Dojo 1.0 is released. The Javascript web widget platform (AJAX or Web 2.0, if you must) features accessible widgets, thanks to the work of many people including David Bolter and Simon Bates at the University of Toronto's ATRC who worked on the W3C WAI ARIA support.

a11y and i18n: rich experiences for everyone. All Dijit 1.0 widgets feature keyboard navigation, right-to-left text detection and layout, and solid localizations for 12 languages. No matter where in the world you are, Dijit has you covered. Dijit goes even further by providing ARIA role and state hinting to give users of assistive technologies the experience that developers intend. 

The Firefox web browser has supported WAI ARIA since 1.5 and Firefox 3.0 extends the support as well as making it available on Linux. WAI ARIA allows authors to have fine control of web accessibility and how ATs respond to events.

One of the first Assistive Technologies to use ARIA is the Firevox screen reader and code library for Firefox. Firevox developer Charles L Chen gives this introduction and also provides a number of samples and test cases including this scoreboard (best viewed in Firefox with Firevox installed). 

Charles now works for Google and at the recent Boston summits demonstrated features he is adding to Google AJAX applications.

It's good to see plenty of accessibility work being planned for GNOME: Themes, icons, Orca, GOK, MouseTweaks and infrastructure (AT-SPI ported to DBUS).

Bruce Schneier tells us about stormworm, the latest organised malware threat.

Redesigning the Microsoft Windows operating system would work, but that's ridiculous to even suggest. Creating a counterworm would make a great piece of fiction, but it's a really bad idea in real life. We simply don't know how to stop Storm, except to find the people controlling it and arrest them.

Well I guess switching to Linux will give some relief - even if only temporary until they switch attention.

Interesting viewpoint and suggestions for teaching kids to program as alternatives to the interactive environments like sqeaklands etoys, Alice etc.

SS12 code-a-thon for Open Source Assistive Technology software is on and Mozilla are sponsoring it.

This is exciting as it's the implementation of the OATSoft ideas of getting developers aware of and involved in accessibility.

On the flight back from the Boston a11y Summits I had the notion that I should write an article for the new Python Magazine. This would help promote the whys and hows of accessibility to Python programmers, hopefully showing the benefits to developers and that it can be achieved with minimal extra work. The focus would be on pyatspi and accerciser for writing ATs and testing application accessibility, and should be fun as I enjoy technical writing and want to develop my portfolio. It wouldn't take long and I should do it 'now' while the mag is new and 'hot'.

So I emailed the mag and after discussion with Brian Jones I decided to go for it and the contract was duly signed. 

Boy did it take me longer than expected but I'm pretty pleased with the result and learnt a lot in the process. It's the longest thing I've written so far but Brian is really helpful and supportive to the newbie author and is also interested in accessibility. After several days work I tentatively submitted my draft. Brian  gave me some great advice and suggested improvements, including adding 500 odd words to make up a total of 4,000, feature lenght. he also suggested screenshots which I somehow overlooked (having screenshots of a screen reader is an interesting concept). I added a disability and accessibility 101 along with an introduction to getting involved with open accessibility.

In addition to receiving a small fee I've been granted a release. This means that after 60 days I can donate the article to the Open a11y group and OATSoft in the hope that it will reach more developers and so help encourage better accessibility.

I'm looking forward to see it in print (well PDF). Naturally I'm now thinking of all the things I could have done better.

Python Magazine are looking for contributions so do 'drop them a line' if you have an idea or fancy a go. It's great fun and very rewarding. The website provides details of the process and Brian is most helpful. Just think, you'll be spreading your knowledge and experience in using Python. As the mag site says; 'chances are that there are many other developers out there who will want to hear what you have to say.

The beeb have an in-depth interview with Gordon Moore, 'inventor' of Moore's law and co-founder of Intel. Moore describes the background to his law, explains the chip fabrication industry and makes a few more predictions. The interview features some great pictures and clips from the days when you could tell the power of a computer by the number of flashing lights and operators. There's a companion article.

