1. Introduction

The aim of this document is to serve as an introduction to the technologies which are available to make Linux usable by people who, through some disability would otherwise have problems with it. In other words the target groups of the technologies are, the blind, the partially sighted, deaf and the physically disabled. As any other technologies or pieces of information are discovered they will be added.

The information here not just for these people (although that is probably the main aim) but also to allow developers of Linux to become aware of the difficulties involved here. Possibly the biggest problem is that, right now, very few of the developers of Linux are aware of the issues and various simple ways to make life simpler for implementors of these systems. This has, however, changed noticeably since the introduction of this document, and at least to a small extent because of this document, but also to a large extent due to the work of some dedicated developers, many of whom are mentioned in the document's Acknowledgements.

Please send any comments or extra information or offers of assistance to <access-howto@ed.ac.uk> This address might become a mailing list in future, or be automatically handed over to a future maintainer of the HOWTO, so please don't use it for personal email.

I don't have time to follow developments in all areas. I probably won't even read a mail until I have time to update this document. It's still gratefully received. If a mail is sent to the blind-list or the access-list, I will eventually read it and put any useful information into the document. Otherwise, please send a copy of anything interesting to the above email address.

Normal mail can be sent to

Linux Access HOWTO
23 Kingsborough Gardens
Glasgow G12 9NH
Scotland
U.K.

And will gradually make its way round the world to me. Email will be faster by weeks.

I can be personally contacted using <miked@ed.ac.uk>. Since I use mail filtering on all mail I receive, please use the other address except for personal email. This is most likely to lead to an appropriate response.

1.1 Distribution Policy

The ACCESS-HOWTO is copyrighted (c) 1996 Michael De La Rue

The ACCESS-HOWTO may be distributed, at your choice, under either the terms of the GNU Public License version 2 or later or the standard Linux Documentation project terms. These licenses should be available from where you got this document. Please note that since the LDP terms don't allow modification (other than translation), modified versions can be assumed to be distributed under the GPL.