Communication from scratch: towards accessible open source ...

Communication from scratch: towards accessible open source information systems David Crombie

Roger Lenoir

Neil McKenzie

FNB Netherlands Amsterdam, The Netherlands [email protected]

FNB Netherlands Amsterdam, The Netherlands [email protected]

FNB Netherlands Amsterdam, The Netherlands [email protected]

Abstract – This paper is intended to provide an overview of a unifying and inclusive approach to open source information systems. In this respect the paper matches the fundamental aims of the Open Source Systems (2005) Conference. This approach can be characterised as communication from scratch. Firstly, we will provide an explanation of our approach to inclusive design and consider emerging perspectives on the nature of accessibility in the wider sense. Secondly, we will introduce the concept of communication from scratch and provide an explanation of the benefits of a convergent gradualism. Thirdly we will explain how these ideas have helped to shape our understanding of open source information processing, a concept which encompasses several of the conference themes and provides a unifying interface to our earlier work on accessible system design. Lastly, we will provide some concrete examples of the communication from scratch approach (crossing several domains) and introduce, for the first time, information about the AccessibleXOOPS initiative.

I. INTRODUCTION This paper is intended to provide an overview of a unifying and inclusive approach to open source information systems. In this respect the paper matches the fundamental aims of the Open Source Systems (2005) Conference. This approach can be characterised as communication from scratch. Firstly, we will provide an explanation of our approach to inclusive design and consider emerging perspectives on the nature of accessibility in the wider sense. Secondly, we will introduce the concept of communication from scratch and provide an explanation of the benefits of a convergent gradualism. Thirdly we will explain how these ideas have helped to shape our understanding of open source information processing, a concept which encompasses several of the conference themes and provides a unifying interface to our earlier work on accessible system design. Lastly, we will provide some concrete examples of the communication from scratch approach (crossing several domains) and introduce, for the first time, information about the AccessibleXOOPS initiative. By way of background and building on earlier work, it is our contention that designing a more inclusive world requires a more Open Focus. This openfocus can be achieved through an interplay of practical solutions conceived by greater co-operation between science and philosophy; technology and industry; and community and education. The traditional route to solving a problem requires that ‘expert knowledge’ is built onto the subject at hand before the problem is tackled. This layered

knowledge is built upon until the expert points of view are focused almost exclusively on the solution. However, incorrect or inappropriate knowledge may lead to an intellectual dead-end. The solution to this dead-end is to take a step back, or in structural terms to move to a perspective with a higher level of abstraction. This can be described as an openfocus [1]. II ACCESSIBILITY CONCERNS EVERYONE The word ‘accessibility’ can be viewed from many different angles. Within the traditional technological approach, accessibility points towards everything that requires extra effort to be able to provide digital content to people with print impairments. Common computer software, ranging from operating systems to simple word processors, do not normally include a broad range of accessibility functions for people who depend on these features, although often additional pieces of software and associated technology can be bought that redeem some of these shortcomings. For each new release of quite fundamental software (such as an operating system or an office suite), updates are required that synchronise the accessibility features of the product at hand. Further, the production suites that are available for producing and providing accessible content are still rare. Modules focusing on accessibility are appearing inside leading authoring and office tools, such as Adobe's GoLive, Macromedia's Flash and Dreamweaver. However, imagine if all these accessibility features (for production, provision and consumption purposes) were available as system service comparable, for example, with Apple's AudioUnits that are available to audio and music software developers and programmers in Apple's OS-X. Accessibility can also be viewed from a wider angle. Being able to see content in whatever modality; perceive its context; and attach a useful meaning to it requires that the user be able to access this content, its context and relevant software application in a way that meets that particular user's consumption preferences. These preferences may become requirements over time - we all get older. Being able to attach useful meanings to content is what lies at the very basis of preservation and education of thought. Attaching useful meanings to content underpins the basis of culture , commerce and civilisation. Being able to access software and the content and the potential for understanding it unleashes, requires us to be able to gain access to software and not be hindered by huge costs, complexity, lack of support and additional barriers. Given the differences between the traditional approach to accessibility and the wider view outlined in the previous

