Recently I’ve become involved in a move to resurrect the Ubuntu Accessibility team, which seemed to have stagnated until quite recently when Penelope Stowe got involved and suggested I joined too. She arranged a session at the Ubuntu Developer Summit for the next Ubuntu release, Maverick Meerkat, which seems to have gone quite well. The main focus for the team right now is getting organised, and to this end we’re aiming to create a set of personas, which are representations of hypothetical users with various accessibility requirements which developers and testers can keep in mind when working on the next Ubuntu release. These personas are going to be developed by a survey which will be dispatched to a host of groups who may have accessibility requirements to get an idea of what the main factors that affect their experience with Ubuntu are, so we can get an idea of the main areas to improve. Hopefully then the work which will take place as a result of these can be sent upstream to the original projects.

My own role in the team isn’t quite clear yet, but I intend to help on the development side, if I can, once more work starts in this area. If you would like to help, the team hangs out on #ubuntu-accessibility on Freenode IRC, and there is a mailing list. You can also check out the wiki page which we’re working on improving.