The EU regulations are good news! Still, regulations force companies to make products accessible. Making them delightful to use while blind is not required. Gnome is already accessible. Every problem the OP ran into has a work around. That generally is all laws require.
What makes Windows a11y nice is Microsoft made it a priorityat the CEO level, in a militaristic company. Note that I use Linux exclusively, but I miss the.speed of NVDA with Microsoft Word, for example. Google docs is slow, so I copy docs into gedit to read them quickly using Orca. Note that Google is also a slime mold. Google's a11y devs are awesome! I know a few of them, and some of the are my heros. But a slime mold has trouble delivering delightful a11y. Bill On Sun, May 30, 2021, 7:01 AM Jason White <ja...@jasonjgw.net> wrote: > I think the regulatory environment may change attitudes and resource > allocation somewhat. For example, computers and operating systems are > explicitly required to meet accessibility standards under the European > Accessibility Act, which applies to products placed on the European common > market. This isn't yet in force, but it will be later in the decade. There > may be other regulatory changes elsewhere. > > This could have significant consequences in terms of legal liability for > commercial distributors and for hardware vendors who supply pre-installed > systems. I think it is in the interests of Linux distributors to move ahead > of the regulations by coordinating through the GNOME Foundation, Linux > Foundation and other projects to commit additional resources to > accessibility efforts. At the moment, there's a community with great > expertise which is doing excellent work, but there's a need for additional, > ongoing commitments in order to improve the quality of implementation and > to make it sustainable. We may be heading to a point at which distributors > can't integrate code until it satisfies accessibility criteria - for legal > reasons, and that would place pressure (positively, by way of developer > education and awareness, and negatively, by way of the risk of legal > liability) on the decentralized development processes. > On 30/5/21 8:02 am, Bill Cox wrote: > > GNU-Linux's accessibility limitations compared to Windows are basically > baked-in, and I doubt it will change. It is no one's fault. It is simply > a result of distributed development with no central leader. However, you > can use NVDA to access Linux through a terminal window, and most of Linux's > goodness will be accessible this way. > > I will try to explain how I see the situation below. It is certainly not > the fault of anyone working on Orca, or any a11y developer at all. It is > just life in the land of distributed open source projects. > > TL;DR > > Janky a11y on Linux is not the fault of the various a11y developers, who > genuinely care about the needs of blind folks, and IMO do a great job with > very limited resources. The problems are baked into GNU-Linux in various > ways. One way to look at this is that Microsoft is like the military, with > a top commander issuing orders, which are followed by everyone, while Linux > is more like a slime mold, with no central nervous system. There is good > and bad with both approaches, and unfortunately, a11y support will > generally be better in a military-style run organization, assuming that the > top leaders have made a11y a priority. > > Bill Gates mandated that accessibility was a top priority, and attended > accessibility meetings personally. That is why Windows is as accessible as > it is. Ubuntu is an open source project, and it is simply not possible to > force every developer to get onboard. IIUC, Steve Jobs did not care about > a11y, which is why Apple had non-accessible products for so long, and IIUC, > Tim Cook does care, and was able to force Apple to embrace a11y. With > Linux, we have various leaders who do care, and some who don't. The result > is that a11y on Linux is janky and probably always will be. > > There are many examples I can point to. For example, the main developer > of PulseAudio cares about music, but not as much about screen reader users, > which is why PulseAudio has broken a11y so many times. Some devs in the > low level GTK widgets refuse to make pixmaps capable of having a text > description, which is why the icons remain inaccessible in many desktop > environments in Linux. Gnome does better than any other Linux desktop > environment, in my experience, but Gnome can't make non-accessible widgets > magically accessible. While in most cases, the goals of free software > advocates are in line with a11y advocates, these groups tend to differ on > support for commercial closed-source software, such as text-to-speech > engines, which is one reason we have limited options in Linux. I use the > Voxin voice, which is the same as Eloquence, and if I were not a programmer > capable of hacking the speech stack, I doubt I could consistently use it. > > A common reply to a11y advocates in the open-source community is that if > you don't like the way it is, fix it yourself. However, this is simply not > realistic. For example, I fixed the pixmap GTK class to add an accessible > description, and attempted to merge this fix into the Vinux version of > Linux. I had to fork not just GTK, but all of Gnome to make this work. I > don't have the time to maintain a fork of the entire desktop just to make > pixmaps talk. > > Another problem I've faced personally in the open-source community is > dealing with folks' feelings. For example, I have an entire alternate > speech stack that can work with Orca, but this upset some of the > speech-dispatcher devs who do very important a11y work. I tried working > with them, and to their credit, they did incorporate one of the most > important changes I have in my stack: they moved the code to talk to the > sound system into speech-dispatcher proper. However, I keep most of my > a11y code to myself simply not to upset anyone. Maybe if I understood > people's feelings better, I could contribute more effectively, but from my > point of view, I poke a random weak spot of the slime mold, and the whole > thing freaks out. > > So, I hope that long winded explanation helps you understand why Linux > a11y is as janky as it is. > > Best regards, > Bill > > > > > > > On Sat, May 29, 2021 at 12:21 PM Jason White via gnome-accessibility-list < > gnome-accessibility-list@gnome.org> wrote: > >> >> On 29/5/21 4:29 am, Rynhardt Kruger via gnome-accessibility-list wrote: >> > I definitely think image recognition has improved a lot, both in speed >> > and accuracy. However, even a difference like 50 milliseconds may be >> > noticeable by an experienced screen reader user, especially if one >> > uses speech at 400 words per minute or more. >> >> A further difficulty is that any system relying on image recognition >> imposes the burden of errors on the user, whose ability to correct for >> them is limited. >> >> Image recognition might be useful, however, in automatically detecting >> errors in the implementation of accessibility APIs. I suppose that would >> be a research project. >> >> My understanding is that the GNOME Foundation has accessibility plans >> which include a new accessibility API in GTK 4, guidance for developers, >> and, possibly, better tools for automatically detecting implementation >> errors. >> >> I don't know whether GNOME developers also plan to fix the accessibility >> API and keyboard navigation of their own applications during the >> transition to GTK 4. Some proprietary operating system developers have >> been relatively successful in setting an accessibility policy for their >> software and implementing it reasonably consistently (e.g., Apple and >> Microsoft in recent years). So there are precedents that GNOME could >> surpass, given suitable project governance, developer education, and >> associated commitment of time and expertise. The GTK 4 initiative is an >> encouraging start. >> >> >> _______________________________________________ >> gnome-accessibility-list mailing list >> gnome-accessibility-list@gnome.org >> https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/gnome-accessibility-list >> >
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