Extending your capabilities with open source

No doubt IT is an enabler, but it becomes an enabler in the true sense when it helps enhance the capabilities of people with handicaps – be it children with cerebral palsy and autism or individuals with visual or other impairments. Not only that, open source luminary Klaus Knopper alerts us – it is also about extending the abilities of the common man in this stressed generation.

“Computers are revolutionary for persons with any kind of handicap. For those who cannot read, it provides the alternative of sound. It also gives a severely motor disabled person like Stephen Hawking the ability to write, and speak. The interface design activity here is cutting-edge, while at the same time, those who do not know English have little benefit from these amazing tools. Open source software has a lot of catching up to do, in this space, but it has unbeatable advantage: we can easily adapt existing software to make it accessible, while the proprietary world often has to write
applications from scratch, making them exorbitantly expensive,” says speaker Arun Mehta.

Speaker Krishnakant Mane adds by explaining that free software offers more than just the cost advantage, as it's free as in freedom. “Free software provides the freedom to change/ modify the software and also to study the code. This gives complete flexibility for disabled people to alter the software and make it suit their particular needs -- professional or otherwise. In the context of employment, cost is not that big an issue but the main problem with the proprietory software is that it can't be adapted to work with the existing technologies being used in the organisation. With free softwares, a disabled person can not just save on license charges but also if need be, get the software altred to work in the given working environment,” he says, and who would know it better than Krishnakant who is a success story himself – a visually-impaired professional at Tata Institute of Fundamental Research, free software developer, activist and teacher.

“Computers also make it easy for persons with different kinds of handicaps to talk to, and learn from, one another. This conversation, however, needs to be nurtured. These events bring together experts addressing different kinds of handicap, to see what cross-fertilization is possible, and to spread awareness of some of the amazing software available in the form of free software in this
space,” adds Arun.

Here is a special session where open source luminaries as well as socially-conscious developers from India and abroad will speak about open source solutions that help enhance one’s capabilities, and about existing problems which developers can help resolve, with feedback from users.

Speakers:

•  C Umashankar, MD, ELCOT – Importance of accessibility and ELCOT’s projects (speech only in New Delhi)
•  Klaus and Adriane Knopper – Workshop on extending capabilities using open source, as well as the ADRIANE desktop environment for the visually-impaired
•  Krishnakant Mane, Tata Institute of Fundamental Research – GNOME accessibility
•  Team Vidyasagar (in Bangalore) and Arun Mehta (in New Delhi) – Computing for children with cerebral palsy and autism, and problems yet to be resolved
•  Steffen Franke – Open source aided accessibility for e-learning

Bangalore:

Venue: Indian Institute of Sciences
Date: 12th February 2008
Time: 11:30 a.m. to 2:00 p.m.
Entry: Free for all those who pre-register on www.osiweek.com

New Delhi:

Venue: Pragati Maidan
Date: 15th February 2008
Time: 12:00 – 2:00 p.m.
Entry: Free for all those who pre-register on www.osiweek.com