@weirdwriter I've been waiting for a little over fifteen years now and still haven't found something which is even comparable, let alone which provides better access than Windows. I would happily switch if I could, but as it stands, the accessibility race for blind users is won by Windows in the vast majority of cases. OSX is quite a bit behind and Linux is very far behind even OSX.
Linux doesn't mean anything. There are many different desktop environments (GNOME, KDE, Pantheon, Mate, Budgie, Xfce...). Each will offer a different experience and more or less good accessibility, depending on its resources.
If you just say that's not accessible at all and that's not true, that doesn't help anyone. It demotivates developers, and means there will be fewer users, contributors, bug reports and suggestions for improvements.
I've tested the problematic examples in the article and everything seems to work on my side (but not being blind myself, I may have missed the main point).
I just think it would be more constructive to acknowledge the progress and point out what's still a problem, what needs to be improved.
@gnomelibre@anantagd@techsinger the point of the article was to illustrate that in order for a disabled person to use any sort of distro they have to do extra things to make it work. Microsoft And Apple for example when you turn on voiceover, it just reads everything. When you turn on narrator. It just reads everything with minimal configuration or no configuration required. any configuration is user preference. The article demonstrated that it’s just not an accessible environment because speech does not start when you Load an operating system. Speech and braille is not available during installation, login, the like. Speech and braille should be available before you get to the desktop. It’s not about just testing to see if things work. This isn’t a binary. You have to mimic Microsoft and Apple and make an accessible environment to where these tools work for us without jumping through hoops and without enabling accessibility features/options/environments. Apple and Microsoft allow the operating system to be controlled without turning on a switch.
One of the advantages of free software is that you can do whatever you want with it, without depending on the goodwill of a company.
So it might be simpler and more efficient to create a new Fedora variant (with BlueBuild), where the screen reader would be activated by default, with better quality synthesized voices, and a list of applications with good accessibility pre-installed.
@gnomelibre@weirdwriter@anantagd@techsinger@jorge For anyone wondering why free software does not succeed over the competition, it's this right here. We point out a deficiency in the experience, and the response is, "Your information is outdated. I tested it and it's fine. The advantage of free software is that anyone can do anything. You are just doing it wrong." Microsoft doesn't respond to users with a defensive crouch, they listen to them and do the work, resulting in a superior product.
@objectinspace@gnomelibre@anantagd@techsinger@jorge Also, Microsoft also does regular usability testing, with actually disabled users, takes down their user experiences, and then implements that feedback instead of saying, well, it works for me!
If free software is far behind, it's only because Microsoft has 166k employees and $211.9 billion in revenue, with an entire team dedicated to accessibility. They have a user feedback team and an army of developers to improve and fix what's wrong. Free software is a small handful of employees and volunteers.
And you can blame me if you want, but at the start of the discussion, we had an assertion that free software was absolutely not accessible (without the slightest detail about what was wrong with it). After a few exchanges, I now have the impression that with a Linux distribution configured from the outset for the blind, the situation would be quite different.
And again, this is free software and we clearly don't have the financial resources of Microsoft.
At some point, if you want things to improve, you have to contribute in one way or another (development, bug reporting, creation of a new specialized distribution, etc.).
@gnomelibre@weirdwriter@anantagd@techsinger@jorge It is not about money! That is another excuse. It is about values. Choices made and not made. Saying "we don't have resources for this" is another way of saying "we chose not to spend our resources on this." It reflects the view that accessibility is a bolt-on and somebody else's problem. For an organization that does an excellent job of accessibility with very little resources, see the W3C.
I'd like to apologize if I've come across as too harsh during the whole discussion (English not being my mother tongue doesn't help either). I was trying to understand what was wrong, in good faith.
I still regret that we misunderstood each other to this extent, since although I have no disability, I would really and sincerely like free software to be perfectly accessible to everyone.
@gnomelibre@anantagd@weirdwriter@techsinger@jorge If you take a snapshot of a GNU-Linux distro/desktop environment at a moment in time, its accessibility will be at a certain level. This will change as the code does, new dependencies are formed or abandoned, and so on.
