities, can continue to be KDE users
as well.

best regards,

Bill

> We want to work with you, but our time commitment will likely be somewhat
> constrained as our hands are very full getting what we have out the door. 
> We'll do the best we can!  We've been interested in working with KDE/Qt from
> the start of our work just over 2 years ago, and made an honest attempt to
> be as lightly dependent on GNOME libraries in AT-SPI as possible in the
> hopes that it could be a pan-UNIX layer.  Alas, at the time we didn't have
> much successful engagement with the KDE/Qt community, and so I fear our work
> in that regard may be less-than-perfect.  At each of the last two Linux
> Accessibility Conferences (held in Los Angeles at the same time as the CSUN
> Conference on Technology and Persons with Disabilities), we led discussions
> on ways to interoperate with KDE/Qt.
> 
> I sincerely hope we can bridge KDE/Qt with the GNOME accessibility work. 
> I've been in the disability technology industry for 11 years now, and the
> work we are doing with UNIX accessibility is one of the most exciting
> developments since folks at my previous company invented the
> Off-Screen-Model technique in 1989 and provided the first blind access to a
> graphical desktop.  To corroborate this, please see the report of Sun and
> the GNOME community receiving the Helen Keller Achievement award from the
> American Foundation for the Blind (their highest honor), at:
> http://developer.gnome.org/projects/gap/news.html
> 
> 
> Regards,
> 
> 
> Peter Korn
> Sun Accessibility team
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