ALViC - Accessible Linux for Visually Challenged launched

ALViC- Accessible Linux for Visually Challenged was launched on 11th February, 2013 by Prof R. Chidambaram, Principal Scientific Adviser, Govt. of India & Shri J. Satyanarayana, Secretary, DeitY, Ministry of Comm. & I.T., Govt. of India during the CDAC Technology Conclave on 11th Feb, 2013 at Indian Habitat Centre, New Delhi. During the 2-days technology conclave, a number of technologies and products developed by CDAC under various thematic area were showcased.

ALViC is a complete desktop environment which provides a comprehensive solution for Visually Challenged users. This is a GNU/Linux distribution based on Ubuntu 10.04; and uses Orca 3.2.0 xdesktop screen reader as the main interaction mechanism for visually challenged users. They can use it out of the box because accessibility features suitable for fully blind as well as for partially blind users are enabled by default.

Main Features :

• Free and open source desktop environment
• Enhanced Orca with skim read, sentence navigation, list shortcut and structural navigation of text documents
• PDF documents made accessible in Linux environment
• Easy navigation and search facility on Desktop icon view
• Accessible login for visually challenged users
• Suitable desktop themes for partial blind
• Other assistive tools like OCRFeeder, Audio book converter, Emerson DAISY reader, sound converter etc. useful for visually challenged users are also included.

This product has been released under the project 'Enhancing Accessibility for FOSS Desktops' at CDAC, Mumbai being carried out under NRCFOSS-Phase II. The research and development activities under this project are aimed at developing software-based assistive technologies/solutions for the differently-abled people.

Download:

ALViC can be downloaded from here.

Launch of ALViC can be watched here.

More details and documentation about ALViC can be accessed here.

Anumaan listed on Softpedia

Anumaan – open source predictive text entry system from CDAC, Mumbai has been added to the database of Softpedia. Softpedia is a library of over 400,000 free and free-to-try softwares. Anumaan on Softpedia can be accessed from here. Anumaan has also been awarded “100% Free” award from Softpedia signifying that Anumaan is a clean product.

Anumaan home page

RPM package of GEM (GEstures with Mouse) released

RPM package of GEM (GEstures with Mouse) has been released. GEM (GEstures with Mouse) is a mouse-gesture based input mechanism developed by CDAC, Mumbai for people with motor disabilities. It can be downloaded now from http://sourceforge.net/projects/gem-cdac/files/gem-0.1-1.i686.rpm/download or from http://www.cdacmumbai.in/accessibility.

New version of Anumaan - open source predictive text entry system from CDAC, Mumbai released

CDAC, Mumbai has announced the new release of open source predictive text entry system - Anumaan. This release includes new version of standalone flavour of Anumaan i.e. Anumaan-standalone-0.2. This version has been released as part of the activities of project "Enhancing Accessibility for FOSS Desktops" under NRCFOSS-Phase II being carried out at CDAC, Mumbai.

Anumaan gives predictions based on preceding text/words used by the user in his/her text and user can use these predictions, while composing text. By incorporating predictions, user can improve his/her rate of text entry to a great extent.

Anumaan is mainly intended to help persons with motor disabilities, specially ones facing problems in hand and finger movement. Such persons face difficulty in using regular input devices like keyboard for text entry related tasks. Anumaan can help such persons immensely in their text entry related tasks by way of predictions. However, It is equally useful for common users also and can support them in creating mails, letters, documents etc. in less time.
Salient features of current version include:

• More user-friendly and simplified interface for easy interaction and navigation.
• Re-oriented layout of text entry area and prediction display in order to reduce visual and cognitive overhead.
• A single comprehensive prediction list combining predictions from all relevant grams for easy selection.
• Keyboard support for selecting predictions from prediction list. It reduces time taken in selecting and committing predictions to text.
• Larger text entry area compared to previous version for easy text entry.
• Integrated context-sensitive help.
• Re-oriented menu bar for easy access and navigation.

All these features are intended to improve user interaction and experience for motor disabled people.

Anumaan is developed on java platform and supports UTF-8, so it can effectively be run on any platform. Newly released version of Anumaan can be downloaded from http://www.cdacmumbai.in/anumaan.

Details about project "Enhancing Accessibility for FOSS Desktops" can be accessed at http://www.cdacmumbai.in/accessibility.

Feedback, bug reports or feature enhancement requests about the application can be sent to ossd[at]cdac[dot]in or predictanumaan[at]gmail[dot]com.

बदलते दौर

एक वो दौर था -

"गुमी हुई आज़ादी की कीमत सबने पहचानी थी,
दूर फिरंगी को करने की सबने मन में ठानी थी,
बूढ़े भारत में फिर से आई नई जवानी थी,
चमक उठी सन सत्तावन में वो तलवार पुरानी थी,
खूब लड़ी मर्दानी वो तो झाँसी वाली रानी थी|"

एक ये दौर है -

"जनता के पैसे की कीमत सब नेताओ ने पहचानी है,
जम कर घोटाले करने की सबने मन में ठानी है,
बूढ़े नेताओ में जागा ये कैसा लालच है,
और देखो, चमक उठी सन बारह में यह महंगाई तूफानी है,
जिससे लड़ रही जाबांज, यह भारत की जनता वही पुरानी है|"

रक्षाबंधन पर एक बहन को समर्पित

बहन अक्सर तुम से बड़ी होती है,
उम्र में चाहे छोटी हो,
पर एक बड़ा सा एहसास ले कर खड़ी होती है|
बहन अक्सर तुम से बड़ी होती है,
उसे मालूम होता है तुम देर रात लौटोगे,
तभी चुपके से दरवाजा खुला छोड़ देती है,
उसे पता होता है तुम झूठ बोल रहे हो,
और बस मुस्कुरा कर उसे ढक लेती है|
वो तुमसे लड़ती है पर लड़ती नहीं,
वो अक्सर हार कर जीतती रही तुमसे|
जिसे कभी चोट नहीं लगती ऐसी एक छड़ी होती है,
बहन अक्सर तुम से बड़ी होती है|
पर राखी के दिन जब एक पतला सा धागा बांधती है कलाई पे,
मैं कोशिश करता हूँ बड़ा होने की,
धागों के इसरार पर ही सही,
कुछ पल के लिए मैं बड़ा होता हूँ,
एक मीठा सा रिश्ता निभाने के लिए खड़ा होता हूँ,
नहीं तो अक्सर बहन ही तुमसे बड़ी होती है,
उम्र में चाहे छोटी हो, पर एक बड़ा सा एहसास ले कर खड़ी होती है|

by Prasoon Joshi (Courtsey: Bombay Times dated 02/08/2012)

GEM(GEsture with Mouse) now on Sourceforge

GEM(GEstures with Mouse), a mouse gesture based input mechanism developed by CDAC, Mumbai‘s accessibility team for physically-challenged people can now also be accessed from Sourceforrge.net.