What doesn't change is the attitude of people who work on free software, that somebody else needs to fix the accessibility. This is what causes everyone, including the most technical among us, to eventually leave.
So, this will be my last contribution to this thread, and, you, in particular. Not for lack of interest or an unwillingness to teach, but, you mentioned that Apple and or Microsoft, and, I'd even extend Google into this pool, that they have money so can dedicate resources to accessibility but there's a key thing they all do that, so far, few or even no distro or otherwise maintainer has done. Listen to the users without pointing the finger back at them. That requires no money. This is key. You say you want feedback and you really want to learn, but you actually dismissed other blind professionals in this thread, people with decades of experiences, and then told them, even, that they were wrong and that it works just fine for you, but then you said it yourself you're not disabled. You didn't listen, you immediately went on the defensive and then made us prove ourselves to you. Apple, and Microsoft, don't behave like this. They also understand that accessibility is as good as the tech infrastructure, and make it usable and accessible from the ground up. My biggest issue with you, and others like you, in the #Linux space, is that refuse to really, and I mean really, listen, to what experts are saying. I've used accessible Cocanut on a VM, and it is a good start. The point is that the ORCA infrastructure needs a lot of work and then some. You all really, and I mean really, need to understand why these bigger tech companies and even other #OpenSource developers actually take the time to get feedback from Disabled users, but not through pull requests or complicated ticket tracking. Come to where the lowest tech people are and get feedback, like these other tech companies do. I use a ton of fantastic #OpenSource tools on Windows because the devellopers actively engage with the community and don't just point and say learn tech! Or it works for me, even though you do not know how to use a screen reader properly. Listen instead of pointing. @gnomelibre@anantagd@objectinspace@techsinger@jorge
@gnomelibre@weirdwriter@anantagd@techsinger@jorge That you have arrived at this impression is curious, since that's not what anyone who's actually tried to do it has told you. There are legions of blind techno-wizards who have spent years, decades even, daily driving GNU-Linux. Today they are all on Windows 11. You believe this because you desire it to be true. Please believe what I, and every other disabled person on this thread is telling you: it isn't.
Not only does GNOME place great emphasis on accessibility, but because GNOME applications are so much simpler (unlike other desktop environments, there aren't numerous menus and sub-menus with thousands of options), I'm sure they're much easier to use for someone with a disability.
But I'm not blind, so I have no problem believing you. Nevertheless, I'd be curious to know a list of Windows' strong points. As well as the main problems GNOME might have (if you've tested Fedora or Ubuntu, it must have been GNOME).
@gnomelibre@techsinger@weirdwriter It seems like you do, since your entire contribution to this thread has been to deny the experience of every blind person who's come in here to say that Linux doesn't work for them.
From what I understand, Windows doesn't tick too many boxes for disabled folks, either. I'm shocked but not shocked that development of an accessible Linux distro hasn't happened.
@helplessduck It’s in the works, but it’s not a priority for a lot of distro maintainers and it’s a very very very slow process. windows actually ticks more accessibility boxes than Linux. Apple too is actually really great at mobile accessibility for the blind and visually impaired. I wish linux would take accessibility more seriously the way that Microsoft and Apple do
Well, at least there's that.
I don't think this is necessarily fair, but would likely have the best end user outcome if one or more disabled programmers put a distro together. But, maintaining it... The big players like Red Hat and Canonical and so forth have really let the disabled community down. They could easily produce a distro flavor that's geared towards accessibility.
@helplessduck@weirdwriter Sorry--by "it" I mean the folks with disabilities maintaining their own distros.
I think we would all love if someone E.G. Gnome were to host a distribution that is optimized for accessibility needs. Perhaps based on feedback from a community survey or some such.
My concerns would be (1) commitment to keeping it current and (2) optimizing for all disability cohorts (blind folks have different concerns from folks with motor impairments for instance)
@helplessduck@weirdwriter It also gets complicated when you have the mishmash of needing to install an experimental branch of something to get access to something that then breaks other things. It can be a bit of a minefield.
Ideally these situations would be minimized by all of the relevent stakeholders getting together and agreeing on a roadmap that takes in everyones' planned additions. But this is about as likely to happen as a rocket to mars, I fear.
Add comment