Moore's law predicted in 1965 that 'the number of transistors on a silicon chip would double every year for ten years'. Moore later revised it in '75 to every couple of years and also predicted much of the current state of the technical landscape.

Unfortunately the interview is in the usual proprietary video formats favoured by the BBC which often makes viewing problematic for viewers using Linux. Due to time constraints I gave up trying to get more than sound and ran Windows on Ubuntu using the excellent VirtualBox.

I've created a poster for the upcomming RAatE Assistive Technology conference to promote the Open Source Accessibility work of Mozilla, Gnome, OATsoft and others. It centres on how I got the Jambu grant from Mozilla, hopefully encouraging others. Side panels cover Mozilla, Open Source and Standards, OATSoft, Firefox, GNOME and other projects like dasher.

It's available as the original OOo presentation (ODF) and a tagged PDF and is A1 size but also works as a A4 printout.

I've put it on a UK CC attribution sharealike license as  it ispromoting Open Source activities.

This is the first academic conference poster I've done and I had not even seen one before but there is a lot of guidance on the web (you can ignore the references to PowerPoint as OOo does as well). The hardest part is selecting the look. Using presentation software is pretty straightforward though you need to set the paper page size to A1 first. It took me much longer than I expected, over 12 hours including research.

I'm amazed and pleased that I'm one of the 500 developers picked to get a hefty discount off the Nokia N810. I've never contributed to Maemo etc. but worked on some ground breaking Mobile data projects in the 80's.  I developed Mobile Data terminals for emergency services, and the cells for the slotted Aloha systems were being installed by Storno/Motorola while we waited in motorway service stations around Stockport. Our second system was even demostrated on Tomorrow's World (respect due).

Attila from Nokia Test advised me of the scheme at  the GNOME summit and I'm keen to see how accessibility can be improved and wonder if it can be used as a communications AT device or if it is too small.  We'll likely need the DBUS port before AT-SPI is small enough for mobile use but then we can use pyatspi and have lots of fun. Perhaps Jambu will port (the N810 includes GNOME in its Linux and the browser is now Mozilla Gecko based. Also the Hildon input method looks interesting for alternative input, e.g mobile devices have some of the same issues that users of alt input do.

Miro 1.0 is a very open video player and platform. Not only is Miro cross-platform Open Source (based on Mozilla XUL), but it actively encourages unfettered video access on the open web. Unlike organisations like Joost which  tightly control the channel, with Miro anyone can set up a channel or aggregate other channels. The name of non-profit organisation behind Miro, Participatory Culture Foundation, says it all.

One aim of the project is to rationalise the complex online video world. The only format they don't support is Real, which is a pain as we remain stuck accessing BBC content through the real player (or as is often the case, not, if you're on Linux).

It's obviously popular as the site is very slow.

A one handed games controller with modular design.

Yet another brain controller, of unknown status (perhaps it will have more utility than tottering around Second Life).

Well it already has but the nice Elgg people have set up a temporary redirect (thanks for a great service folks).

The elgg.net domain is getting reused and eduspaces.net is the correct one from now on.

So my blog is now http://eduspaces.net/stevelee/weblog/ and the RSS feed is http://eduspaces.net/stevelee/weblog/rss

Good article explaining why the work of ACE and funding from sources like CAP (defunct) is vital to many childrens' ability to communicate.

Clive PiG is an excellent story teller. He's physically dynamic and performs with drums adding pace and tension. We listened to 4 stories including tradional English and African folks stories, and attended a workshop as part of Exeter Storyworks literary weekend. The web site has examples of his art.

We also saw another wonderful play by Theatre Alibi, called 'Lost and Found' and featuring a cello player on stage playing wonderful supporting music. Previously we enjoyed 'Bonjour Bob' performed at  our school.This is wonderful children's theatre, that is totally entrancing for adults to.

A post to senit mail list in repsponse to some comments on Flash from someone very kindly offering free support  for developing flash educational activities for children with disabilities, something that really should be of use. Sometimes I just feel the need to to promote the issues and hope people don't run for the hills at the first hint of politics....

