John G. Heim <jheim@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote: > I wouldn't go quite that far. I will agree though that the accessibility > tools in linux have gotten worse in the last 5 years, not better. This is a > disturbing trend. I think things began to fall apart when Oracle bought Sun > and got rid of the orca development team. Having observed this entire history, I think the GNOME 2 to GNOME 3 transition was initially disastrous for accessibility, in part as a result of the necessary move to the DBus-based version of AT-SPI 2. Since the release of GNOME 3, the advances that were lost have been largely, if not entirely, regained. Of course, if there were more resources devoted to this effort, the software would be much better than it is now. The departure of IBM and Sun from the scene and the lack of uptake by commercial Linux distributors (who stand to benefit from accessibility, including regulatory compliance in countries that represent important markets for their products and services) have undoubtedly slowed progress considerably. The Linux console and command line environment remains as accessible as ever. Some of the newer tools (NetworkManager, PulseAudio) have comprehensive command line and terminal-oriented interfaces. Systemd and its associated tools are also well supported at the shell prompt. It seems then that developers are looking after the command line environment (and to a lesser degree terminal-based applications), which are superior under Linux than under competing systems. Others, who have different needs, may well disagree with this appraisal. _______________________________________________ Speakup mailing list Speakup@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx http://linux-speakup.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/speakup
