Accessibility

I discuss my involvement with NVDA and NV Access.

I’ve written and published a new proposed high-level strategy for Mozilla-related accessibility efforts. Note that this is not a detailed roadmap for future work, and not a firm commitment to fund or perform such work. Rather it is intended to provide a context within within which we can make overall decisions about where we should concentrate funding and effort. This is especially important because our resources are very much finite, and we will need to make decisions about what we should do and what we should leave undone or leave to others to do. ...

Some of you may recall that about a year ago the Mozilla Foundation provided a grant to NV Access, an Australia-based nonprofit organization dedicated to developing NVDA, an open source screen reader designed for blind users of Windows applications like Firefox. This grant went to support NV Access hiring a developer (James Teh) to work full-time on NVDA. (The Mozilla Foundation had previously provided a smaller grant as well.) I’m happy to pass on the news that NV Access has now received financial support from Microsoft sufficient to allow Mick Curran (the original developer of NVDA) to also work full-time on NVDA. From my point of view this is a significant development for both NV Access itself, which has taken another step towards sustaining itself and the NVDA project for the long term, and for blind users of Windows. ...

This is my report on activities related to the Mozilla Foundation for the week ending February 29, 2008. Projects for the week Here’s a summary of what Foundation-related activities went on last week; for more information about others’ activities please see the weekly status reports published by David Boswell, Gerv Markham, and Zak Greant. Grants and related expenditures The GNOME Foundation announced the GNOME outreach program for accessibility, which the Mozilla Foundation helped fund. CAs and related issues I gave preliminary approval to the application from VeriSign to add a new EV-capable root (bug 402947). I also worked on EV-related applications from Comodo (bug 401587), GeoTrust (bug 407168), and thawte (bug 407163). Public communication David continued work on various www.mozilla.org-related tasks. Conferences and events Zak spoke at a number of Norwegian universities February 25-27 on open source and Mozilla-related topics. Gerv attended FOSDEM. I continued work on arrangements for CSUN. Other Gerv worked on a script to assist with the proposed Bugzilla product/component reorganization. Upcoming events and activities I’m planning to be in Mountain View on March 12 and at the CSUN conference on March 13 in Los Angeles CA. I’m also planning to attend the Freedom to Connect conference March 31 and April 1, 2008 in Silver Spring MD, and (if possible) the Berkman@10 conference May 15-16 in Boston MA. Zak will be speaking at the PHP Quebec Conference March 12-14, and other events later in 2008.

This is my report on activities related to the Mozilla Foundation for the week ending January 18, 2008. Projects for the week Here’s a summary of what Foundation-related activities went on last week; for more information about others’ activities please see the weekly status reports published by David Boswell, Gerv Markham, and Zak Greant. Grants and related expenditures I’m happy to announce a major new grant from the Mozilla Foundation to NV Access to support development of the NVDA open source screen reader for Windows; the NVDA developers blog has all the details. Scott Haeger completed the final milestone on his Foundation-funded project to improve rich document browsing in the Orca screen reader for Linux. For more information see the GNOME wiki pages for Firefox 3.0 ARIA widget support in Orca, Firefox 3.0 Live Region support in Orca, and integrating the Collection interface into Orca. Codethink Ltd completed its Foundation-funded study on the feasibility of migrating the AT-SPI accessibility API to use D-Bus. I got a grant agreement in place for another major new grant to be announced later. CAs and related issues I reviewed the applications from KISA and WISeKey, tentatively approved them, and started the two-week public comment periods prior to final approval. For more information see bugs 335197 and 371362 respectively. Other Gerv is recovering well from his recent surgery. David moved out to California (not without some excitement). I completed my migration to Google Apps, as discussed in my last status report. (However I’ve postponed my blog migration for a week or two until I have more spare time.) Upcoming trips and events I’ll be attending (at least part of) the CSUN conference March 10-15 in Los Angeles CA, and the Freedom to Connect conference March 31 and April 1 in Silver Spring MD. Zak will be speaking at the Southern California Linux Expo February 8-10 in Los Angeles, the PHP Quebec Conference March 12-14 in Montreal, and other events later in 2008. A reminder: We’re still accepting donations to the Mozilla Foundation through our directed giving program. Help support Bugzilla, Camino, SeaMonkey, and the Mozilla accessibility project, as well as general Foundation activities for the coming year. ...