Proceedings of the First International Conference on Open Source Systems Genova, 11th-15th July 2005 Marco Scotto and Giancarlo Succi (Eds.), pp. 179-186

paragraph, we are in something of a transitional phase at this time. From the software producer, business community and the Open Source System community we see a move towards the inclusion of accessibility features into systems, tools and the programming languages themselves as system wide core functionalities (examples being KDE, GNOME, and Java Accessibility). There also exist less fundamental approaches in the form of separate applications with specific purposes which are bundled with software releases (such as the MS Windows screen magnifier). From the accessibility community we see a move towards more advanced and abstract descriptions of the procedures involved: in other words a move from 'common' content towards content that is processed to be granted accessible certification. A good example of such a move is the Web Accessibility Guidelines 1.0 and 2.0 [3], which provides detailed guidelines on how to (re)structure and enhance websites and their content to ensure a sufficient level of accessibility. The approach we have taken goes further and involves the collection of accessible information transformation knowledge into software components, development methodologies and implementation trajectories. Regarding web authoring and delivery, we have aimed to capture the WAI 1.0 and WAI 2.0 guidelines in web applications and Content Management Systems such as the Open Source content management system XOOPS [4], an implementation which is described in greater detail below in section 5. Based on the same methodology, we have developed plug-ins for the leading Finale© music editor that are designed to allow strict separation of interpretation logic and application code required to translate - for instance - Common Western Music Notation to Braille Music and Talking Music regardless of the complexity of the musical content [5-7]. The core of these plug-ins is built on a dynamic transformation engine that uses XML, XSLT-FO and others. The methodology used with these plug-ins and the AccessibleXOOPS initiative has also been successfully applied to the Mathematical domain [8]. The modules required for this particular project were developed to allow automatic transformation of MathML2.0 formatted documents to the Braille manifestation of that content. Since the core of the methodologies described above allows implementation using any technology, a recent development is the porting of this knowledge and experience to the MPEG technology family [9], more specifically mpeg7 and mpeg21. This implementation of accessibility related knowledge and experiences within MPEG environments should create completely new possibilities regarding the distribution of accessible content compared with current systems; for example, delivery on DVD and consumption using an ordinary DVD player instead of specialist DAISY [10] players, or versatile language and subtitle processing based on user models. There is a good chance that experiments with 'Accessible MPEG' will yield new ways of tapping into communication channels between print impaired consumers on the one hand and producers and distributors of content and services on the other. The transitional stage described above involves relatively slow change when compared with general exhilarating technological developments. However, this relatively slow

pace also creates an opportunity to take a step back and observe all the individual processes that touch upon the notion of accessibility. This allows us to explicate similarities and possible complementarities, a process of convergent gradualism if you like. The opportunity then arises to synchronise various efforts in the accessibility arena and offer them to end-users and business as a ‘package’. Such a package contains scientific knowledge about accessibility, as well as technological knowledge about how to implement such notions. This package also contains detailed descriptions of the requirements of the end users, producers and distributors of content, as well as tools aiming towards market segments that rely on these requirements. Such an approach that aims to unify 'common' content, system, service and tool provision and the more 'specialised' content, system, service and tool provision, can be called (Open Source) Accessible Information Processing (AIP).

III KEY INGREDIENTS OF ACCESSIBLE INFORMATION PROCESSING We would like to add Open Source Information Processing to this list of processes that is involved in the manifestation process of Open Source software development, distribution and application, which in our opinion provides a highly meaningful interface to the approach we have described on accessibility. In the work we have undertaken in recent years, acting as accessibility consultants and designers, a methodology has emerged that touches upon the key areas mentioned above. This “accessibility methodology” can be modularised in separate processes which are briefly described below:  

 

Accessible Infrastructures – Freely available tools, software and operating systems for content production, distribution and consumption Accessibility Technology – OS Screen readers, screen magnification and speech technology with tight yet transparent integration with open source operating systems Content – Freely available content, commercial content, personal content, any content Knowledge Management and Interaction Design – Described and implemented knowledge and experience in processing any content to transform it into accessible content using a combination of the above points. This includes transformation of cognitive complexity as well. The main aim is to extract specialised knowledge of the accessibility domain (amongst others) from the experts' heads and to wrap these chunks of knowledge into components. These components serve not only as units of Business Logic and Business Intelligence, but also as learning units for the education of the Accessible Information Processing paradigm.

