completely impressed with linux's accessibility

kendell clark <coffeekingms@xxxxxxxxx> · Wed, 18 Mar 2015 08:27:45 -0500

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hi all.
I couldn't sleep, so am up early. I wanted to write in to basically
apologize for yesterday's completely unclear rant. I had an idea what
I wanted to say but I was so frustrated I didn't ge tit out, I'll
explain in just a minute. I've just completed converting another
windows user over to fedora, always cause for celebration, and I just
installed lots of updates with gnome software. You guys have done a
fantastic job with gnome software by the way. I'm in the process of
tracking down the one anaconda accessibility bug, and will file a bug
when I have. How do I submit a patch?  I don't have access to the git
repository so can't push directly. The only purpose of that rant was
to ask 3 questions. 1, When there are accessibility issues, how do I
get developers who don't know anything about orca and at-spi
interested in fixing them? Issues I often run into are developers
complaining about the lack of good up to date documentation or simply
that accessibility is hard. 2, how do I deal with persistent bugs?
There is a persistent one at the moment with orca and terminal
applications. It will sometimes fail to announce incoming text.
Apparently the cause is something in vte, which all or most terminal
emulators depend on. 3, how do I deal with the inevitable "just switch
to windows, it's perfect" or "just switch to mac" developer?  I also
wanted to clarify some of my points. I only get frustrated enough to
rant when a bug is persistent. I don't immediately go, oh my  god
there's a bug, then go onto the irc channel in a rage to attack the
developer for not caring about us poor blind people. I only get that
way when a developer seems disinterested in fixing a bug, tries to
sell me on another platform or is hostile "why would I fix
accessibility issues, I don't need that" is the usual response that
can get me worked up. If I'm going to be part of the fedora community
I've got to adjust my attitude. I think accessibility should be at a
low level so there don't have to be as many layors between orca and
what is on screen, but I'm no developer. I want to help developers fix
their issues, not whine and complain about them. Most accessibility
issues are really easy to fix. Simply do the following and it will
work ninety percent of the time. If you're using a toolkit, such as
gtk or qt, use stock widgets. Those all provide the proper accessible
names and labels that orca needs. If you use custom widgets, provide
AccessibleNames for your controlls, and set the correct role type.
Remember to set focusable to true on controlls such as buttons, lists,
etc so that orca  won't skip them. Fedora tools already do this, and
as a result I've had zero issues with any of the gui tools fedora puts
out, great job! If it helps, now comes my explanation, poor though it
is. I've been under a lot of internal pressure lately. I've been
hearing about little else but windows 10 this, windows 10 that. I'm
worried that this might be a threat to gnu/linux, because microsoft
seems to be addressing some of the big issues that gave us an edge,
although they're still not open source. When windows publications do
review linux or linux laptops, they always seem to find something
wrong with it. The thing that set me off yesterday was a complaint
about scaling issues. Something to do with chrome not scaling right,
and how this of course works fine on windows. I get so tired of the
"windows just works" argument ... I got discouraged, and started
circling. This got me thinking about how blind windows users have
little interest in linux accessibility, and that got me thinking about
how hard a time I have trying to get some developers, but by no means
all, to fix accessibility issues. Linux is very personal to me and I
believe in the open source principals. It's hard to go into anywhere,
a mall, a store, etc where windows, and  apple feature prominently.
Store employees generally no little to nothing about linux, and I ...
I don't know exactly. I want linux to be the thing on the news. THe
thing people talk about, rather than ridicule or blow off. Linux? WHy
would I use that, I use windows. Linux accessibility really isn't that
bad. If I weren't surrounded by windows everywhere I turn I might be
able to just relax for a while. It's ahrd to avoid though. And I'm
rambling, this is a desktop fedora list. If I haven't damaged my
reputation completely beyond repair, I'll straighten up and try to
stay positive. A little reassurance off list wouldn't be unwelcome
though. How do you long tiem linux users deal with "windows" people?
Some of you likely use windows, and I don't fault you for it. I
personally dislike windows but I don't mean all windows users when I
mention windows. I mean the die hard, zealot, windows walks on water
type of people, not the person that uses windows for gaming or because
there's an app that only works in windows person. Off to get some
coffee so I can start ironing out that anaconda bug.
Thanks for reading
Kendell clark
Sent from Fedora GNU/Linux