Minutes for Accessibility IRC Meeting of June 17th, 2010

• When: Thursday, June 17th, 15:00 UTC
• Where: irc.gnome.org, #a11y

Meeting Log

• 20100617_log.txt

Topics Discussed

AEGIS conference

• Funding:
  • Regarding CENATIC funding, Fernando Herrera got an initial proposal, but didn't get any news from GNOME Hispano about presenting on its behalf. He will follow up with them later today.
  • Alejandro Piñeiro suggested Fernando also talk to Chema Casanova since he is the one coordinating GUADEC-ES.
  • Bryen indicated he wants to focus finding additional funding sources so as not to drain GNOME Foundation funds, but is waiting until more of the logistics have been worked out. He would then like to get various companies to sponsor components of the event (lodging, travel, etc.). He does not yet have specific companies/institutions in mind, however.
  • There was a brief discussion about what sponsors could get (and/or might want) in exchange for being a sponsor.
• Agenda:
  • Alejandro Piñeiro and Joanie will meet on Monday (21 June) to draft out a proposed schedule.
  • Bryen indicated he wanted to add an "Outreach hackfest" into the schedule for attendees who "aren't coders."

  • Joanie reminded Bryen that anyone interested in seeing a given topic on the schedule for the hackfest should add that topic to the wiki.

• Spreading the Word:

  • Alejandro Piñeiro wrote a post on p.g.o in his personal blog.

  • Fernando Herrera indicated he would write another one.
  • Alejandro Piñeiro reminded us that we are all free to announce it everywhere.
• Logistics:

  • Joanie discovered that the venue and a list of possible accommodations had been added to the wiki.

HFOSS/OUTREACH

• Status:
  • Bryen is not sure if HFOSS is happening or if it fell through. He also indicated that Patrick (not present) had been responding to interns queries, but wasn't sure if that was still taking place. Bryen will email Norman to get a status report.
  • Alejandro Piñeiro indicated that the status of both HFOSS and Outreach, and the relationship (if any) between them, is unclear to him. And he asked if Bryen or Steve Lee (not present) could email the gnome-accessibility-list and provide a summary of the status of HFOSS and Outreach, along with an introduction/explanation of the purpose of each.
  • Bryen indicated he would provide the requested information as soon as he finds out more.
• Caribou as a possible source of projects:
  • Heidi asked Bryen if Caribou is a good direction to explore for fall projects for undergrads.
  • Bryen responded that there is a gap in maintainership of Caribou at the moment, but that it deserves the interest of Heidi's project.
  • Alejandro Piñeiro pinged Eitan, the current Caribou maintainer, but Eitan wasn't present for the meeting.
  • Heidi has a student interested in working on Caribou and would like to identify a probable candidate project by the end of July.
  • Bryen and Heidi will discuss this further tomorrow (18 June).

GNOME 3.0 items status

• The current situation with respect to gnome-mag is still unclear.
• Joseph Scheuhammer reported that he had been working to get Orca better working with gs-mag, but had no news regarding gnome-mag.
• Alejandro Piñeiro asked how many users of gnome-mag there were and pointed out that some users prefer the options provided by non-accessibility tools, such as Compiz, due to performance.
• Joanie estimated that there'd still be a handful of users, in particular those who use magnification but rely upon the keyboard to navigate, because these alternatives do not do reliable cursor tracking.
• Fernando pointed out this would include individuals using gnome-panel instead of gnome-shell.
• There was some confusion over which Carlos (Carlos Diogenes or Carlos Garcia Campos) had started porting gnome-mag to D-Bus.
  • Joseph pointed out that Carlos (i.e. Diogenes) had begun this work.
  • Fernando asked Carlos (i.e. Garcia Campos) about how much work was involved in porting gnome-applets from bonobo to dbus, to try to get a estimation for gnome-mag porting
• Alejandro Piñeiro suggested that Fernando should contact Carlos (Garcia Campos) in order to find out his intentions and whether or not he can continue with the work started by Carlos (Diogenes).
• Joseph and Fernando took a quick look at the gnome-mag code
• Conclusion: We need to find someone to finish the porting of gnome-mag to D-Bus, and whoever that someone is should try to coordinate with Joseph and Joanie in order to implement a common D-Bus API.

• Mike Gorse and Fernando briefly discussed the need to figure out the status of the accessibility of gnome-applets over D-Bus. This work is still in a branch; not master.

Agenda for the next meeting

(Feel free to add points here)

AEGIS conference

• Any new about CENATIC funding? Has Fernando Herrera talked with José María Casanova?
• New ideas about funding?
• Agenda updated?
• Logistic: any new from Alejandro Leiva and Juanje (they are living in Seville).

HFOSS/OUTREACH

• Status. Have Bryen sent a status/description mail?
• Bryen and Heidi would have a meeting about Caribou and a student the 18th. Any new?

CSUN 2011

• Do we need a hackfest having just had the AEGIS hackfest (and possibly Boston Summit)?
• Do we want to have a booth and a session? (And if so, we need to act fast.)

GNOME 3.0 items status

• gnome-mag: Have we contacted Carlos García Campos about gnome-mag?

• GnomeVoiceControl uses CSPI, should we include voice control in the GNOME 3.0 item list?

• In the same way, VEDICS, which will have developers present on the hackfest also use this *deprecated* library
  • Redefine CSPI approach? (Very unlikely right now due resources)

Misc

• Some people asked on the list about duplicated a11y related webpages, some with errors, other obsoletes
• We need a review?