These ingredients will be explained in more detail in the sections below, with particular attention paid to the interplay between these individual ingredients as we positioned them in the Accessible Information Processing

Proceedings of the First International Conference on Open Source Systems Genova, 11th-15th July 2005 Marco Scotto and Giancarlo Succi (Eds.), pp. 179-186

domain. During the period of our activities in this area that focused on (fundamental) research, software development and teaching accessibility notions [11], we found the crucial factor to be the interplay of the various disciplines of science, social studies and technological developments involved in producing, distributing and consuming digital content. Conveying this notion by means of research, publications and software development that yield usable tools for production, distribution and consumption purposes and demonstration purposes is what we call Accessible Information Processing. The importance of explicit knowledge and experience regarding the interplay between the various stakeholder’s perspectives and associated requirements forms the basis of the EC funded EUAIN project [12]. The ultimate aim of EUAIN is to stimulate the emergence of an accessibility standard that unifies initiatives like Design For All with initiatives that originate from the business and academic domains. 3.1 Access to accessible infrastructures When considering the accessibility of content, information about content and functionalities, various abstraction layers of digital content consumption, production and distribution processes are encountered. Starting from the most practical levels -such as the operating systems- to the more eclectic levels, such as knowledge management. 3.1.1Operating systems : booting up In order to use computers to access any kind of content, information about the content or the functionality of an operating system is required. Moreover, for an end user that relies on specialised accessibility features, additional functionalities that enhance and/or complement the common operating system 'manifestation' features are required. Typically the end-user will run into problems when they attempt to install such systems themselves, since there is no guarantee that, for example, a Braille Bar or Speech Assistance is offered at this stage. An example of a system that does support accessibility enhancements from start – ie from scratch- is Suse Linux by Novell. At boot time this distribution scans for the availability of a Braille bar. Windows users are dependent on third-party screenreader software that can be installed once the operating system is itself successfully installed. 3.1.2 Webbed systems : crossing boundaries Portals are examples of systems that exceed the desktop and are capable of being accessed from any platform that supports a web browser. Naturally the attachment of the label 'webbed systems' to portals may sound very simplistic, with the availability of many distributed system infrastructure technologies around. However for the sake of clarity, we think that explaining and introducing distributed systems to the domain of accessible computing specifically the opportunity to extend representation of content, searching and processing beyond the local computer - is relatively easier when using portals and websites as communication metaphors. Object Orientation is a well-founded and widely used approach to developing software with re-use , scalability, transparency and flexibility as basic requirements and aims. Although this technology introduces complexities and fundamental problems of its own - which we have considered elsewhere [13] - it remains an excellent

approach. By using Object Orientation in the abstraction levels of knowledge technology and meta modelling we have a very useful frame of thought for embedding Accessibility from Scratch notions into the software design process. 3.1.3 Object Orientation : building accessible structures Knowledge about the transformation steps that are required to transform a specific kind of content to its accessible counterpart should be described in Object Oriented Transformation Frameworks. Typically, the abstract building blocks for such frameworks already exist. This is because of the many similarities between Accessible Information Processing activities and aspects of general software development. Explicit knowledge about the exact requirements and implementations of these requirements as practical and re-usable approaches that actually codify these accessible information transformations is a new - but much needed - phenomenon. Figure 1 below illustrates this sustainable collaborative structure, and shows the relationship with the open source community and the communication from scratch concept.

Figure 1. By taking a step back and viewing the parallel processes that take place in the domains of Open Source Systems and Accessible Information Processing and synchronisation of the aims of both areas, the strategic application of methodologies can yield a collaboration structure that is able to support itself.

3.1.4 Knowledge Management : complexity and enlightenment Knowledge Management and its implementation cousin Knowledge Technology can be applied to deduce, preserve and communicate protocols of how to apply the above in any specific context, alongside the learning and training of these protocols. Where such protocols are described in detail and include re-usable exercises that also serve as real-world applications and components, they will likely yield valuable learning material. If we bring together accessible Open Source software and systems and a firm scientific basis, a combination is created that yields a practical methodology. 3.2 Access to Accessibility Technology A broad range of software and hardware adaptations and extensions of common computer technology have been conceived to meet the needs of users that are not able to communicate with computer devices or with computer software as it is commonly available. These initiatives

