Supporting Multi-Touch devices in NVDA, plus September fundathon update

Usually, donations go to supporting general development of NVDA and administration of NV Access. However, the September Fundathon recently started by one of our users gave us the idea of raising some specific funds to purchase a Multi-touch tablet PC, so that we could start developing support for these devices in NVDA.

As tablet PCs become more wide-spread, we believe that it is very important that NVDA can provide open, no-cost access to these devices for the blind or vision impaired user. We also believe that the introduction of multi-touch screens in to mainstream devices such as PCs offer a very exciting future for the blind and vision impaired as it will allow for new and innovative ways of accessing not only the Operating System and general tasks such as browsing the web, but also information such as maps and other graphical materials.

Apple has proven that multi-touch devices are well suited to the blind, with the inclusion of the VoiceOver? screen reader on the iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad.

Microsoft has built support for multi-touch screens in to the Windows 7 Operating System, so all that needs to happen now is for assistive technologies such as NVDA to make use of these available features, and bring multi-touch access to the blind and vision impaired Windows user.

Please consider making a  donation to NV Access to help purchase a tablet PC, so that we can secure access to these devices for blind and vision impaired people in a free and open way. Our goal is to raise AU$3,500.

Finally, we wish to thank all who have donated so far in the September fundathon, with special thanks to the member of the NVDA community who started it. So far in September, we have received AU$295 in donations.

Thank you for supporting NV Access and the NVDA project.