Hi Quentin, Over the last 20 years I have spent quite a bit of energy on the matter of accessibility in openoffice.org so let's consider your request in that light.
*Background* Accessibility is undeniably important, and LibreOffice already includes the results of large amounts of work by a variety of people to make it accessible to people with a variety of different needs. This work has been done by different people with different affiliations over the years. It has required skills, equipment and experience that are all specialised. It would not be correct to assert that LibreOffice has neglected the needs of those requiring specific accessibility accommodations. However, the need is huge and there are always more needs that could be addressed, especially maintaining the work that has already been done. LibreOffice is not written or maintained by TDF, despite all the materials that might give you that impression. It is written by diverse individuals with diverse motivations, many of them associated with employment. Almost all of the significant additions to LibreOffice are made by developers working for companies with a commercial interest in LibreOffice-derived service, support and products. TDF's Board cannot give any of them instructions to address any particular development need. The most they can do is make a budget allocation to have work done, and when that happens it needs to be openly tendered. Those tenders remain a controversial topic for the Board as you will see from the minutes. *Your Request* To the matter of NVAccess. To have the accessibility capabilities your organisation maintains integrated into LibreOffice is not within the direct power of TDF's Board. They could however approve a detailed, costed work proposal and then open a tender to have it satisfied by developers with the appropriate skills. From looking at https://www.nvaccess.org/ it seems the people most likely to be able to create that proposal are actually staff and volunteers for the charity you represent. May I thus suggest that your energy would be better spent trying to create that costed and detailed proposal for the Board to approve? If you need help with the format or structure needed, it is likely a member of the Engineering Steering Committee (which is actually the council of core developers) would assist you, or failing that I am sure Florian would direct you to resources if you asked him. I am no longer a Board member, but I would expect your proposal to be received positively. This approach will lead to an outcome; asking the Board to discuss accessibility in general terms will not :-) I hope that helps. Best regards, Simon On Wed, Oct 28, 2020 at 7:30 AM Quentin Christensen <[email protected]> wrote: > Thanks Florian, > > Given the increasing use of open source software such as Libre Office in > government and corporate use, it is disappointing it isn't more of a > priority. Not being accessible does explicitly exclude LIbre Office from > most government use for instance. I understand the difficulties with not > having any paid developers you can direct to do particular work, but it > does make the product specifically impossible to use for large segments of > potential users. > > I wonder how other FLOSS projects handle this? > > Kind regards > > Quentin. > > On Wed, Oct 28, 2020 at 5:59 PM Florian Effenberger < > [email protected]> wrote: > >> Hi Quentin, >> >> Quentin Christensen wrote: >> > Was there any discussion about accessibility and if so, did anything >> > come out of it? >> >> there was no separate discussion about accessibility. It is one of the >> topics the board has in their ranking, to determine the >> importance/priority of the topic - but we didn't discuss it in detail. >> >> Florian >> > > > -- > Quentin Christensen > Training and Support Manager > > Web: www.nvaccess.org > Training: https://www.nvaccess.org/shop/ > Certification: https://certification.nvaccess.org/ > User group: https://nvda.groups.io/g/nvda > Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/NVAccess > Twitter: @NVAccess <https://twitter.com/NVAccess> > -- *Simon Phipps* *Office:* +1 (415) 683-7660 *or* +44 (238) 098 7027