Proceedings of the First International Conference on Open Source Systems Genova, 11th-15th July 2005 Marco Scotto and Giancarlo Succi (Eds.), pp. 179-186

range from adapted tactile devices [14]; to more commonly known software enhancements like screen reader software that drives a Braille Bar [15]; or an integrated or 3rd party Speech engine such as SpeakOut [16]; and tools that enlarge portions of the graphical computer desktop. Perhaps the most notable characteristic of these initiatives is their highly specialised nature, due largely to their target audience. However this means these tools are of a highly distributed and fragmented nature. It is only recently that constructive top-down frameworks have begin to emerge that embed accessibility as a package in its own right. This allows collaborative use of these distributed enhancements and interfaces to computer devices and software. For the collaborative use of these accessibility services successfully to be exploited and to allow the emergence of inclusive technology frameworks, a more robust foundation is required. From the technology producer's viewpoint, the construction of such a framework also makes sense. At present there are some production tools that allow the application and integration of high level accessibility processing services (eg GoLive [17] and Dreamweaver [18]) but in order to focus on more specialised and therefore more personalised accessible processing features, one has to rely on highly specialised tools, such as Dolphin’s DAISY production suite [19]. Where accessibility features are required for larger organisations, such as publishers, universities, public sector bodies or libraries, there is to our knowledge no automated production environment that supports flexible content processing. With the creation of an Accessible Information Processing methodology and accompanying framework and application of this methodology and its framework to, for example, MPEG technology, the possibility then exists to use mainstream MPEG content production suites for the production of accessible content. In this case it would not be a highly specialised production tool with only one target area. Instead, accessible content seen from this perspective would be a natural side effect of the production suite as it is and no additional services or investments are required: in other words, accessibility from scratch. 3.3 Access to Content Whereas content used to be limited to only a few modalities (such as text, images, movies, music, sound, and so forth), nowadays content provision is an increasingly multimedia experience. With the advent of multimedia information consumption as a default manner for content consumption, coherent synchronisation and consistent and customisable navigation through this multimedia content becomes more and more important. Whereas the common user risks only the danger of information overload, print impaired users are confronted with that same danger as well as a lack of perceptual flexibility. Given that almost none of the digital content provision systems provide any means to compensate for these different requirements in perceptual flexibility, the freedom of choice that print impaired users have regarding digital content is severely limited. 3.4 Access to Knowledge Management and Interaction Design By providing access to knowledge management and interaction design, this will introduce technical knowledge

about how to build systems that allow transformation from the common application and consumption domain to the specialised application and consumption domain. However, it will also allow the explicit representation of a user of any persuasion as an entity into the whole spectrum of process types that are of importance for the domain of Accessible Information Processing. This allows association of the understanding that we can form about users with these user representation entities and thereby form user models. This not only allows us explicitly to address issues and associate solutions to these issues with application code and users, but it also allows the preservation of the knowledge and understanding we have of that topic and allows flexible reuse.

This spectrum includes Use Case modelling, System Design, Project Management, Support Desk, Marketing and so forth. By representing a user model as an explicit entity in the whole architecture, opportunities emerge to associate any requirements, business logic, business intelligence and methodologies to this user model as well as the content model, the content presentation model or any model that is considered important for a certain initiative, solution or market demand. Building on this level of User-System Interaction Design allows the re-use of any perception models that might emerge in any other content production, consumption or distribution scenario: in other words, communication from scratch. IV FROM MODELS TO REALITIES This section contains a description of an attempt to create an accessible Content Management System that allows accessibility in both the content consumption perspective and content administration perspective. Figure 2 below illustrates the XOOPS portal architecture.

Figure 2. The XOOPS architecture allows identification of almost all relevant entities that are required when approaching the problem of accessible information processing. The traditional “skinning” or “theming” functionality turns into a role/user and organisation dependent transformation tool. Since this kind of business logic includes user preferences that may capture Accessible Information Processing requirements an exceptionally high integration of Accessibility can be provided.

The eXtensible Object Oriented Portal System (XOOPS) provides generic structures for the representation of web portals including blueprints for systems that are required to

Proceedings of the First International Conference on Open Source Systems Genova, 11th-15th July 2005 Marco Scotto and Giancarlo Succi (Eds.), pp. 179-186

maintain such portals. Module, notification, messaging and user profile entities are available. Extending the original XOOPS architecture with 3rd party (open source) modules provides a framework that can be used to represent any kind of resource and messaging/notification of changes in the structure or use of these resources. The following collection of modules can be used to erect a generic web portal structure that includes use of: 1. 2. 3. 4. 5.

