Greetings from Ubuntu

[Henrik Nilsen Omma]

Hello SpeakUp List!

I've just been make aware of this list, so I'm writing to introduce 
myself. I'm Henrik Nilsen Omma, Accessibility Coordinator at Ubuntu.

I see from the archives that there have been some questions about Ubuntu 
Edgy, Orca etc. and some misconceptions that I'll try to clear up.

The aim of the Live CD is to provide an environment for exploring the 
system and later installing it. This should work independently for both 
visually and mobility impaired users. We are just a few bugs away from 
making it work smoothly ;) -- but we still have a couple of weeks.

The default Ubuntu installer is written in GTK (as it runs on a Gnome 
system). The reason it does not speak to Orca at the moment is that it 
is running as root, while Orca runs as a user. We are preparing a fix 
for this, but for now you can work around it by running Orca from a root 
terminal and then running 'ubiquity' from there as well (the installer).
 The Kubuntu version of the installer is written in QT, but most VI 
users would not want to install KDE at this point. Things are looking 
better for KDE4 though.

We have also included speakup with our default Edgy kernel, but have not 
prepared the required command line scripts for it yet. Any help with 
testing speakup in Edgy and preparing such scripts would be great!

About myself: I'm not visually impaired but I do have a mobility 
impairment. Of the Linux access tools, I only use sticky keys myself 
though I do have a working familiarity with the others. My main role is 
to encourage, facilitate and coordinate accessibility development in 
Ubuntu. I work with end-users in the forums and mailing lists and with 
the core developers to implement features.

Henrik