Re: [to all candidates] Accessible software in Debian
Hi! Mario Lang writes: > I'd like to know your opinion on this. Are people with disabilities > something that we want to support, or is it just luck if "they" get a > working system. As a Free Software community, should we make sure that > the digital divide is not going to increase, or is accessibility just > margin topic which we as a community do not really care about? Accessibility is more important than most people realise, yet, it is also a very hard thing to get right when one has a hard time imagining how accessibility features would be/are used by the people they were designed for. My experience is that until you *had* to use a system this way, you'll just be poking around trying to accidentally get something right. So the lack of manpower in the field hurts even more than the lack of it elsewhere. > If you think we should make sure to provide maximum accessibility to our > users, do you have any idea what to do to ensure that? I'm not sure we can ensure anything - not within the scope of a volunteer project. What we can do, however, is making damned sure that accessibility is cared about. I believe many people would like to support accessibility in their projects much better than they do now, but without enough manpower, it's not going to happen soon. They need people who understand accessibility, who can test the software, or tell whether an idea is useless from an accessibility point of view or not. We need better communication, and more people motivated to help. I do have a couple of ideas how we could attempt to motivate - but we must keep in mind, that in the end, we do not want accessibility to be a Debian-only development, we want to take the task upstream. (If it originates from Debian, if we 'lend' our human resources to upstream, that's great, but whatever we come up with, has to go upstream.) > Do you have any ideas what we could do to raise awareness of > accessibility issues, and maybe motivate developers who are currently > not into accessibiility work in any way, to start caring about various > issues around accessibility for people with disabilities. I do have a couple, yes, but I don't want to sound extremely stupid, and would rather consult with someone who understands accessibility first, before I write down the ideas. Nevertheless, the basic driving force behind my ideas is positioning accessibility as an area where work is in high demand, is very rewarding, and can be learned. How? Meet with people. Tell people. Show people. For example, an accessibility workshop at DebConf would be a reasonable way to gather feedback from package maintainers, users within our developer community, and we could proceed from there. Furthermore, we have a thing called "Invisible Exhibition" here in Hungary, an exhibition of sorts, where the goal is to have a blind guide guide the visitors through the exhibition, in complete darkness, teaching them to rely on touch, hearing and smelling, and discover the world of the blind, first hand. They're shown and taught situations, simple things like paying for a cup of coffee at a restaurant. It is a very popular exhibition, and I think it's an amazingly useful one too. We could adapt a similar idea, and have sessions at the Debian booth in various conferences, teaching visitors how people with accessibilities use computer systems (and Debian in particular). I've seen blind people work with computers, and I was astonished: they used it more effectively than I did. That was kind of a revelation, to be honest: why would *they* be disabled, when it is I, who is inefficient? Finding oneself in a similar situation is a real eye opener. We should open more eyes. We have a fair number of people within the project who could help us with that, if elected DPL, I'd do my best to support them in doing so, even if, to open our eyes, we'd need to close them shut first. -- |8] -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-vote-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/87d2uu9zed@galadriel.madhouse-project.org
Re: [to all candidates] Accessible software in Debian
On 2013-03-18 14:37, Mario Lang wrote: While discussing this topic on IRC with other Debian people I was kind of shocked to read that basically every feature can be dropped anytime, and since accessibility is for a very small user group, that user group suffering from big rewrites is "normal" and acceptable. I can appreciate the frustrations here. Within the DebConf organisation we've tried hard to make sure that the conferences are as accessible as possible, but individual small decisions by people who don't pay attention to these issues can easily spoil a whole event. In the same way, for an accessible desktop we need every upstream maintainer to pay attention to these issues, and one change that doesn't take account of accessibility can make a program useless to many people. Sadly I don't think we have the resources to fix every upstream project and send patches. Nor can we just throw out every piece of software that is not accessible to everyone, which probably wouldn't leave us with much at all. But clearly accessibility should be part of our decisions about what software is "default", and should inform, for example, decisions about when we keep new and old versions of a package around in parallel rather than only the latest release. (It's quite possible that a new version will be more accessible to one group, but less accessible to another.) Do you have any ideas what we could do to raise awareness of accessibility issues, and maybe motivate developers who are currently not into accessibiility work