The KDE Artist team and Apliki, a German psychological IT consultancy company, cooperate on creating easy and understandable icons for KDE software. Read on for more.

Recent weeks have seen a lot of cooperative activity between the KDE Accessibility Team and various other Free Software accessibility teams. The Free Standards Group Accessibility Workgroup, KDE Accessibility and GNOME Accessibility teams have now released a joint statement describing some of this cooperation. "We believe users who are persons with disabilities should be empowered to choose technologies from any and all environments which provide accessibility just as other desktop users today routinely use a mix of technologies from different desktop environments. Our goal is seamless interoperability."

Adam Trickett reports on his experiences of setting up KDE for his father in Desktop Adapted for Dad. His article on The Linux Box shows the range of features KDE has for someone with poor eye-sight and reduced hand coordination. He concludes by saying "modern Linux desktops are highly configurable, and with thought can be adapted for most people".

The KDE Accessibility team is in the process of integrating speech synthesis into KDE. Not only does this mean better support for visually-impaired and speech-impaired users, but the new features should also prove for a fun desktop experience overall. An important milestone has been reached with the recent release of the KDE Text-to-Speech System (ktts). If you wish to learn more about speech synthesis support in KDE, you can also read an extensive interview with four developers at the KDE Accessibility Website.

A new snapshot of the cspi-dbus bridge has been released. Together with the Qt 4 D-BUS bindings, it is now possible to write KDE assistive technologies that transparently interact with Qt/KDE applications as well as GTK/GNOME applications.

With the new Qt-ATK bridge, Qt/KDE applications will integrate seamlessly with existing assistive technologies on GNU/Linux desktops as well as other Unixes that support Sun's accessibility framework. First snapshots can be expected in early 2004, more information and screenshots can be found here.

The KDE Accessibility Project is proud to have accepted a trophy at the international Free Software competition Trophées Du Libre in France. The KDEAP received this trophy for a number of accessibility aids, including KMouth, KMag, KMouseTool and the upcoming KDE Text-To-Speech Service. Many thanks and congratulations to everyone who has contributed to these applications! Captioned photos are available on the KDEAP site.

The KDE Accessibility Project has released the first stable version of the KDE Accessibility module.

The package currently contains three nifty accessibility aids (screenshots and info):
KMagnifier, a screen magnifier,
KMouseTool, a program for people who have trouble clicking the mouse, and
KMouth, a program that enables people to let their computer speak for them. The module has been translated into Danish, German, Hebrew and Portuguese thanks to the hard work of the i18n teams. An interview with Gunnar Schmi Dt, the maintainer of the KDE Accessibility module, is also available.
The interview contains detailed information about future plans of the KDE Accessibility Project as well as its relation to other accessibility efforts.

The 3rd Linux Accessibility conference will take place on March 20 to 21 in the La Jolla room of the LAX Marriot. KDE-related activites include an update on the progress of the KDE Accessibility Project and a discussion on KDE accessibility and interoperability. It will coincide with CSUN 2003 (aka CSUN's 18th Annual International Conference: Technology and Persons with Disabilities), a large, long-standing conference held annually on the subject of technology for persons with disabilities. Information about participating via phone is forthcoming. Please email me if you are interested in attending, or participating via phone, so that I can get a headcount.

After several weeks of technical problems,
Accessibility.kde.org
is on-line again with a completely renewed and enhanced version of the web site. You can now find a new section with
Accessibility Reports,
and detailed information on the KDE Accessibility Project's
first IRC meeting.