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
<mailto: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.
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