About Speaker
Software engineer, 31, graduated National Research Tomsk State University in 2007, got Ph.D in computer sciences in 2010. Since 2003 work on Open Source solutions in area of accessibility technologies for blind and visually impaired people. Disabled person since 18 years old. Live in Russia.
His travel and accommodation costs at HKOSCon is sponsored by Electronic Moscow, Tomsk State University and Hong Kong Creative Open Technology Association (Hong Kong Open Source Conference).
About the Topic
Open Source software allows us to work on new kind of accessibility technologies for blind and visually impaired people. The core of our project is the special UI. It brings the information to user in the form which is the most suitable for perception of blind people. It significantly increases speed and comfort, making computers accessible for children born blind and seniors.
The environment is capable of running as a standalone OS (Java+Linux) or as an application (Java part only). In the former case it could be an OS for laptops, opening new areas for PC manufacturers.
Since the environment is easily understandable by handicapped people and accessible without financial or technological barriers, it can be considered as a platform for creating adapted applications by developers, which have no experience in accessibility technologies.
Wide range of service providers get a chance to make their products available for everybody who has eyesight restrictions. This could be interesting for social networks, payment systems, digital government services etc. You can take our idea as a development of a trend to move functionality from a web-browser to mobile platforms.