On Mon, Oct 5, 2009 at 3:43 PM, jtd <[email protected]> wrote: > On Monday 05 October 2009, Vickram Crishna wrote: > > On Mon, Oct 5, 2009 at 3:02 PM, jtd <[email protected]> wrote: > > > On Monday 05 October 2009, sunil wrote: > > > > Let me assure you that > > > > mandating WCAG will go a long way in ensuring rapid adoption > of > > > > FOSS tool for producing and consuming web-content. > > > > > > In the case of accessibility we are already dealing with a thoroughly > > > disadvantaged minority with extremely limited resources and > > > opportunities. I > > > do not see how removing references to FLOSS can be beneficial, except > by > > > relying on charity (doles / handouts / subsidy). > > > > Just fyi, depending on how the word 'ability' is defined, the minority > you > > refer to could be about 30% of India's population. That is substantially > > the same or more than the communities often referred to as 'majorities' > > (and I won't digress by listing the most - or should that be least? - > > obvious ones). > > WOW!. I most certainly never new that. Even if the term is substantially > watered down the numbers are hughe. any pointers to stats on the web? > > Whenever I meet up with a bunch of educated people, the majority wear spectacles. Why should it be /that/ surprising that the quantum of people who will be impacted by 'improving' policies (standards etc) towards accessibility are actually so substantial? Let me answer that: because we have cultural hangovers against persons with different abilities, to the point we don't accept 'they' are 'we'.
I got the 30% figure at a conference some years ago, but I suspect the National Association for the Blind website will have some telling numbers on visually challenged persons, for instance. The incidence of untreated cataracts is simply appalling, and with that the country loses a majority of the most experienced workforce (in the unorganised sector, of course). Blinding malnutrition is another huge problem (childhood vitamin A deficiency). Other childhood vitamin deficiencies lead to bone weakness and mental slowness. Bone and muscle problems need different I/O widgets (the standard mouse and keyboard is pathetically unsuitable). Mental slowness needs a GUI that helps the user decide how best to express herself, even to the point of data entry. Visual challenges need brightness and size flexibility. And that does not even begin to address the problem of languages, the arguably greatest cause of discrimination in the country. But localisation is perhaps one of the Free world's greatest achievements. It took several years for a CDAC sponsored project to try and localise Windows and MS Office to Hindi, because MS would not do it, whereas incredibly large numbers of free software apps and tools are localised now for several languages. I have mentioned in an earlier post about the lack of a suitable standard for mobile phones in India wrt localisation (and got a good boost from jtd towards sorting that out), and am hoping to work soon on a solution that bypasses the patents lock on GSM widgets insofar as telephony services themselves are concerned. I don't think the people who either work on localisation or fund it would like their efforts to be characterised as charity, though. We need to express ourselves very strongly, through FOSSCOMM, that 'conventional' models of business need to be localised suitably, instead of blindly adopting one that evolved in a different culture and era. All in good time. -- Vickram http://communicall.wordpress.com
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