[Accessibility] draft minutes Accessibility meeting 12/15/04

John Goldthwaite john.goldthwaite at catea.org
Wed Dec 15 12:19:14 PST 2004


Accessibility meeting 12/15/04

Doug Beatty
John Goldthwaite
Bill Haneman
Earl Johnson
Peter Korn
George Kraft
Janina Sajka
Gunnar Schmidt
Kris Van Hees
Matthew Wilcox


Minutes:  12/08 minutes approved.
Announcemenst:  we are working on getting funds from NSF.  We need to
purchase some airline tickets this week.  Once we get the password, the
funds will be transferred electronically.  Janina has been nominated for FSG
board of directors by the Trace center.

Janina talked to Greg Vanderheiden and they do not have any patents.  They
have not submitted a trademark for “stickykeys, etc.” but have been using
the trademark symbol.  There intent is to register them long enough to
release them.  They assert that they do have code that is part of the Xkb.
Bill- that code was already released under the MIT license.  Only if they
had a patent that they threatened to enforce that we would have a problem.
There is no problem with agreeing to give credit informally.  The exact way
they make claims could effect the ability to standardize on it.
Janina- code
Bill- the code has been part of the server under the MIT for about 15 years.
Don’t waste time.
Janina- Greg wants to make sure that anyone can uses it and that Trace gets
credit.
Peter- just depends on where we can give credit.
Bill- We should ignore the code questions,  if it is in the Xserver it is
free to use.
Janina- I am expecting something in writing from him soon.
Earl- that doesn’t effect what we are doing with keyboard.
Janina- correct,

Janina- we have some responses- I have not gotten through all the list.

Once unable
NCAM- Jerry Field will attend.
Sebastian – from France is able to come.
Robert Love can not come
Fredrick beckem can ‘t come
Keith Packard– can attend – HP is paying for ½
Dave Milke- does not travel outside Ottawa, very interest so will be on
teleconf.
Carlos Velasco – can’t attend
Mario Lang – can’t attend – need one of the brltty maintain
Greg can’t attend but will be online
Godfried Zimmerman- can’t attend but will call in for the V2
Aaron Sego – will come if we pay for travel, has lodging
Mark Malcahe- we are covering his travel
Attending- Doug, Dedra, Kris, Janina, John G.

Bill- would we be able to get a list by next Monday of people who have
requested travel funding?
Janina- I’d like to get that out to the group by the end of the day
tomorrow. Will send directly not publish on the website.
Earl- How much has we committed so far?
Janina- 10 to 12 thousand so far.  We have 50,000 total so we can fund more.
Earl- if there is money left over who gets it?
Janina- it goes back to NSF.
Earl- it doesn’t go to the lu’au?
Kris- is the idea that the NSF will cover all travel expenses or is there a
limit.
Janina- it will cover the travel and hotel.  Attendees will cover their own
food.
Sandy has arranged a sponsor for the dinner. I plan on asking Larry Scadden
to attend since he lives in Hawaii.  He lives on the big island.  Any other
issues on the attendance,  we need to finalize this next week.  Can we step
through the agenda.  There is the conflict that Bill noted last week that we
need to resolve.  I’d like to find out day by day and session by session if
anyone thinks they need to be in two places at once.  We also need to see if
we have requirements for teleconferences in two talks at the same time.

Bill- the problems we’ve had with Braille is with licensing.
Unfortunately, I am probably the person that knows the most about the
history of it.   The other folks could sort it out
At-SPI vs . Brltty -  Wednesday 2:30
Magnification vs TTS API
Is Will going to be there?
Peter-  I think so but not positive.
Bill- that conflict is less severe because others can handle the TTS
discussion.  There should be enough people working on it.  The AT-SPI is
going to take a big chunk as will the magnification.
Peter- there is more overlap between AT-SPI and Braille.  There isn’t as
much for Braille and magnification.
Janina-  I appreciate the prioritization.
Bill- one possibility is to spread the breakouts out some more.
Janina-  the discussions involving teleconference should be earlier in the
day.
Bill- I think your notation GUI desktop meant GUI-less desktop.
Janina-  there are console issues that need to be discussed.
Bill- do you need a desktop server (X-server) running?   You may need it but
it could be on another machine on the network.
Willy- or serial console
Janina- I think we want to protect the serial console.
Bill- sorry for starting the discussion rather than just naming it.  What is
it in six words or less.
Janina- we could call it Console/terminal environment

Peter- I’ve got breakout conflicts.  On Friday, we have time for summary,
could we move some of the breakout there?
Janina- that is possible, especially if we need to move Braille to early in
the day.
Bill- if we could move Braille, my conflicts would be more tolerable.
Janina- Braille has to move
Peter- what about Braille at 8:30 on Friday and put the future issues at
10:30
Bill- I’m concerned about squeezing the futures too much.  The schedule I
put forward had an overflow session on Friday.  That’s been removed so that
we don’t have any wiggle room.
Peter – Possibly move futures into an earlier day.  Could kernel
Xserver/bios issues be in a breakout?
Bill- I think we accidently combined two different issues there.
Janina- is that where we were going to go through the whole stack to see how
our parts fit in?
Bill- I was hoping to talk about Xserver issues that were not specific to
magnification.  I think we were think of system resources.  If you want to
call it Xserver/kernel
I don’t want to have the big picture stack discussion there.
Earl no
Bill- things not happening in the desktop – what are the services that need
to be provided by the OS and Xserver.  Maybe kernel/Bios Group and a
Xserver/remote access group   Instead of plenary can we just split in to
those two breakouts?
Peter- what about having it in a breakout that would include Braille.
Bill- no I have to got to both.
Peter- do we have to end at 4?
Bill – that would help a little, but we don’t have an overflow slot.  The
thing about Xserver is that we need to get ideas out there.  It needs a
discussion.
Janina- the breakouts work well when you pretty much know what needs to be
done.  The Plenary helps everyone see what the issues are.
Bill- its nice to have an overflow slot so you can be stricter about cutting
off discussion and keep to the schedule.
Janina- we are moving Braille to Friday first thing and everything else on
Friday gets pushed back.
Peter – we can add a half hour at the end.  The last session can go from
2:30 to 4:30.
Bill-  it is nice to have the “what is missing” talk before lunch.
Peter- seems strange to have futures before the discussion of the breakout.
Janina-  the flow isn’t as good.
Bill- I like futures before lunch so that people can talk about it.
Peter- we have a break after it but its only 15 minutes.
Janina- any other opinions,  should we swap them?
Peter- extract Braille and put it at 8:30 on Friday.
George – so outcome of break outs is after lunch?

Janina- does everyone have the To do list that Sandy distributed last week?
Sandy had travel difficulties so couldn’t make it today.
Peter- sent on 12/8 by Janina-  conference to do list v.1
Janina- we don’t need the whole conference brailled, just the agenda
Peter- we’re behind on getting the teleconferencing equipment up and tested.
George and I distributed ? last week. Can we put this information about
teleconferencing on the website?
Janina- we wanted to do the testing before we post it.
Peter- we don’t have to make it public yet but get it up.  Each of us can
fill what we know.
Janina- okay – be looking for an email on invitees tomorrow.  We have one
more call this month.  Happy holiday-





John Goldthwaite
Center for Assistive Technology and Environmental Access, Georgia Tech
john.goldthwaite at catea.org





More information about the Accessibility mailing list