Its interesting actually to note a few things about Linux vs Windows users here.
many people choose to use Linux, or Unix in general, precisely because there is a text based interface available.
If you've got an old 486 you can still happily run the latest release of Linux on it, and do useful things like surfing the web, reading email, word procesing etc.
Try to do that with Windows XP, its not possible (in fact, it won't even boot on a 486).
Perhaps an even more important issue though is that in general, Linux applications are released in an Open Source model, IE you have access to the source code.
A sufficiently motivated programmer could take an application designed for X, strip the graphics routines out, add in some text ones and have a console app.
This has happened in the past and it will continue to happen in the future.
Again you can't do this with Windows because you generally don't have the source, and even if you did, dos is so far removed from Windows that source code for one is no longer compatible with source code for the other.
That said, the most powerful insentive for groups like the Gnome and KDE projects to include accessibility support from the ground up is that
many governments around the world, notably the U.S government, are now requiring applications to be accessible in order to be eligible for government purchase.
because of the way the X protocol works, if you have accessibility in your server, your libraries, and your desktop manager, then you have it in all yor applications too, automatically, unless someone goes out of their way to do things inaccessibly.
This is something that, due to backwards compatibility, Microsoft will never be able to achieve with Windows.
Active Accessibility is good, but its still not an integral part of the operating system like the accessibility provided by Gnome and KDE will be.
Good things are forthcoming I think, its just a matter of time.
Regards
Aaron
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| Aaron Howell Kitten Internet | |
| aaron at kitten.net.au Internet consultancy, | |
| Phone: +61-417-625550 System administration, | |
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