I agree that Flash is a powerful and flexible media with which some very effective movies and interactive applications can and have been created. It seems especially effective for 'cause and effect' training activities so your offer of assistance is of great value. That Star Wars précis is a lot of fun and you might like
http://www.angryalien.com/1205/starwarsbuns.asp
The site has many more 30 second films done by the bunnies.

As a point of information it may be worth keeping at the back of our minds the distinction between the format and the programs used to author and play it.

Flash was there first and is so common that many assume it is part of the Open Web but in fact it is proprietary to Adobe. They can in theory change the rules for using it at any time. Adobe do publish the format so third parties can create programs that use it, giving us a choice and a measure of protection from sudden changes in costs. They could change their minds.

SVG on the other hand is an entirely Open Standard which is free from individual ownership or control and there are also free programs for creating and displaying it (e.g Inkscape).

Tim Berners Lee, the inventor of the web, realised that in order for it to be useful to us all it must remain Open and free from control by any individual organisations or political agents. He formed the  W3C to ensure we can all enjoy it and that it runs on Open Standards. Others like Mozilla (developers of Firefox Web browser) are helping promote the  Open Web by supporting Open Standards and creating Open Source Programs.

Adobe may come under increasing pressure to open Flash and it will be interesting to see what happens. In the mean time is a great tool as you say.

Steve

[Update] - More details are now appearing on the SS12 website.

From the SS12 web site it looks like some great projects were being worked on, including several for alt access, which is particularly pleasing after all the evangalism to raise the profile of physically disabled users compare to those with visual impairments. A word prediction project fills a much needed gap and comes from discussion on OATSoft.

Web accessibility is covered using Charles Chen's AxsJAX (greasemonky based injection of web accessibility) and Dojo 1.0 (WAI ARIA).

Having 40 odd students working on accessibility projects is incredible, not only for the projects themselves but for the exposure they are getting to accessibility design. Having such a strong emphasis on projects for people with physical disabilities is the 'iceing on the cake'.

I really aught to create an addendum for the RAatE poster on Open Source Accessibility, that covers this landmark event.

Respect due to the organisers.

Frank Hecker supplies full details of the 2007 Mozilla Foundation grants and related expenditures, of which nearly 3/4 was targeted at accessibility related work. The list of funded activites covers a range of projects (including Jambu) and other activities such as the recent ss12 code-a-thon.

The new directed giving scheme means you can now donate to Mozilla and be assured that your money will be used for accessibility work. An what's more Mozilla Foundation with match twice your donation.

Leonard Cheshire and Aarman Animation (Wallace & Gromit, Flushed Away) have teamed up to produce a set of wonderful TV ads to promote public understanding of disability. Made in a similar mould to the previous ground breaking Creature Comforts series, they feature animals animated in Nick Park's Aardman Animation house style combined with audio interviews with people describing their everyday experiences.

See them on the web site where there is also a related set of radio ads.

Exeter's recently opened award winning shopping centre was enhanced by a new shop opening today, offering welcome relief from the legion outlets for fashion victims. Yes, our first Apple store, and an alerting text from my wife prompted me to pop in and delay meeting her for a coffee.

The shop was buzzing, loads of punters and almost as many staff were looking at iMacs, Macbooks, iPhones and iPods. I wandered around enjoying the psyched up buzz and the georgeous looking and well designed Apple kit.

Unfortunately all the while I had a little voice in my ear wispering 'Vendor Lock-in',  'Vendor Lock-in', 'they charge for battery replacements' and 'they use their own formats'.

Don't get me wrong I love Apples and Steve Job's 'cool appliance' designs. In the 80's 3 classic macs appeared for us engineers to use for docs, much to the annoyance on the secretaries. In no time at all and without manuals or help files we were knocking out techy documents. They just worked (well the occasional crash meant we needed to stick things into the case in a secret place to cause a reset). I also had my first taste of smallTalk and the Mac resource fork.

However until Apple get the 'Open' idea more than, say, using a Linux core in a proprietary OS I'm unlikely to use a Mac product. Unless I win one in the opening sweepstake that is....

