---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: Phill Whiteside <[email protected]> Date: Thu, Feb 18, 2010 at 9:17 PM Subject: Re: [orca-list] Making Ubuntu Software Center accessible To: Hugh Sasse <[email protected]>
The raft of sometimes contradictory standards proposals are a nightmare. I've been recently looking into providing fuller support for web-site readers - one set of standards for CSS has been demoted, a new set is kicking around from Web Accessibility Initiative and yet more proposals for the next CSS - I'm not sure what to code to, just for a web-site. Imagine being the author of software, you could spend a lot of time meeting a set of standards, to find they have been supplanted. My views on the matter are over here --> http://forum.phillw.net/viewtopic.php?f=14&t=32 But, heck, I am trying !! Regards, Phill. On Thu, Feb 18, 2010 at 6:50 PM, Hugh Sasse <[email protected]> wrote: > I think there's a more fundamental question here. That is: > "Why are people still developing inaccessible software?" > > The Americans With Disabilities Act dates back nearly two decades, > the UK legislation is about 15 years old, and that's just the legal > side of things, ignoring culture. So why aren't people catching up > with this? > > I think there are a number of answers to this, but they include > > * Much of the information out there is about available applications > and configuring them by/for the disabled user > > * There would seem to be nothing in the acceptance process which means > that inaccessible applications are rejected for inclusion in > GNU/Linux. [I don't know enough about that to be certain...] > > * A quick search shows little for the programmer along the lines of > how to make your application accessible. I found Accerciser through > http://www.linuxjournal.com/article/9991 > but good though that is, it is rather "after the event", as opposed > to how to write in accessibility from the start. > > * Much of the material is pretty intimidating for someone starting out > in terms of the number of things you have to cover. Just taking > vision: speech access, braille access, large print access, the needs > of colour blind people, be that red/green, blue/yellow, or total > colour blindness. [Then there's deafblindness...] > > * The wider case for accessibility doesn't seem to be put forward > enough. Much is said about full participation of the whole of > society, but that won't get most people to jump at the chance to > add accessibility. What seems to be left out is that something > accessible is usually easier to script with another technology, > because there are more hooks into it. Textual interfaces can be > screen scraped easily, etc. > > A search for Accessibility Howto (a particularly blunt instrument for > this sort of thing) only turns up this on the second page: > > http://www.faqs.org/docs/Linux-HOWTO/Accessibility-Dev-HOWTO.html > > and it is dated 2002, which is probably rather old now. > > I'd suggest that there is a need for people who know more about > GNU/Linux accessibility than I do [1] to write about it for a wider > audience to get the techniques out there. "As a programmer this > will benefit you, because you can do [...] as a result of the > accessibility hooks being there." Etc. > > I don't think the problems will start to go away until more people > are aware of how easy the easy things are. The difficult things > will come later. > > Hugh > > [1] I don't know much about the programming of accessibility yet. > I'm hoping this will change when (if?) I get more time. > > -- > Ubuntu-accessibility mailing list > [email protected] > https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-accessibility >
-- Ubuntu-accessibility mailing list [email protected] https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-accessibility
