Abhivyakti

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 ski...

About training In India, about 7-8 million people are suffering from full or partial visual impairment. Such people have to be provided with different kinds of support devices to access the world and to perform routine tasks like bill payments, banking transactions, reservations etc.. Now technology, either software-based or hardware-based, has made it possible for these people to access the world in their own way. But a large section of blind population is still away from advantages of modern assistive technologies. The main reasons for this gap are not only the lack of awareness about assistive technologies available and lack of hands-on practice to use it, but also the cost of technology. Free & Open Source Software (FOSS) tools/techniques play an important role in creating assistive technologies that are free-of-cost, available to all and easily maintainable for a large portion of population in a country like India. For visually challenged people, available co...

Centre for Development of Advanced Computing (CDAC), Mumbai has released beta versions of GNU/Linux distributions for Differently-abled people. These distributions are part of the activities being carried out under “ Enhancing Accessibility for FOSS Desktops ” project under NRCFOSS-Phase II at CDAC, Mumbai . There are three distributions specific to three different kinds of disabilities namely: 1. GNU/Linux distribution for Visually-challenged: This is a GNU/Linux distribution (beta version – 0.1.1) created specially for visually challenged users. Visually challenged users can use it out of the box because accessibility settings required by them are already enabled. 2. GNU/Linux distribution for Physically-challenged: ‘ GNU/Linux for Physically Challenged-Beta-0.1.1′ is a special distribution for physically challenged people, so that they can easily access FOSS desktops. 3. GNU/Linux distribution for Cognitively-challenged: This GNU/Linux distribution has...