I agree with this, but I do have a few caveats. First, looking for a
job, whether you're between jobs or between projects, can be a pretty
time consuming effort requiring a lot of hard work and a lot of mental
toughness. Someone in this position may not have a lot of time to do
some programming for free. Second, a programmer looking for that next
job or that next project does have to sharpen their skills and make
themselves as employable as possible. Although working in the
accessibility infrastructure and working on an open source project like
Orca or NVDA would definitely build some marketable skills, it isn't
going to do as much as contributing to some popular open source project
like OpenStack will do for someone's employability. I'm not discouraging
anyone from working on AT or contributing to Orca; I'm just saying a
blind programmer between jobs or projects may have very legitimate
reasons to spend some of that time working on something else or in some
other area.
On 11/03/2013 11:11 AM, B. Henry wrote:
Of course. The other part of this includes more willingness to back such
projects financially, but the other angle to consider is that so many blind
people are unemployed now. Even if they become pretty good programmers there's
not likely going to be work for them all, and even less traditional fulltime
work. While one is looking for work they could also sharpen their skills
working on the kind of software projects we're talking about here. Others may
be content to dedicate some window of time to this work living on some kind of
disability paymentss, and on the more extreme edge of the conversation there's
the alt economy model. Whether its possible to create a group with the
critical mass of talent and deverse skillset needed to be sustainable is not
one I'm willing to bet on; but I would certainly consider donating some labor
to a person who has made my computer more usable above and beyond the very
limited money I can donate to open-source projects.
While I don't see a revolution in the making, maybe we can see a significant
evolution in thinking and behavior where more users of FOS-access-tech donate
to developers. While there's a long way to go, NVDA has made notable progress
getting donations from end-users over the last few years.
Another thing to consider is that many programmers work on a project basis, not
a salary payed by one company. This means that even very good coders with
contacts and good work habits are likely to have some down time between
projects that they could dedicate to accessibility work, or they could choose
to give a couple weeks here and there to something that interests them.
Get a job with Google and use your discressionary time to improve
g-access...lolThere's nomagic bullet, but I think many of us can organize our
lives better on an individual basis, and we can perhaps create some support
systems making this easier.
--
B.H.
On Sat, Nov 02, 2013 at 04:44:35PM -0500, Christopher Chaltain wrote:
I agree with this sentiment, but one challenge I see is that it's
hard to make a living doing accessibility programming. If a blind
person has the aptitude and becomes a programmer then they may have
a hard time getting paid to do any accessibility related coding. Of
course they could do this in their spare time, but then their time
is constrained and it takes a while to come up to speed on some of
this access technology infrastructure.
On 11/01/2013 07:39 PM, B. Henry wrote:
Ah_men!
Sadly, neither drugs nor prayer seem to be able to give many blind folk that;
and I think we all know of more than a couple bind folks who have both 1 or
more degrees and above average inteligence who are unemployed.
One alternative is for more of those who have some potential as far as logical
thinking and such, and a fair math back ground to learn to code.
It's a longer and harder row to hoe, but if enough folks got in to the nuts and
bolts of the tech they use so much then most of the money could be taken out of
the equation.
I have a terrible math background, am over 50 with responsibilities, and a few
not very promising hours looking at beginners programing tutorials; so, I''m
probably not our boy, but there must be othrs who could really do something.
I'm still hoping I can say I've done something real to advance Linux
accessibility before I die, but this may not be as concrete as I'd like.
On Fri, Nov 01, 2013 at 07:24:25PM -0400, Doug Smith wrote:
No, the thing we need is to become those rich visionaries. How in infinity can
we do it? What is the over night, have nothing to have it all quick
fix approach to getting blind people into areas of work where they will have
real incomes and earn that kind of money so that each of us might be
willing to put that few million into it. Instead of waiting for someone else
to do it, how in the known universe can we become those people?
I'm serious. Any possible answers that might be doable for all of us?
--
Doug Smith: Special Agent
S.W.A.T Spiritual Warfare and Advanced Technology
Forever serving our LORD and SAVIOUR, JESUS CHRIST.
--
Ubuntu-accessibility mailing list
[email protected]
https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-accessibility
--
Christopher (CJ)
chaltain at Gmail
--
Ubuntu-accessibility mailing list
[email protected]
https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-accessibility
--
Christopher (CJ)
chaltain at Gmail
--
Ubuntu-accessibility mailing list
[email protected]
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