ÆGIS is an acronym for Open Accessibility Everywhere, Groundwork, Infrastructure, Standards.
About the project
The ÆGIS project seeks to determine whether third generation access techniques will provide a more accessible and more embeddable approach in mainstream ICT (desktop, rich Internet and mobile applications). It runs from 2008 until February 2012.
The project investigates embedded access solutions in these three areas of technology as well as developing toolkits for developers. This will enable developers to "engrave" accessibility into existing and emerging mass-market ICT-based products, thus making accessibility open, plug and play, personalised and configurable, realistic and applicable in various contexts. The main feature of the project is that all of this technology will be open source and freely available.
How is this being done?
ÆGIS is placing users and their needs at the centre of all ICT developments. Based on a holistic user-centred design, ÆGIS identifies user needs and interaction models for several user groups, (users with visual, hearing, motion, speech and cognitive impairments as well as application developers) and develops open source-based generalised accessibility support into mainstream ICT devices and applications.
All developments are iteratively tested with a significant number of end users, developers and experts at four pilot sites Europe wide (Belgium, Spain, Sweden and the UK). RNIB was one of the two UK pilot sites for the first phase of prototype testing, alongside the ACE Centre Advisory Trust.
The project includes strong industrial and end user participation (the participating industries are among the market leaders in the corresponding mainstream ICT markets). The project results' uptake is promoted by strong standardisation activities, as well as the fact that much of the technology results will be either new open source applications or will be built into existing and already widely adopted open source ICT.
Phase one testing
Various prototypes were tested during the first phase of the project for many different types of disabilities. For people with sight problems, the prototypes included a screen reader and a magnifier on the open desktop, a screen reader on Blackberry, accessible Rich Internet Applications (RIA's) on the internet, an open source Text to Speech Engine and a DAISY (Digital Accessible Information SYstem) translator for OpenOffice.org documents.
How was RNIB involved?
At the beginning of the project, RNIB worked on the questionnaires that investigated how users and experts are using technology and what problems they had encountered. Following this research and the development of the first prototype, RNIB then participated as one of the pilot test sites for the prototypes and undertook testing with users and experts.
What is the latest information?
The latest information on the project can be found on the ÆGIS website and you can download the latest (sixth) project newsletter (PDF 529KB) iteratively. If you have any questions about this area of work then please go to the User Forum.