OSA Roadmap

Initial Priorities

Although there was limited time to focus on the roadmap during the planning meeting there was general consensus on three initial priorities moving forward as well as a large number of additional priorities identified.

 

The three initial priorities are:

 

1. Accessible collaboration tools.

The communication systems, bug-tracking systems, planning wikis, text chats, teleconference systems, and other means whereby open source communities plan, design, develop, evaluate, refine and distribute open source systems must be accessible. This will enable participation by community members with disabilities. It will mean that the needs of people with disabilities are represented in the community and it will enable the participation of individuals knowledgeable and personally interested in accessibility requirements.

1. End to end accessibility in one platform.

No one platform has the necessary critical mass of accessible applications to enable full adoption as an accessible open source platform. This impedes institutions or jurisdictions from adopting an open source operating system. GNOME was identified as a possible candidate for this and meetings are planned to determine how this can be accomplished.

1. National Public Inclusive Infrastructure

A compelling case was made that an inclusive open source infrastructure was needed. It was argued that this is just as important as other forms of infrastructure given the digital age. There was agreement that partners would launch proposals in their respective countries and that these efforts would be linked. 

 

The following table summarizes other priorities identified.

Research

•  research into empowering customization
• increase localization for Braille, TTS
• streaming media
• HTML5 - opportunities in richer controls - Access4All personalization with "local storage" - Canvas (could be a real challenge to Flash)
• narrative and framework to bring people together
• sometimes we have to think fresh and new to escape legacy vested interest
• core architecture for "feature-based" access
• instant access to all media
• take an anthropological approach - look at behaviour of large groups of users and make those things accessible
• growth of frameworks with accessibility built-in from the start
• area of mobile devices
•  

Desktop

• Collaboration tools

Web

• ?

Mobile

• Speech rec engine
• TTS
• Accessibility into mobile development environments

Netbook

• ?

Development

• personalization
• interoperability
• Collaboration (and community) tools

Desktop

• Linux audio environment resolved

Web

• ?

Mobile

• Mobile environment in general
• Accessibility into mobile development environments
• Screen reader
• Server-side TTS

Netbook

• ?

Implementation

• help a platform get a critical mass

Funding

• Funding shift from purchase to funding use, maintenance, support, bug fix.
• We need a good story on why accessibility is needed (more research on users)
• More stable funding!
• Ensure funding gerts to right places

Training

• Training

Maintenance

• of existing solutions

Documentation

• More, better documentation for users and developers

Cross-cutting

Education

• accessibility becomes part of expectation of students
• educaton and awareness for developers, users, etc.

Language Support

• Multiple language support

Developer Support

• ?