It seems obvious that charities, churches and non-profits will benifit from using FOSS for their ICT systems. Apart from low cost and open standards, the ability to customise and pass on is great for users as well.

Open Source Makes a Donation from Computer Weekly contrast s2 different chariities reaping the benefits of changing over to Open Source. One is Contact a Family a fine charity that provides information, support and advice for families that include children with disbilities.

The BBC report that 'Commons education select committee is calling for stronger government guidelines for councils, to end a "post-code lottery" of provision.'

The full reports, HC 478-I and HC 478-II, are available here.

My interest and that of the senit mailist is foucssed on where ICT is helping SEN students and the effects of government policy on that provision. Martin Littler of Inclusive Technology has been particularly active since Becta announced the breakup of the Becta SEN Team and produce a whilte paper 'Every Child Matters?' and has now a response from Bill Rammell Minister of State for Lifelong Learning, Further and Higher Education at the Department for Education and Skills.

You can find out more by view the senit archives.

Apple to add speech synthesis operation to iPods. It will be interesting to see if this is done well and is of interest for the reason that something that is traditionally AT is being done for main stream commercial reasons.

However that patent sounds worrying.

iPod Linux

 Could a AT use be found or at least help make it more accessible?

As I was leaving a supermarket just now I spotted Tux's wise and friendly visage smiling at me from the magazine rack. On closer inspection it wasn't the usual suspects, the Linux rags, but rather the main stream and respected Personal Computer World. The main cover items is

Linux - Free, easy & secure (link to online version)
* A true windows alternative with 1,000s of free applications
* how to install and use it.

It's just what is says on the can, a good beginners guide to getting going with Linux by installing it on your PC. Barry Shilling has done a great job of demystifying Linux installation and clearly explains some of the common questions first time users have. He explain low risk ways to install and try Linux.

The DVD version includes Ubuntu, Knoppix and Suse and though the CD version I got does not include a distro it does include Star office 7, 'complete office suite with full Microsoft compatibility'. Shame they don't mention Open Office org, the Open Source version of Star Office.

Along side in the mag is a detailed article of technical tweakery required to 'Make XP hacker-proof'. Compare that with the strap line for Linux being 'Free, easy & secure'.

Recently someone paraphrased Victor Hugo's 'An invasion of armies can be resisted, but not an idea whose time has come.', applying it to Open Source. I wonder if that includes large armies of marketing people with huge budgets pushing expensive software with questionable security?

Watch this space....

2 projects that I'm involved in are helping users take advantage of Open Source. Schoolforge-UK encourages the use of Open resources in education and has a guide to low risk ways of exploring the advantages of Open Source software.

OATSoft is improving accessibility and Assistive Technology using Open Source (I'm very pleased to say that Ubuntu Linux are now part of the project). 

A player with excellent design

http://www.1pixelout.net/code/audio-player-wordpress-plugin/

Bloglines.com are using it.

David Colven of the Ace centre and I presented OATSoft at this years Schoolforge-UK's FLOSSIE.

Miles has blogged FLOSSIE both Thursday and Friday.

Miles also present an excellent talk on Moodle, Elgg and the e-strategy.

More details on the schoolforge FLOSSIE 06 Report page.