[sugar] Re: [oats-sig] OLPC and AT

[Steve Lee]

Here's some demos on You Tube

http://www.eetimes.com/news/semi/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=196100148

-- 
Steve Lee
www.oatsoft.org
www.schoolforge.org.uk
www.fullmeasure.co.uk


On 11/16/06, Henrik Nilsen Omma <henrik at ubuntu.com> wrote:
> Hi All,
>
> David Colven and I talked a bit about the One Laptop Per Child project
> when we met in Oxford in September. See: http://www.ace-centre.org.uk/
>
> I think both the software and the little machine itself could be of
> interest to the wider AT community.
>
> The software - Sugar
>
> The machines run a simplified version of Redhat/Fedora Linux using some
> Gnome components. The user interface has been completely redesigned
> however, to make it much easier to navigate for children. The result is
> called 'Sugar'. See: http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Software
>
> I think this interface could serve as a useful base for many AT
> deployments, being uncomplicated for both users to use and AT experts to
> configure ;) And of course it's fully open source, so features can be
> added or removed.
>
>
> The hardware - small, rugged and affordable
>
> A major issue in the AT world is the cost of highly specialised
> hardware. I think the more functionality we can provide on commodity
> hardware, the better for the user. It's cheaper and easier to service
> and upgrade.
>
> PCs have traditionally been fairly chunky in a home or mobile setting.
> Laptops are better, taking less space and with less cable clutter, but
> have traditionally been expensive. Neither is esp. rugged.
>
> The OLPC solves all these issues. It's small, light, rugged and clutter
> free. It has some standard inputs/outputs like USB and sound. It runs
> Linux and has various standard interface libraries like Cairo, Gecko,
> Pango, etc. installed, so it should be fairly easy to write suitable AT
> applications for it.
>
> See: http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Hardware_specification and
> http://wiki.laptop.org/go/B1_Pictures
>
> Chris Jones of the Ubuntu accessibility team has already started to work
> with the OLPC hardware (main board) to investigate which of the existing
> AT tools for Linux might be suitable for it. I'll likely receive a
> beta-version laptop at some point as well for AT testing purposes.
>
>
> This is mainly just an introduction. Some members of he OLPC team came
> to the recent Ubuntu Development Summit and suggested we collaborate on
> accessibility amongst other things. I know that there are many AT
> experts on the oatsoft list, with both software and hardware experience.
>
> Please feel free to add your suggestions to the sugar mailing list:
> http://mailman.laptop.org/mailman/listinfo/sugar
>
> Henrik
> Ubuntu Accessibility Coordinator
>