Before this news gets old, I figured I should mention it in this here bloggy.
I started working for Collabora! I am really happy to be on board, it’s great to be in company with smart people. I’m already busy with Telepathy once again, after a few years break. I’ll be at the upcoming FOSDEM, and I am looking forward to catch up with my new colleagues.
So my talk _How to Make Friends and Remove Access Barriers In Open Source Software
_ has been accepted for CSUN 2010. The presentation is scheduled for 8 AM, I expect high attendance of dairy farmers, since they will probably be taking their lunch break around that time.
Here is a short abstract:
This presentation will consist of two parts. In the first part we will demonstrate the contrasts that exist when developing accessible applications between proprietary platforms and free platforms. In the second part we will become familiar, through real-life examples, with the culture in GNOME, a Free and Open Source desktop environment, and how it provides a conducive atmosphere for accessibility innovation and contribution, by developers, writers, educators, and users.
I am going to have a lot of fun putting together slides and media for this.
While reading Boingboing today, I came across two consecutive posts that made me really itch to do something.
The first one was about a grad student who posted an instructable for building a $300 book scanner. The second is how the US Chamber of Commerce is trying to derail the rights of individuals to digitize their own copy of books, typically to an accessible format.
Does anyone in the Seattle area want to team up and build this? I think it would be a cool service to offer friends and family. Need a book in DAISY or e-book format for your Kindle? Just send it to us with return postage, and we will send it back together with a CD.
I don’t see this as strictly an accessibility issue. I am reading Another Country by James Baldwin now. I could not find a digital copy for it to read on my Kindle. Or more correctly, it exists, but I would need to live in Europe to purchase it. Isn’t that crazy?
So, who is up for this?