The Linux Screen Reader (LSR) is a discontinued
free and open source effort to develop an extensible
assistive technology
Assistive technology (AT) is a term for assistive, adaptive, and rehabilitative devices for people with disabilities and the elderly. Disabled people often have difficulty performing activities of daily living (ADLs) independently, or even with ...
for the
GNOME
A gnome is a mythological creature and diminutive spirit in Renaissance magic and alchemy, first introduced by Paracelsus in the 16th century and later adopted by more recent authors including those of modern fantasy literature. Its characte ...
desktop environment. The goal of the project was to create a reusable development platform for building alternative and supplemental user interfaces in support of people with diverse disabilities.
The original use of the LSR platform was to give people with visual impairments access to the GNOME desktop and its business applications (e.g. Firefox, OpenOffice, Eclipse) using speech, Braille, and screen magnification. The extensions packaged with the LSR core were intended to meet this end.
LSR was an alternative to
Orca, but there were a number of non-competitive reasons for having two extensible assistive technologies for the GNOME desktop.
* Two implementations stress test desktop accessibility in non-overlapping ways:
* Two design philosophies explore different ideas for system architectures and user interfaces.
* Two products enable user choice based on the task at hand, personal preferences, and the individual strengths of the two systems.
* There is ton of room for innovation in the field of enabling technology.
Linux Screen Reader (LSR) was started in 2006 by
IBM. Initially, LSR was released with the
Common Public License
In computing, the Common Public License (CPL) is a free software / open-source software license published by IBM. The Free Software Foundation and Open Source Initiative have approved the license terms of the CPL.
Definition
The CPL has the stat ...
but on November 29, 2006, the version 0.3.2 was switched to the
New BSD License. It was discontinued in 2007 when IBM focused their resources in other projects.
Maintainers list
The maintainers managed the development process with the help of many other members of the GNOME community:
* Larry Weiss
* Brett Clippingdale
* Peter Parente
Other developers who made great contributions to the project were Pete Brunet, Eirikur Hallgrimsson, Scott Haeger, Eitan Isaacson, Andy Shi, Critóbal Palmer and Joel Feiner.
References
{{Reflist
Free screen readers
GNOME Accessibility
GNOME obsolete