However, the downside is, the keyboard is very small and cramped for any adult-sized pair of hands. It is difficult to impossible to touch type on it, unless you have very small hands.

Also, because the XO is meant to be for children in DEVELOPING countries, it is difficult to impossible to buy one if you are in a rich country. (I bought mine through a very short-term program in which OLPC allowed people in rich countries to buy two XO lap tops — one of which they receive, the other of which is sent to a developing country.)

Have you tried asking around among people with mobility impairments (or parents/family of same)? Maybe google search for relevant organizations, or browse through groups.yahoo.com or googlegroups.com for listservs devoted to relevant concerns.

As a deaf person, I find that mainstream companies don’t always do so well at addressing the concerns of consumers with disabilities. Or when they do, it’s by accident and they may fail to highlight this information in a way that’s easy for people to find. Whereas, other deaf consumers may have already researched the market and found something that might be relatively obscure to the general public but works well for them. For example, products from a smaller, independent company.

I’ve currently contacted HP, Dell, Apple, Gateway, and I can’t tell you how many other sites looking for a laptop that has a different configuration with the keyboard and mouse. They are all the same. The lower 1/3 or so of the keyboard section is devoted to a touchpad mouse, making it impossible for her to be able to reach above the second line of keys. This one is the same. *shrug* what else is new, I guess.

Sorry, I’m disheartened at the moment…I didn’t know that everything was all the same on this front and had thought I might find something different. I just wanted to find *one* thin easily that would work for my child, and yet again, it’s not going to happen

THANK YOU, NoName. I’ve now posted about the mailing list you indicate, at:

http://wecando.wordpress.com/2008/01/05/resource-news-making-the-xo-laptop-accessible/

1. On the page where they discuss the screen reader, they don’t even mention students with vision impairments or reading-related disabilities as a target audience for this screen reader. This makes disabled children invisible. And that’s always a concern because when any population is “invisible” to the mainstream their needs will be overlooked as well. Will a screen reader designed for sighted children who don’t like to read, or who are still learning how, still meet the needs of a hearing blind child? Maybe it will. I’m not familiar enough either with standard screen readers or with the version they’re working on for the XO to judge. So maybe I’m worrying over nothing. But unless blind and dyslexic children are added to the list as part of their target population, and unless blind children in developing countries are specifically recruited to test the resulting software, we can’t be sure. (Ideally dyslexic children should also be recruited–but would probably be more of a challenge to find because in many countries there is little or no effort to even identify them.)

2. Of course, sound-based software still misses students who are both deaf and blind, or who are both deaf and dyslexic. These students would need some kind of Braille readout. But although part of the software needs might be similar (I know little about computers so I’m guessing here), I realize that this would have to be a separate project. Does anyone reading this know if people at the OLPC are working on this angle?

3. I would also still urge the OLPC project to mention the screen reader project on their main web site as one example of something they’re doing to make the laptop more accessible to a wider number of children.

Is anyone reading this via a screen reader? Can you help contribute to this dialogue? I’d really welcome your input. (No, there is NO CAPTCHA at this blog. The “captcha” being those nasty image things where other blogs ask you to type in the letters you can’t see in order to prove that you’re a human and not a spam robot. So unless there’s something I’m missing, there should be no barrier for blind or dyslexic people who want to add a comment. If I’m wrong, please let me know.)