Background

On October 6-8 the AEGIS project is hosting its 1st International Conference of AEGIS & 2nd Pan-European Workshop/User Forum in Seville, Spain. We expect to have a significant GNOME accessibility presence at the event, including a booth, and also a GNOME accessibility hackfest (similar to the hackfest we had at CSUN.

Spain is a world center for GNOME use, with two regions - Extremadura and Andalusia - using GNOME for all K-12 students in all public schools. In particular, Orca is the screen reader of choice in Extremadura and Andalusia... Andalusia is also the source of three GNOME a11y grants as part of the GUADALINFO ACCESSIBLE PROJECT. And Seville is in Andalusia.

Are you a maintainer of one of GNOME’s assistive technology modules? Are you developing an on screen keyboard? An alternative means for text input? A magnifier? Some trippy head-tracking app? Voice control? Switch access? Something new and exciting for cognitive disabilities? Are you hacking on new features for Orca? Are you working to provide users with disabilities unfettered access to GNOME? Are you working on accessibility tests?

If the answer to any of the above is ‘yes’, we hope you will consider joining fellow GNOME a11y folks at the AEGIS conference this year to help promote GNOME and to hack with fellow AT developers.

Venue

See the venue page of the conference for full details. Also see the travel page of the conference for information on getting to Seville, to the venue, the conference hotels, etc.

Accommodations

Hotels

• Tryp Macarena: San Juan de Ribera street, 2, 41009, Seville. From 70 €

• Hotel Montecarlo: Gravina street, 51 41001, Seville. From 60 € + 7% VAT

• Hotel Inglaterra: Plaza Nueva, 7 41001, Seville, From 98 € / VAT incl.

• Hotel Europa Sevilla: Jimiost street, 5 41001, Seville. From 65 € / VAT incl.

• Hotel Las Casas de la Judería: Callejon Dos Hermanas, 7 - Santa María la Blanca street, 5, 41004 Seville. From 90 € / VAT incl.

• Hotel Londres: San Pedro Martir street, 1, 41001 Seville. From 51 €.

• AEGIS Conference hotels website

Hostels

• Hostel One Sevilla: Jesus del Gran Poder 113, 41002, Seville. Map at http://www.hostels.com/maps/HostelOne-Sevilla/37784 From 12,90€ and in a good location for going to the venue and the centre of the city

• Hostel La Caja Habitada: C/ Crédito, 20 http://www.tertuliaandaluza.com/explora/sevilla/hostal-la-caja-habitada-sevilla/ From 22€ and looks nice (Only 6 rooms available)!

• Oasis Backpackers Hostel Sevilla: Plaza Encarnación 29 1-2, 41004, Seville Samay Sevilla Hostel: http://www.hostelworld.com/hosteldetails.php/Oasis-Backpackers-Hostel-Sevilla/Seville/15162/directions/ From 16€ in the centre of the city but not so close the venue

• Hostel Urbany Hostels. Calle Doña María Coronel, 12 Sevilla State 41003 http://www.sevillaurbany.com/ From 11€ and also close to the centre

Sponsors

We can get some sponsorship for the event from CENATIC. At 10th June they'll launch the call for sponsorship for Free Software events happening in Spain. Probably someone from GNOME Hispano can help with this. More info: CENATIC Facebook announce

Goals

1. Identify, and begin implementation of, a community-wide regression testing solution for accessibility.
2. Increase team-wide familiarity with all current and proposed GNOME accessibility modules.
3. Create topic-oriented help content for GNOME accessibility features and tools.
4. Assess the current accessibility of the just-released GNOME 2.32 and fix as many bugs as possible in preparation for GNOME 3.0
5. Evangelize GNOME as an accessible platform to users and other attendees of the AEGIS Conference.

Pre-event Homework

1. Have Yelp 3 (2.31.x) installed. Yelp 2.30 is OK.

2. Read http://projectmallard.org/about/learn/index.html to get a head start

3. If you are an AT module developer, come to Brian Nitz' testing session prepared to discuss (and ideally demonstrate) instances of accessibility problems you face and their consequences for your AT and its users.

4. If you plan to attend the conference itself, be sure to register for the conference (instructions below)

Formal GNOME participation

1. GNOME accessibility will be an exhibitor

2. We have been invited to submit - for free - posters that will be up for the duration of the conference. Ideally we will have a poster for each of the main accessibility features of GNOME (e.g. one for Orca, one for Dasher). Also GNU/Linux distributions are welcome to submit posters describing the accessibility features provided in their distros

   • List your posters in the AEGIS Posters section below.

3. GNOME Hackfest attendees who want to attend the conference programme itself should register for the conference as a student, for the student price of €53.19. Use "GNOME" as the "student ID"

Tentative Schedule

Details for the items below an be found on the Detailed Schedule page. If you are a point person, please fill in the details. Also see the AEGIS Conference schedule.

Attendees

(If you're planning on coming, you should be in this list - and not the "hope to attend" list.)

We will need to know everyone's projected air fare ASAP so we could propose a budget to the foundation board.

Hope to attend

(If you would like to come, but are not sure if you will be able to, you should be in this list.)

As in the attendee list, we need a estimation of people going in order to propose a budget to the foundation. Apart for the "almost confirmed" attendee list, we also though that it would be fine to add a list of people that hope to attend to the hackfest:

AEGIS Posters

If you or your organization is presenting a poster at the conference, add a description to the table below.

Visit to a Guadalinfo center

Mario Cámara, from the Fernando de los Rios Consortium, has offered an kind invitation to all attendees to the HackFest in Seville to visit one of their Guadalinfo centers to see how they try to make them accessible and to receive feedback from you.

If you will attend this visit, please tell them so in the Doodle poll link at the end of this email.

The visit will be held on Tuesday October 5th at 7pm in the centre located at Castilleja de la Cuesta, 5km from Seville.

We will provide paid transport from the Hackfest place to centre and back to Seville for up to 7-8 people. But more people will be able to attend it if the local attendees share their cars.

Exact details:

Departure time: around 6.40pm. Departure place: Hackfest area

Centre to be visited: Castilleja de la Cuesta, 5km from Seville. Address: C/ Principe de Asturias, nº42, inside historical building known as Hacienda Santa Barbara Google Streetview Beside Hotel Santa Ana/Cafeteria

End of the visit: around 8.30pm. Coming back to the Hotel Tryp macarena or where the beer fest will be held.

Doodle link:

http://doodle.com/em27d2h7vapkxu67