[Athen] Assistive Technology on VMs with Application Streaming?

Al Puzzuoli alpuzz at msu.edu
Tue Mar 3 18:09:13 PST 2009


Hi Ron,

Sure, any information you could provide would be great, and I'll post
any of my own findings back to this list as well. I should get my hands
on a test bed system within the next couple weeks, so then I'll get to
try to break stuff!

My only other concern involves product support. I spoke with one major
screen reader vender in regards to another issue last year, and their
position at that time was that officially, they didn't support the use
of their product in a VM. This trend is only going to grow, so I
assume their position will of course change over time; but, I'm not sure
whether we're there yet.

Al Puzzuoli

Michigan State University

Information Technologist
http://www.rcpd.msu.edu <http://www.rcpd.msu.edu/>

Resource Center for Persons with Disabilities

120 Bessey Hall East Lansing, MI 48824-1033

517-884-1915



________________________________

From: athen-bounces at athenpro.org [mailto:athen-bounces at athenpro.org] On
Behalf Of Ron Stewart
Sent: Tuesday, March 03, 2009 6:24 PM
To: 'Access Technology Higher Education Network'
Subject: Re: [Athen] Assistive Technology on VMs with Application
Streaming?



Hi Al, I am currently working with a CC System that is rolling out an
Altiris based system to virtualize all the computers in their
multicampus network. There is one option in the system that allows for
the setup of a physical hard drive space on the local computer and as I
have seen it demonstrated this option allows for the necessary hooks
into the base image. If you like I can see if the details are for
public consumption, I did some testing and the AT that I was working
with functioned just fine, but I think this implementation is not quite
as plane jane as what you may be proposing.



Altiris makes the claim that the can virtualize anything and based on
what I have seen so far the claims seem to be accurate. But of course
they would not let me try to break the build J



Ron Stewart



From: athen-bounces at athenpro.org [mailto:athen-bounces at athenpro.org] On
Behalf Of Al Puzzuoli
Sent: Tuesday, March 03, 2009 2:46 PM
To: Access Technologists in Higher Education Network
Subject: [Athen] Assistive Technology on VMs with Application Streaming?



For years, the software image used in all our campus labs has included
assistive technologies such as Jaws, Kurzweil 3000, and Zoomtext. Over
the next few months, the infrastructure of our lab environment is going
to be reworked. All our current PCs will basically be used as Thick
clients, which over time are to be replaced by Thin clients. upon
starting, the clients will boot to Linux, with Firefox running in kiosk
mode. Users will be presented with a simple login web page. After
logging in, a Windows XP VM will be streamed to the client.



The base VM is going to be very vanilla, with most apps being streamed
to the VM as needed. These streaming packages will be built using
Altiris Streaming Composer. Is there anyone else dealing with a
similar setup? If so, I would be very curious to compare notes as to
any accessibility issues you have needed to overcome. My biggest
concern is video chaining issues with apps such as Jaws and Zoomtext.



Thanks,



Al Puzzuoli

Michigan State University

Information Technologist
http://www.rcpd.msu.edu <http://www.rcpd.msu.edu/>

Resource Center for Persons with Disabilities

120 Bessey Hall East Lansing, MI 48824-1033

517-884-1915


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