In GNOME, accessibility is a core value that touches all aspects of the system. [1]

From the infrastructure, to the graphical toolkit, to the applications, to the assistive technologies, accessibility has been a central consideration from the very early days. As a result, GNOME not only has compelling accessibility today, but it also provides a rich and stable base for future accessibility work.

At some moment of 2010 it is planned a GNOME 3.0 release with the intention of be a major change on GNOME.

One of the major actors in this release will be GNOME Shell [2]. GNOME Shell is the defining technology of the GNOME 3 desktop user experience. It provides core interface functions like switching to windows and launching applications. GNOME Shell takes advantage of the capabilities of modern graphics hardware and introduces innovative user interface concepts to provide a delightful and easy to use experience, using the innovative technology Clutter [3]

At this moment GNOME Shell doesn't have a proper accessibility support, and the GNOME community has detected it as one of the most important points in the GNOME 3.0 accessibility roadmap [4].

Since 2009, several work was made to improve the accessibility support in Clutter itself, in the form of the Cally library.

The purpose of this presentation is explaining: * Introduce accessibility on GNOME. * Briefly explain the status towards GNOME 3.0 * How GNOME Shell affects the interaction with the desktop * The status of his accessibility support * How Cally would be used there * How ATs apps like Orca would interact with GNOME Shell * How the community has reacted and tried to solve this accessibility issue

[1] http://library.gnome.org/devel/accessibility-devel-guide/nightly/gad-how-it-works.html.en [2] http://live.gnome.org/GnomeShell/ [3] http://www.clutter-project.org/ [4] http://live.gnome.org/Accessibility/GNOME3#GNOME_Shell