User / Guest / Admin account system Messaging between the above participants and their roles, Notification between services/modules and the above participants and their roles, Article management - including associated downloads and printing service, news article management - used as messages that can be used to ‘point’ to a new or a change in existing resources in the article management system

The following modules – built-in and 3rd party open sourced - are used:    

System (built-in) News (built-in) WebLinks (built-in) FAQ (built-in)



wfSection (3rd party)

module provided a 1:1 mapping between questions and answers. No mechanism for sub categories is available. If allowed users can post comments to the category screens that display the questions and answers and with that provide comments to both. More detailed control over questions and answers and related functionalities can be achieved with the newsbb module, which provides a forum engine with associated functionalities. 4.1.3 BBNews forum An integrated news forum engine with category, message, moderation, comment and notification services. Groups of for a can be created and each forum can concentrate on a subject. Per subject discussion ‘threads’ can be created. Discussion threads contains messages between registered users and visitors (if permitted) 4.1.4 WFSection WfSection is a module that provides article and article category entities as well as File entities that represent (any) type of uploaded files that are related to articles. These entities are grouped and accessible through an article management system. Images can be associated with categories. Navigation means are provided to search through content and structure. 4.1.5 WebLinks

Brief description of relevant XOOPS modules 4.1.1 News The News module provides means of collecting new articles, which are abstracted into a news story class, and means of organising these stories into topics. Both entities can be created by administrators and by registered users and visitors if they are permitted to do so. Comments can be posted and associated with stories and previous comments. Comments can be posted by administrators, registered users and visitors. Permissions to do so have to be granted by the administrator. News stories can consist of one page or it can span multiple pages. A news story is made of an abstract and body text. Of no body text is present, only the abstract will be shown. If body text is available, a link to it called [more] will be shown below the stories abstract in the main page of the news module. The main page of the news module contains an overview of the last x stories posted as well as a means of navigating through the news topics. News stories can have a publish date and interval associated with them. New news stories can appear in the module’s main page (called the home page) or can be made to appear only in the tree structure of the topics and sub topics. The news topics can have images (icons) associated with them.

This is a module that provides a simple mechanism for storing weblinks. The weblinks module can be treated as a reference collection system. Weblinks are represented as links that can be stored in categories that can contain subcategories. In addition to the link’s title and URL, a description of the external resource can be provided. 4.1.6 Search engine All XOOPS modules provide an interface to a XOOPS wide search engine. The titles of the available content as well as the body text are searched for matches. An overview is provided with the search results. 4.2 Incorporating accessibility features Figure 3 below illustrates the inclusion of accessibility features into the XOOPS system.

4.1.2 FAQ The FAQ module consists of a means to represent questions and answers in a hierarchical way. FAQ categories can be defined. FAQ categories contain questions and answers. Questions and Answers have an associated order as well as the categories. The FAQ Proceedings of the First International Conference on Open Source Systems Genova, 11th-15th July 2005 Marco Scotto and Giancarlo Succi (Eds.), pp. 179-186

Figure 3. Accessibility within XOOPS. Because of the Object Oriented framework that supports the XOOPS portal framework and the representation of Accessibility requirements using this framework and the integration of Accessibility features with that framework provides building blocks for an accessible information processing environment.

The inclusion of accessibility into a Content Management System relies on proper 'connections' between processing entities and the transparency of these entities within the architecture as a whole. This naturally applies for any software architecture [20]. Clarity and transparency is of particular importance in the area of accessible information processing. For accessibility to emerge as a built-in property of any system, the developer or architect has to take a meta position on the system the designer develops. An accessible manifestation usually means that the application the developer envisions should be able to present itself using various different and independent 'presentation schemes'. A 'skin' is a good example of this. When a 'skin' in the traditional sense of the word is reinterpreted as 'a looking glass associated with a specific role with specific requirements' we arrive at the point of similarity. As the XOOPS Content Management System and its underlying framework is regarded as a Content Model, Content Transformation Model and User Model, the 'themes' XOOPS uses can be used as 'filters' or ‘Looking Glasses’ that process the content as well as the presentation of the content based on the user's and organisation's preferences. Because AccessibleXOOPS contains explicit entities that represent common user preferences as well as print impaired user preferences of the consumption process, explicit relations between all of these can be made. Because of the same source of content and content processing, the content and functionalities will be available to both the common consumers and the print impaired users instantaneous without additional tools and effort (see Figure 4 below).

Figure 4. XOOPS through the Looking Glass. XOOPS as a portal system, content model, user model and transformation engine serves as a centralised global information and processing model. Depending on the user profile that collects requirements and preferences the manifestation of the content model can be personalised.