This year's RAatE was particularly good, at least that is the opinion of the delegate I asked who had been for several years. Indeed I found my first visit highly informative with many quality presentations, interesting exhibits and a chance to advocate Jambu, Open Source, OATS and Mozilla. RAatE is a conference and exhibition for and by  those involved in providing Assistive Technology and related services in health and education for children and adults.  A couple of people kindly encouraged my work on Jambu and Open Source AT and I got several ideas for Jambu as well as developing contacts with a number of people who should be very helpful in ensuring it has maximum benefit for it's users. I also enjoyed it immensely

Attendees comprised a very  mixed assortment of clinical staff, clinical scientists, medical engineers, technicians, suppliers, service operators, engineers, academics, developers, managers. The electronic equipment included wheelchairs,  Electronic Assistive Technology and computer accessibility. Interestingly there was noticeably more coverage of physical disabilities compared to visual. This may be due to origins of the conference in wheelchair service and the interests of those attending.

Venue

The venue was the incredibly ornate 200 yr old Cutler's Hall in Sheffield, which felt something like a stately home, but which suffered from poor accessibility (loads of stairs, unusable lifts), very poor acoustics in one room (high domed ceiling) and ancient non-standard power (2-amp round pin). However the event was very well organised (including changes forced due to bad access), the catering was good and we had wifi so 'hey'.

 

Key Points

The main take homes were:

• Eye Gaze tracking is now a highly effective if expensive access method for people with physical disabilities. A cheap open source option should be really popular as long as it is reliable.
• Independence through TeleCare, or more comprehensively, TeleHealth and Environmental Controls (EC) are becoming important with our ageing population threatening to overwealm the Health Services budgets. Open Standards and Open Source will be key in ensuring ensure reasonable costs and alowing interoperability.

EyeGaze

Eyegaze was particularly high profile, due to the work of the EU funded COGAIN project, SmartBox's suppyling the Swedish MyTobii combined the Sensory software's The Grid2 (£11,000), the QuickGlance (£4000), and the tireless activity on behalf of users of one Mick Donegan who seems to be involved with just about every Eye Gaze activity going.

Eyegaze works by shining Infrared on to the operator's  face and monitoring the retina reflections (the effect that gives redeye in photographs). The specialist hardware is backed by software to track and eliminate noise problems and in the case of MyTobii a software API is used by The Grid2 to provide advanced features such as targeted dwell select and pause controls. COGAIN demo videos.

Although eyegaze is of obvious use to those with almost no usable physical control (eye control is nearly always available), it's direct pointer access  method (2 dimension random access) is also often much more effective than slow and tedious switch use (serial). Current systems require the user to confine themselves to fairly limited position but are tolerant of small movements. It requires the use of the eyes in a unusual way, controling rather than looking but this does not appear to be an issue and the initial fatigue is soon overcome with practice. Options include  single eye and blink control. I tried the MyTobii and found it easy enough to use and quite tolerent of head movement.

For Open Source projects the tracking software algorithms and some hardware are available as used in the OpenGazer project which Simon Elmsie built and described recently on the OATSoft mail list .Open Gazer uses cheap webcams and the use use of visible light is more sensitive to 'noise' and confusion than Infrared. Head tracking programs also use webcams as for example camera mouse which is now free and hopefully will become open source as development has ceased (hint: we need to lobby them). There is a need for cheap usable Infrared cameras but it is likely that very effective use can still be made of visible light with some innovation and allowance in use.

TeleHealth

I'll leave TeleCare for another post apart from saying that allowing people to  take their own clinical measurements and administer medication clearly empowers then to look after their own health when they would otherwise go to hospital (so saving large amounts of cash and stress). Environmental controls further enable people to have independence by providing assisted control of home appliances (tv, bed etc). This is an area ripe for Open Standards and Open Source components if not Open Source applications. Firefox (or XUL) should be a very effective component or platform for giving User Interface to a web infrastructure. The key features I'm thinking of are excellent customisability and extension including kiosk modes and great accessibility. Prof. Branko Cellar gave a good presentation of the effective research and systems of his MedCare systems in Australia.

