3. GNOME
● Desktop environment
● Composed of free and open source software
● Heavily emphasis on make environment as
user-friendly as possible
● As in any other desktop you can browse files,
play music and videos, read the email, etc
4. GNOME is ...
● Extended: most of Linux distributions include it
● Free Software: part of the GNU project
● Usable: defines a global Human Interface
Guidelines
● Accessible: accessibility has been a central
consideration from the very early days
5. Define accessibility
● Means helping people with disabilities to
participate in substantial life activities.
● Work
● Use of services and products
● Access to information
6. Going technical
● Key aspects of accessibility:
● Provide programmatic access to the features
and capabilities of application objects
● Keyboard navigation
● Theming
● GNOME includes libraries and support
framework that allow all people to utilize all the
functionality of GNOME user environment.
9. Normal releases
● GNOME policy is a release each 6 months
● Free Software!
● User can obtain a stable updated environment
each 6 months
● And each day if they are cutting-edge users
● Incremental updates
10. Major releases
● Done to introduce major changes.
● Can be a breakage of previous state
● History:
● 1997: GNOME project started
● 1999: GNOME 1.0 release
● 2002: GNOME 2.0 release
11. GNOME 3.0 is coming!
● Planned to March/April 2011
● More than 9 years since the last major release
● Several packages and libraries will be dropped
● Several common programs on GNOME 2.0 will
not be available
● A lot of work was done in order to provide proper
equivalent programs
13. Gnome panel
● GNOME 2.0 uses the usual desktop metaphor
● Monitor as the user desktop
● Objects like documents and folders can be places
● Document can be opened into a window
● Represents a paper copy of the document placed
on the desktop
15. gnome-shell
● Defining technology of GNOME 3.0 desktop
● Provides a new and innovative way to interact
with the desktop
● Take advantage of modern graphics hardware
18. Gnome-shell is so new...
● … that uses new and fancy technologies
● Not initially supported on the GNOME 2.0
accessibility stack
● Gnome shell developers are focusing on
gnome-shell itself
● But they have included accessibility in his roadmap
19. Solutions
● A11y community started to work in provide
gnome shell a11y support
● Cally could be used to access UI elements
● Required to screen readers
● A magnifier feature was introduced
● (Next presentation)
20. … but
● I would be really likely that accessibility support
will not be ready for GNOME 3.0
● Anyway, work will continue
● GNOME will maintain his 6 month policy, in 6
months GNOME 3.2 will be there