Well, this goes back to the reason I helped create the International
Association Of Visually Impaired Technologists. There doesn't seem to be
anybody taking systems admin accessibility seriously. I talked to Curtis
Chong of the NFB about this. The NFB spends a lot of it's resources
talking to Microsoft about fairly minor accessibility flaws in Excel,
Word, etc or to Amazon and Netfliks about the accessibility of their web
sites. I argued that something like the Red Hat kernel not having
console speech was more important because that could cost a sys admin
his job. In fact, I know that things like that cost sys admins their
jobs because I've seen it. You may not be fired for not being able to
access the console on your servers. But what happens is that someone
else is given all the duties involved with console access. It's one
thing after another like that and pretty soon, your entire job consists
of nothing more than helping people change their passwords. And when
layoffs come around, you're the one to go. And that's only fair -- after
all, you are the least valuable person in the department. I've seen this
happen often enough that I even coined a term for it. I call it "getting
backwatered".
I doubt that not having console speech is a huge problem for more than a
handful of blind systems admins. But it is just one more brick in the wall.
On 08/11/2016 08:49 AM, Janina Sajka wrote:
Hi, John:
It's certainly possible to build rpms with the staging modules for
Fedora. I used to do that years ago. Bill Acker kept up with doing that
in recent years. While he wasn't the maintainer at rpmfusion for that
particular package, builds did seem to cease about the time of his
demise.
I'm also surprised that others weren't clamoring for these drivers for
their own, non Speakup related reasons, but I never did find any
discussion like that. I filed bugs with each new Fedora release, but
nothing happened. In fact the very last release at rpmfusion never
worked because of broken dependencies. I've been sitting on a 4.0.3
kernel until I finally switched to Arch. Key functionality on my systems
had begun to break, for example linphone.
Yes, there was the option for me to take over building these rpms.
However, it's not were I want to focus my efforts these days. I
certainly thought about it. After all, there's a good deal of
dislocation involved in switching distributions. Not everything works
the same way, and I've already bumped into a need for workarounds.
Fedora is certainly a major Linux distribution with much to recommend
it, but easy use of Speakup is no longer one of its attributes. On the
other hand I'm not aware of anyone using RHEL with Speakup. Certainly,
there maybe someone who's figured that out. I can categorically report
that Bill Acker failed in his attempts to build RHEL kernels with
Speakup support, though these efforts took place some years ago. I'm not
aware that he tried post 3.x, for instance.
Lastly, I should add that the very argument you're making is one I tried
making with the U.S. Access Board when the first Sec. 508 regulations
were being written. Doug Wakefield didn't agree, and my argument was
not accepted, and Redhat, among others, was able to slither off the
hook around low-level systems accessibility.
Janina
John G Heim writes:
Surely there must be somebody building kernels with those modules so that
you can install by adding their yum repository to your system. If not, it
would mean that a blind RH systems admin couldn't do his work at the
console. If remote access is broken he'd be in serious trouble. Most systems
admins don't have a choice as to what flavor of linux they use in their job.
Here at the University of Wisconsin, the IT department used to run Red Hat.
The campus had a site license. The Math Department, where I work, uses
debian and ubuntu. But if I worked in another department, I'd probably be
stuck with RH.
I have been building kernels for debian and ubuntu that have a hack do
serial synths work. I set up a apt repository at www.iavit.org so other
people can use them too. I don't know anything about Red Hat but surely
there must be the equivalent of a ppa.
On 08/10/2016 09:10 AM, Janina Sajka wrote:
Hi,
Well, I've moved from Fedora to Arch on any machine where I need
Speakup. The reason is that rpmfusion has not provided kernel staging
modules since kernel 4.0.4.
So, I had the choice of constantly building my own, or switching
distros. I chose the latter.
I am still running Fedora on my data center server, but I don't use
Speakup on that machine, of course.
Janina
Willem van der Walt writes:
Redhat these days is mostly used on servers as one buys support for that,
but it is accessible.
I ran Redhat years ago, but these days, I think, Janina is still running it
or Fedora without problems.
HTH, Willem
On Sat, 6 Aug 2016, Mark Peveto wrote:
Hmm, I noticed this is hosted on redhat.com. Does redhat have an accessible distro?
Everything happens after coffee!
Mark Peveto
Registered Linux user number 600552
Sent from sonar using alpine 2.20.14
_______________________________________________
Blinux-list mailing list
Blinux-list@xxxxxxxxxx
https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/blinux-list
--
This message is subject to the CSIR's copyright terms and conditions, e-mail
legal notice, and implemented Open Document Format (ODF) standard. The full
disclaimer details can be found at http://www.csir.co.za/disclaimer.html.
Please consider the environment before printing this email.
_______________________________________________
Blinux-list mailing list
Blinux-list@xxxxxxxxxx
https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/blinux-list
--
--
John G. Heim; jheim@xxxxxxxxxxxxx; sip://jheim@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
_______________________________________________
Blinux-list mailing list
Blinux-list@xxxxxxxxxx
https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/blinux-list
--
--
John G. Heim; jheim@xxxxxxxxxxxxx; sip://jheim@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
_______________________________________________
Blinux-list mailing list
Blinux-list@xxxxxxxxxx
https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/blinux-list