Don't interpret my single post as representing the sentiment of this
list or the blindness community as a hole. I think to be successful,
you'll have to worry about PR and perception though, and my only advice
is that you'll have more success if you don't trivialize the work or
significance of Unity and Ubuntu Phone. That's just my opinion and
advice, and it's up to you whether you take it or not.
On 01/05/2013 08:07 AM, Nolan Darilek wrote:
All valid points, and while I agree in spirit, I'm not sure that I have
the patience or tact to worry about things like PR or perception. Are
they necessary? Perhaps, but my hope is that we don't have to keep
fighting these same fights from square one each time a new platform
emerges. After nearly 3.5 years I feel like I can finally back off of
Android a bit; we have decent web accessibility and the ability to do
text review, and things are steadily improving. I've been asking myself
for the past few days if I'm ready to start this fight from scratch
again, and if sentiment is that I can't call out Canonical for being
shiny in its pursuit of Unity and other pretty tech while having an
accessibility team of 1-2, then the answer likely is no. I don't have it
in me to do a few more years of time only to have the next shiny hotness
surface in 2016 and be just as inaccessible.
So yeah, maybe I'm the silly one for emailing this list and saying that
I'm not the right person for this. But whether or not I take up the
cause, it is one that needs to be taken up. Ubuntu and Linux have
succeeded all the more because for-profit companies like Canonical and
Redhat advance the state of the art. For them to do so and not
prioritize accessibility is irresponsible stewardship at best, and it
saddens me to look to non-free operating systems because those *have* to
be more accessible to keep government or educational contracts. I'd hope
that free software in general, and a company that builds Linux for human
beings in particular, would strive to improve accessibility without
having the threat of contract compliance hanging over their heads.
On 01/05/2013 07:13 AM, Christopher Chaltain wrote:
Below, you mention that Canonical is throwing resources at shiny
things. I'm not sure if you're referring to Ubuntu for the phone as a
shiny thing or not, but if you are or that's what you're implying then
I'd suggest refraining from that in your push to get more resources
committed to Ubuntu's accessibility. Shiny things in this context
refer to frivolous waste of times, and I don't think Canonical trying
to get Ubuntu into the phone space is a shiny thing in this sense.
Remember, Canonical is a privately owned company that is still trying
to become profitable. Having Ubuntu run on more and more platforms,
phones, TV's, tablets, netbooks, laptops, desktops, servers, clouds
and so on is part of the strategy to create enough revenue streams for
Canonical to become profitable. Note that I don't know that Canonical
is actively working to have Ubuntu run on all of those platforms or
not; I'm just basing this assumption on public comments from Canonical.
I think you make a lot of good points below, and I think this is a
laudable effort, I just don't think you serve your goals by implying
that something as significant as having Ubuntu run on smart phones is
somehow frivolous or trivial.
Note I also changed the subject line since this discussion seems to be
much broader than just the Ubuntu Phone OS announcement.
On 01/04/2013 10:50 PM, Nolan Darilek wrote:
Here is Jono's announcement of Ubuntu for Phones:
http://www.jonobacon.org/2013/01/02/announcing-ubuntu-for-phones/
My comment there appears to still be around, but I find that under
Ubuntu 12.10 I cannot arrow down the list of comments. Focus appears to
bounce to the top. That isn't Canonical's fault I'm certain, but one
would hope that a distribution that is changing so much about how we use
our computers could afford to hire enough of an accessibility team to
work on these types of issues.
If people want to work on this then I'm happy to help. Quite honestly,
I'm burning out on accessibility. I've used and have developed for
Android since 1.6, when the accessibility situation there was barely
tolerable, and even today I'm trying so hard to contribute to the
Android accessibility ecosystem and am being snubbed by Google. I don't
know what it is about accessibility and open source culture that makes
it so hard for people to contribute. My girlfriend has CP, and she too
wishes she could use Ubuntu but doesn't because of accessibility issues.
I'm almost to the point of replacing my Ubuntu system with Windows just
because I'm tired of battling with these access issues. I have a lot of
respect for Canonical's small access team, but if Canonical just wishes
to stick its head in the sand again and again, to throw a bunch of
resources at shiny things while ignoring the disabled, then it will
quickly become apparent that Linux for Human Beings *really* means Linux
for Completely Able-bodied Human Beings. I understand that other
distributions may not be accessible either, but that is no excuse for
Canonical, Redhat, etc. to simply stand aside and let Linux become less
accessibly relevant than Windows. It's sad that I enjoy using my
VirtualBox Windows 7 install more than I do Ubuntu for many tasks, and
is sad when accessibility developers ask me why I don't just abandon
Linux for the far more accessible Windows.,
--
Christopher (CJ)
chaltain at Gmail
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