Projects for the Disabled and the Needy?

lshawnaiken asks: "I've been looking for an open source project to help with, so that I can "give back to the community." While I've seen some fine projects, none have grabbed me. The community is doing just fine, battling Microsoft with much abandon. I was thinking of devoting my time to a project that people really do need. Although i haven't heard of any, I bet tehre are projects out there that are creating software for disabled or needy people. Voice programs for the blind. Educational programs for those who need extra help learning. I mean, there must be SOMEONE doing something like that. I'd like to help. And others would too, I bet. So I would like to ask the readers of Slashdot if they know of any Open Source projects like this, what they are, and to provide links to them. I'd really like to help."

ideas

[brlewis]

Helping the learning disabled [ldcommunity.org] is a great cause, in that it's harder for them to benefit from technology as easily as, say, verbally skilled blind people. You might also look at work in developing countries [softpanorama.org].

Access Mozilla

[holloway]

Access Mozilla [sourceforge.net] is a project to make Mozilla more accessible for the disabled. In doing this they're working on the abstracting XUL (the Mozilla GUI) into a more accessible form. However XUL is being written for Mozilla's use first, and generic use second.

I email a few open-source projects each week if there are problems with the accessibility on their pages. HTMLtidy and a few acronym tags go a long way.

SEUL

[Anonymous Coward]

you may want to see what they have over at www.seul.org [seul.org]

Emacspeak

[gmhowell]

Emacspeak [sourceforge.net]

Emacs is already a desktop environment (and was before Gnome was a gleam in Miguel's eye) and it just needs a few things here and there (better documentation for one).

I'd appreciate it at least:)

Well

[LucianSK]

While helping people with learning disability is good, how many people with learning disabilities are there? not many. Its better to help a very large number of people, the best way to help them is to build software, the best software to build is software to empower them. Build software for people who cannot afford to buy it, and use the GNU license, teach people step by step how you write each program and walk them through the code so they learn how to write what you give them. Knowledge is power, more programmers = good.