[Nottingham] Revolution Request

[Mr Alan Carter]

Hi All,

My name is Alan Carter. I’m the author of a free Linux package called 
Skipper, visible at http://home.freeuk.net/skipperproject. Skipper adds 
2 highly configurable extra layers, inside and outside X, and makes all 
Linux apps fully accessible to people with all sorts of impaired 
movement.

It works a treat - I’ve tested it with people suffering from severe 
Cerebral Palsy, stroke damage, impact brain injuries from road traffic 
accidents and so on.

With old P233 computers being easy to find and Linux being free, there 
is no reason why anyone with a mind need be isolated - or even bored - 
any more. There is certainly no excuse for raising kids to be 
functionally illiterate just because they’ve got Cerebral Palsy. 

Obviously Skipper projects freeware power into a new area of need, and 
it also opens the question of what around 2,000,000 people will do when 
they get access to the Internet and can earn kudos for the first time 
in their lives. Setting Skipper boxen up is also fun hacking. (See the 
“VxD Configuration” page for examples of graphical programming of I/O 
processing, the “Selecting Sensors” page for some really noddy, rainy 
afternoon type hardware interfacing. For the inventive there’s also the 
“Further Work” page!)

I’ve joined this list because I need help. I need to start a fashion, 
and get loads of households with movement impaired people in them into 
the Linux community. The charities are no help at all with this. The 
sociology is nasty, and means that (for example) the vast number of 
existing texts available at Project Gutenberg are never used as large 
print books, and are never fed into the Festival voice synthesiser to 
produce talking books. People who need large print and talking books 
are being held in the pre-IT era by vested interests that are even 
worse than Micro$oft, and the same is true of movement impaired people. 


So the people (around 1 in 250 of the total population) who are being 
cheated out of the Information Age - but who need it most - need Linux 
enthusiasts tracking down their movement impaired neighbours, relatives,
colleauges’ relatives and so on, finding Christmas-obsoleted old PCs, 
downloading Skipper, setting the people up, showing them what’s out 
there and (where the users are willing) making them famous. It has to 
happen directly, on the ground, in the free software, just do it, zero 
administration way.

I’m currently staying near Alfreton (hence this list), and can meet 
interested hackers, help and support in whatever way I can. Please, 
please, help get the penguin where it needs to be - and remember this 
is waiting to happen worldwide.

TIA,

Alan




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