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Have you had to deal with accessibility for disabled students (e.g. blind, low-vision, or mobility impaired) yet? As I understand it, assistive technologies on

Have you had to deal with accessibility for disabled students (e.g. blind, low-vision, or mobility impaired) yet? As I understand it, assistive technologies on desktop Linux are much less mature than on Windows or Mac. And AFAIK, the only desktop environments that are accessible to blind users in particular are GNOME and Unity.

tomswartz07 12y ago
I'm not certain. Although I work in the district, I'm typically stationed at buildings other than where the current 1-to-1 deployment is happening; so I miss out on a lot of the day to day details. That being said; the computers run stock-ish Ubuntu 14.04 with Unity. The students are able to install whatever accessibility tools they wish.
- mwcampbell 12y ago
  Maybe you guys should challenge one of your student apprentices to use one of the laptops with their eyes closed (or with the screen turned off if that's feasible), try to get through tasks that a student typically has to do, and fix any problems that come up, even if that involves contributing to the relevant open-source projects. The Orca screen reader is written in Python and supports application-specific scripting. The process could be quite educational.
  - click170 12y ago
    I just want to say that contributing can sound daunting, but its honestly as simple as proof reading docs or filing bugs. No coding required.
Kluny 12y ago
Slightly off topic, but students with disabilities that cripple them on computers will be dealing with those issues their whole lives - I just think that it's awesome that they'll be able to start exploring the technology and assistive devices that will make computer use possible for them while still in the low-stakes world of high school, with techs to help them out. It's a great opportunity for learning that would be lost if they were simply provided with an Apple device with Apple approved assistive technology, and told to make the best of it since there's no way to customize anything.

tomswartz07 12y ago

I'm not certain. Although I work in the district, I'm typically stationed at buildings other than where the current 1-to-1 deployment is happening; so I miss out on a lot of the day to day details. That being said; the computers run stock-ish Ubuntu 14.04 with Unity. The students are able to install whatever accessibility tools they wish.

mwcampbell 12y ago
Maybe you guys should challenge one of your student apprentices to use one of the laptops with their eyes closed (or with the screen turned off if that's feasible), try to get through tasks that a student typically has to do, and fix any problems that come up, even if that involves contributing to the relevant open-source projects. The Orca screen reader is written in Python and supports application-specific scripting. The process could be quite educational.
- click170 12y ago
  I just want to say that contributing can sound daunting, but its honestly as simple as proof reading docs or filing bugs. No coding required.

Kluny 12y ago

Slightly off topic, but students with disabilities that cripple them on computers will be dealing with those issues their whole lives - I just think that it's awesome that they'll be able to start exploring the technology and assistive devices that will make computer use possible for them while still in the low-stakes world of high school, with techs to help them out. It's a great opportunity for learning that would be lost if they were simply provided with an Apple device with Apple approved assistive technology, and told to make the best of it since there's no way to customize anything.