4.3 Thoughts for the future The combination of accessible content management systems, accessible desktop systems and content modalities with internalised notions about accessibility, can be used to form a new generation of information processing environments. Because of the presence of explicit entities that can be used to represent the User (perception) models on one side, and content and application models on the other side, we can experiment with new interaction schemes. These new interaction schemes will, because of the knowledge preservation process that is included in the approach, create a consistent body of information including real-world applications for education purposes. Illustration 5 below shows, from the knowledge technology perspective, the development from traditional content consumption schemes towards knowledge consumption and even understanding consumption that may be stimulated to emerge. After all, understanding can be considered the dynamic systemic overview one can obtain of all the facts, the interactions between facts and the interactions between these interactions and it's surroundings. The mere process of conceiving and creating this systemic overview can be considered education to oneself. Allowing a system to include multiple perspectives on that systemic overview and additionally allow that system to create associations between these multiple viewpoints for any relation to be explicated, stimulates the emergence of mutual understanding. In other words, a system that facilitates communication from scratch.

Proceedings of the First International Conference on Open Source Systems Genova, 11th-15th July 2005 Marco Scotto and Giancarlo Succi (Eds.), pp. 179-186

[9] See www.mpeg.org [10] See www.daisy.org [11] Crombie, D., Lenoir, R., and McKenzie, N., & Blom, H., (2004) New approaches to processing accessible information, Proceedings Conference and Workshop on Assistive Technologies for Vision and Hearing Impairment, University of Glasgow [12] See www.euain.org

Figure 5. Possible futures

V CONCLUSION We regard access to both content and applications as a fundamental right. We regard accessibility as a fundamental right. We regard understanding of the need for accessible information processing as a fundamental right. The Open Source community regards access to applications and operating systems as a fundamental right. Communities that are based on democracy regard access to education as a fundamental right. With all these statements postulated in the sentences above, all the individual key players combined define the fundamental right of being enabled to communicate. And with the definition of these fundamental rights the key players share one great responsibility. This responsibility is accessible - and therefore sustainable - production, provision and consumption of knowledge and its technology that manifests this knowledge.

REFERENCES [1] Crombie, D., Lenoir, R., and McKenzie, N., (2004) Accessibility from scratch : how an open focus contributes to inclusive design, Proceedings ICCHP, Lecture Notes in Computer Science, Vol (in print). Springer-Verlag, Berlin Heidelberg New York

[13] Crombie, D., Lenoir, R., and McKenzie, N., (2004) On Scoping Abstraction, Openfocus Foundation, Amsterdam [14] For example int.org/issue8/weasel/

http://www.cultivate-

[15] See http://www.alvabraille.com/ [16] http://www.screenreader.co.uk/pages/speakout.htm

See

[17] See www.adobe.com/golive [18] See www.Dreamweaver.com [19] See EasePublisher http://www.dolphinuk.co.uk/audio/products/EasePublisher/ index.htm [20] Crombie, D., Lenoir, R., McKenzie, N., and Miesenberger, K., (2004) Interfacing the interface: unification through separation, Proceedings European Research Council for Informatics and Mathematics: 8th User Interfaces for All Workshop, Lecture Notes in Computer Science, Vol 3196. Springer-Verlag, Berlin Heidelberg New York

[2] Crombie, D., Lenoir, R., and McKenzie, N., (2004) On Scoping Abstraction, Open Focus, Amsterdam [3] WAI [4] www.xoops.org [5] Crombie, D., Lenoir, R., and McKenzie, N., (2005) Designing accessible software for music applications, in Hersh, M., & Johnson, M. (eds) Assistive Technology for vision impaired and blind people, Ch. 16, Springer-Verlag, Berlin Heidelberg New York (in print) [6] Crombie, D., Lenoir, R., and McKenzie, N., (2004) Integrating music representations within MPEG environments in Proceedings 4th International Conference on Web Delivering of Music, Barcelona, IEEE [7] Crombie, D., Lenoir, R., and McKenzie, N., (2004) Accessible music technology for people with print impairments, in Journal of New Music Research (forthcoming) [8] Barker, A., Crombie, D., Lenoir, R., and McKenzie, N., (2004) math2braille: opening access to mathematics, Proceedings ICCHP, Lecture Notes in Computer Science, Vol 3118 Springer-Verlag, Berlin Heidelberg New York Proceedings of the First International Conference on Open Source Systems Genova, 11th-15th July 2005 Marco Scotto and Giancarlo Succi (Eds.), pp. 179-186