It is my first time to attend CSUN and GNOME Accessibility Hackfest. I’ve been involved in accessibility development since I joined SUN Microsystems on November 2008. At that time, accessibility is just lots of headachy codes for me. I spent quite a lot of time to get familiar with AT-SPI, ATK, GAIL and Java-Access-Bridge. After that I started my way on the development of Java ATK Wrapper, a communication layer independent alternative of Java-Access-Bridge.
This little contribution to GNOME Accessibility gives me the chance of attending this hackfest(thanks to GNOME committee’s sponsorship). On this hackfest, I met many developers of accessibility technology from different countries around the world, Eitan Isaacson, Willie Walker, Joanmarie Diggs, Peter Korn, Bryen Yunashko, Mike Gorse, Ben Konrath, Flavio Percoco and API, whose true name is quite difficult for me to remember. Some of them are full-time employees, others are part-time volunteers. All their spirits to devote themselves to open source development are admirable.
During these days’ experience at the booth of the GNOME community on CSUN Conference, I saw the value of our accessibility development, I saw how our products really help people with disabilities, and I also saw where we should still improve to help more people with various physical impairments. All these experiences will drive me to contribute more on accessibility development.
Accessibility, is now, not just thousands of lines of codes for me. Accessibility is a spirit, which makes people devote themselves without thinking of returns. Accessibility is a powerful strength, which can tightly ties developers all over the world for achieving even a tiny improvement that will better help disabled people.
As part of the conclusion made on this hackfest, I will continue my work on Java ATK Wrapper. Jobs are still needed to make JAW work on AT-SPI2. I’ll also takeover part of the maintenance job of Orca. Thanks to the deep introduction to Orca made by Willie Walker and Joanmarie Diggs, I’ll do my best to help in Orca’s maintenance and improvement job.
More information about this hackfest can be found on Willie Walker’s blog. Willie, forgive me for stealing your ideas 🙂