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<DIV><FONT size=4>Hello </FONT></DIV>
<DIV>Re Linux Accces. Here at Scarborough Blind Association we have been
experimenting with Linux for over a year. After trying out various "flavours" we
have at the moment got "Mandriva 2007 free" installed on one of our PCs. </DIV>
<DIV>At home I am using "Suse 8.1" which works quite well apart from the usual
hardware recognition issues</DIV>
<DIV>There are a few bits of accesibiity tools for Linux, but they are very hard
to find and install and don't allways work,</DIV>
<DIV>The fact is that Windows are recognising the need for better accesabilty
and each new OS has vast improvements built in (Vista), which to a certain
extent applies to Linux.</DIV>
<DIV>If you would like to get involved and and bring some new ideas and help,
that would be great, contact me.</DIV>
<DIV>Roy </DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
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<DIV style="FONT: 10pt arial">----- Original Message ----- </DIV>
<DIV
style="BACKGROUND: #e4e4e4; FONT: 10pt arial; font-color: black"><B>From:</B>
<A title=davidknight24@btinternet.com
href="mailto:davidknight24@btinternet.com">DAVID KNIGHT</A> </DIV>
<DIV style="FONT: 10pt arial"><B>To:</B> <A
title=scarborough@mailman.lug.org.uk
href="mailto:scarborough@mailman.lug.org.uk">scarborough@mailman.lug.org.uk</A>
</DIV>
<DIV style="FONT: 10pt arial"><B>Sent:</B> Saturday, May 19, 2007 5:42
PM</DIV>
<DIV style="FONT: 10pt arial"><B>Subject:</B> [SLUG] Opinions wanted with
accessibility issues.</DIV>
<DIV><BR></DIV>
<DIV>My main passion is accessibility, in particular I would like to improve
accessibility to computers for the elderly and for the blind (of course these
sadly often go hand-in-hand). I am an optometrist with plenty of experience
dealing with these groups and there is a great desire for an easy to use,
simple OS. There a smattering of very expensive Windows based applications
catering for these people at present but no good freeware option. Ubuntu has
orca and screen reader but in my opinion it's putting the cart before the
horse. The best way of improving accessibility for people with visual
disability is not to provide tools for people to access the standard
interface. They are not required if the interface is designed correctly in the
first place. The standard 'windows' environment is the problem here.
The majority of users in these groups want a limited selection of
applications ie word processing, e-mail, internet, OCR (a must for vision
disabled persons) and photo viewer. That's pretty much it, except for perhaps
VOIP. The question is how easy would this be to implement?</DIV>
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