[SLUG] Opinions wanted with accessibility issues.

[John Allsopp]

DAVID KNIGHT wrote:
> I've been speaking to David Dartnall-Smith at the Blind Centre about 
> this subject and he mirrors my thoughts. David currently teaches 
> computing skills to 96 blind and partially sighted students in 
> Scarborough, the vast majority of whom are over 50. The main 
> applications wanted are scanning with OCR/talking text (for reading 
> newspaper, bills, correspondance, etc), basic word processing, E-mail 
> and internet. He can give people free computers but he currently is 
> forced to charge £400 for the software which many people can't afford. 
> He says he's sold 30 copies of the software, leaving around 70 people 
> struggling with current free options (basic XP screen magnification 
> tools and simple text to speech software) in Scarborough alone. This 
> is a big gap in the market that Linux could fill ;-)
Absolutely. We wrestled with it with David, but ultimately didn't solve 
it. We contributed though. We found many Linux accessibility projects 
had turned stale. We demo'd talking computers, magnifiers and so on. All 
very interesting.

J