This is my report on activities related to the Mozilla Foundation for the weeks ending December 14, December 21, and December 28, 2007. Projects for the week Here’s a summary of what Foundation-related activities went on in the last three weeks; for more information about others’ activities please see the weekly status reports published by David Boswell, Gerv Markham, and Zak Greant. Grants and related expenditures A number of significant grant proposals were approved in December; I’ll make public announcements on these soon and will update the 2007 grants report to reflect all 2007 activities. Eitan Isaacson completed work on a Mozilla Foundation-funded project to improve performance of the Orca open source screen reader; for more information see GNOME bugs 446277, 495077, 502924, and 491756, as well as Marco Zehe’s report on the overall improvements to Orca performance with Firefox 3. Eitan is now working on a new Foundation-funded project to enhance the Braille output of Orca, including adding support for contracted Braille. Licensing and legal I looked over the proposed replacement for the CVS contributor form to determine what’s needed to complete the project. CAs and related issues I went over the application for inclusion from TÜRKTRUST and all the public comments prior to making a final decision on approval. Web sites David Boswell worked more on proposed changes to www.mozilla.org. Other Gerv had surgery and is now back home recovering. Zak worked on Mozilla Foundation participation in various upcoming events. Upcoming trips and events I’m planning to attend the Freedom to Connect conference March 31 and April 1, 2008 in Silver Spring MD.

This is my report on activities related to the Mozilla Foundation for the week ending December 7, 2007. Projects for the week Here’s a summary of what Foundation-related activities went on last week; for more information about others’ activities please see the weekly status reports published by David Boswell, Gerv Markham, and Zak Greant. Grants and related expenditures Ariel Rios completed his Foundation-funded project to add the Accessibility::Collection interface to the AT-SPI accessibility API for GNOME; for more information see GNOME bug 326516. Patrick Michaud produced a progress report on the Perl 6 work jointly funded by the Mozilla Foundation and the Perl Foundation. Zak and I worked on some new grant proposals. Licensing and legal Gerv worked on revising and updating the Mozilla license policy, to bring the document in line with current practice. CAs and related issues I approved the application for inclusion from SwissSign and filed bug 407396 to have the SwissSign CA certificates added to NSS. Web sites David Boswell worked on various changes to www.mozilla.org, including a new Mozilla Foundation home page and a new “Featured Projects” page (bug 393447). Miscellaneous We have a new #foundation IRC channel on irc.mozilla.org for anyone wishing to contact us real-time. Upcoming trips and events I’m planning to be in Mountain View on December 11 (afternoon only) and 12. A final note: We have just over two weeks left in 2007 for you to donate to the Mozilla Foundation through our directed giving program and support Bugzilla, Camino, SeaMonkey, and the Mozilla accessibility project. ...

This is my report on activities related to the Mozilla Foundation for the week ending November 30, 2007. Projects for the week Here’s a summary of what Foundation-related activities went on last week; for more information about others’ activities please see the weekly status reports published by David Boswell, Gerv Markham, and Zak Greant. Grants and related expenditures Steve Lee provided a report on his participation in the RAatE conference. (Steve’s Jambu project has received funding from the Foundation.) I received some new grant proposals for the board’s consideration. CAs and related issues I worked on the applications for inclusion from SwissSign and TÜRKTRUST, as well as on the EV applications from VeriSign and QuoVadis. I made updates to the pending list to reflect the current status of CA applications. I created a wiki page to track recommended practices relating to CA applications. Web sites David Boswell posted a proposed new Mozilla Foundation page mockup for comment. Upcoming trips and events I’m planning to be in Mountain View on December 11 (afternoon only) and 12.

This is my report on activities related to the Mozilla Foundation for the week ending October 12. Last week we had a Foundation board meeting, and we’re working on some internal (for now) initiatives coming out of that. Projects for the week Here’s a summary of what Foundation-related activities went on last week; for more information about others’ activities please see the weekly status reports published by David Boswell, Gerv Markham, and Zak Greant. ...

This is my report on activities related to the Mozilla Foundation for the week ending September 21. I spent a lot of the week handling internal administrivia. Projects for the week Here’s a summary of what Foundation-related activities went on last week; for more information about others’ activities please see the weekly status reports published by David Boswell, Gerv Markham, and Zak Greant. Legal/IP issues I’m still waiting on more feedback on the proposed corporate contributors agreement. Grants and related activities Alexander Surkov completed the second milestone on his implementation in Mozilla of the IAccessible2 accessibility API for Windows (to be used by future versions of Firefox and Firefox-compatible screen readers on Windows). The IA2ToGecko project page has more information, including links to the relevant bugs. Ariel Rios completed the second milestone on his project to implement a new Collection interface for the GNOME AT-SPI accessibility API (to be used by future versions of Firefox and Firefox-compatible screen readers on Linux). For more information (and to track progress) see GNOME bug 326516. Steve Lee completed the final milestone for his project to create a prototype switch-activated on-screen keyboard for Firefox; he’ll be showing this at the Mozilla accessibility summit. Web sites David continued work on getting old www.mozilla.org content archived. Upcoming activities I’m considering attending the Mozilla accessibility summit on October 5 in Boston. I’m also considering attending one or both days of the Seneca College Free Software and Open Source Symposium (FSOSS 2007) in Toronto on October 25 and 26.