Poster and advocacy

The poster on Jambu, Mozilla and Open Source was placed in a prime position and there was quite a bit of interest. It seems Open Source is familiar to many now, if not in any depth. It's clear we need Jambu code that is more user ready ASAP as several asked about downloads.

As always many people declared they use and like Firefox (one said he had gone back to IE as it had better printing so I suggested it may have been fixed and that he used the broken web site tool to report problems). Most of the Mozilla loot (swag) I had went ,which is not bad for 150 delegates. Many of those I spoke too were not aware of the many Firefox accessibility features and those I told were surprised to hear of MoFo's commitment and funding of accessibility.

I gave someone my Ubuntu CD as he was interested after seeing it on my laptop (note to self: get some nice printed CDs from Ubuntu to carry around). One of the presenters also mentioned it having seen it on my laptop just before her talk.

Speech control

One project in particular is looking at speech control and is approaching the design of a new controller in a re markedly open and user centred style. They held a workshop to get ideas and shared their ideas . The PDA based hardware being designed by Toby Churchill is Open Hardware and will run an Open Source software stack (Linux-based). This 'hackable' hardware could be useful in many projects.

Multi mode input

Of interest to Jambu was that on a couple of occasions it was reported that users preferred to use a combination of devices such as headmouse and speech recognition or voice control and a switch. This user chosen flexibility is the goal of the capability palette concept which will allow users to pick and mix gestures across devices.

Students use of Agile Technology and web 2.0

E.A. Draffan gave an challenging talk on how students are self selecting consumer gadgets and free software as their own assistive technology. She tied this in with the digitally literate generation's use of technology like Web 2.0 for social interaction and contrasted it with Assistive Technology that is currently supplied. Like teachers, clinicians need to address this widening gap between their familiarity with technology and student expectations of using it. 

Ace AT Assessment Workshop

The workshop from Mick Donegan and Jackie Ayre of the Oxford Ace Centre was excellent and I found it highly informative. Jackie explained their effective assessment approach which is highly user centred and quite holistic (plus 'fun' as Jackie was keen to point out). Mick presented demonstrations of the QuickGaze and MyTobii eye gaze systems as well as a few more programs including Tapir (see below).

It seems Vista is being a problem as many programs have not yet been updated to work on it, a problem that seems worse than with the move to XP. Some want to stick to XP and it was noted that Dell and others still supply it. It's good that we don't see this so much with Linux for a number of reasons, not least that there is not the pressure to produce feature rich new versions to encourage purchase, but rather it evolves in small frequent increments.

The main points I got about AT use were:

• need to trade off speed / accuracy, a11y / usability (I need to find out more about later)
• good technology support is vital
• know properties and limitations of systems (this can be hard for busy clinicians to achieve and a challenge for us developers)
• pass on information on possible customisations to end users.

Tapir
Tapir is an open source 'OSK' program that features both disambiguation and prediction so is familiar in operation to mobile phone users. It has been developed and designed by David MacKay's Dasher team with Mick Donegan. I will certainly work on integration with Jambu but it could also be a useful GNOME program (it depends on Python + GTK). It can optionally use festival but that could be changed to eSpeak. I'll post the idea on the lists. Mick is keen that other developers should contribute.

So a big thanks to the RAatE team for organising such a useful event and thanks to Mozilla for paying my expenses and funding Jambu and many other accessibility projects. Plus cheers to Theakston for the Old Peculier we enjoyed in the evening.

One of the issues I've been chewing over is how to make assistive technology easy to use and configure and yet ensure users and clinicians are aware of and/or can find the best options to maximise it's effectiveness. That's not a problem specific to AT and Jacob Neilson has plenty to say on the matter. However I do think it is more critical in AT software especially for users with physical disabilities where the right set up can make a dramatice difference. As the 'right' config can vary with time (daily or longer term) the access to options are more important. Perhaps we could use some form of AI as that is used in video games to adapt behaviour..

Tamsin won the Best Impact Project award for her work on 1Voice