in any way, to start caring about various issues around accessibility for people with disabilities. A couple of things I can see that we might be able to do better: - provide a stronger Debian voice to call for good accessibility support, e.g. at developer events for upstream projects - make sure that accessibility is kept as a headline topic in Debian discussions: there may be lessons here to learn from Christian Perrier's methods of promoting the need for translation over the years - track in a more public way packages' accessibility status, both to help users filter software that will work for them, and to help contributors find areas they can help improve. As someone who knows a lot more about these topics than I do, do you have concrete ideas of things you would like to see us doing as a project? -- Moray -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-vote-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/06d8d48402b63e3bb78ab94930953...@www.morayallan.com
Re: [to all candidates] Accessible software in Debian
Hi Mario, On 18/03/13 at 12:37 +0100, Mario Lang wrote: > Hi. > > To make a rather complicated and long story short: Accessibility of > graphical user interfaces in Debian has taken a slight step backward > with the GNOME 3 rewrite. Squeeze was more stable regarding this. > > While discussing this topic on IRC with other Debian people I was kind > of shocked to read that basically every feature can be dropped anytime, > and since accessibility is for a very small user group, that user group > suffering from big rewrites is "normal" and acceptable. > > I'd like to know your opinion on this. Are people with disabilities > something that we want to support, or is it just luck if "they" get a > working system. As a Free Software community, should we make sure that > the digital divide is not going to increase, or is accessibility just > margin topic which we as a community do not really care about? > > If you think we should make sure to provide maximum accessibility to our > users, do you have any idea what to do to ensure that? > > I realize the provokativeness of this mail. However, I feel I really > have to ask this question publicly. When I read the reactions "quoted" > above on IRC, my heart felt heavy, and I was seriously considering for > a moment to leave Debian, since the attitude I've read there was really very > discouraging to me personally. Actually, I didn't expect a rteaction > like this from fellow DDs. > > I realize that accessibility is suffering from the same lack of manpower > issues that most other free software projects have. But I am still > enthusiastic enough to hope for some sort of solution that will work > around the "small margin group" problem in one or another way. > > Do you have any ideas what we could do to raise awareness of > accessibility issues, and maybe motivate developers who are currently > not into accessibiility work in any way, to start caring about various > issues around accessibility for people with disabilities. > > After all, we will all grow old, and our eyes and ears will eventually > start to fail slightly. I guess at least then people will enjoy if > their favourite desktops on Linux would help them to still be able to do > quality work with their computers. And I dont mean just reading and > replying mail, I mean everything else that people without diminished > vision or hearing or mobility would want to do. > > If you wait until your body fails you, it might be too late to catch up then. First, I think accessibility is extremely important. Now, a few points: In Debian, we often have no real choice but to follow upstream projects decisions. A good example is GNOME 3, another good example is systemd (and how it could [not] support kfreebsd). It's sometimes possible for Debian to maintain patches or its own branch, but it's often too much work. And as you rightfully pointed out, accessibility suffers from the same lack of manpower than the rest of the project. So yes, we should work on increasing awareness. I can imagine two main ways to do that: - communication. Most of us rarely have the chance to engage with people with disabilities. Some of us might not know what it's like to use a computer in that case. More talks or demos on this topic during DebConf, or more blog articles, etc. would be very useful so that the community understands the needs and current limitations. - have an "accessibility" release goal to leverage the increased expose (display in the PTS, etc.) and have a way to generally check the status of accessibility in Debian. Lucas -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-vote-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/20130319070404.gb28...@xanadu.blop.info
Re: [to all candidates] Accessible software in Debian
Vincent Cheng (18/03/2013): > Slightly off-topic, but since you bring up GNOME 3 as a specific > example of how Debian has regressed in terms of accessibility...how > exactly has GNOME regressed? It still has AFAIK the same set of > accessibility features [1] as it did previously with GNOME 2, and it > is easily accessibly via an icon on the top bar of the shell (you > can't even get rid of it without an extension), and the > gnome-accessibility package is pulled in by a number of other gnome > meta-packages in Debian. Admittedly I myself don't use any of those > features, but I'm curious to know why you consider GNOME 3 not as > accessible as GNOME 2 was (i.e. are they any specific features dropped > in GNOME 3)? For starters, GDM is not accessible: http://bugs.debian.org/694937 Mraw, KiBi. signature.asc Description: Digital signature
Re: [to all candidates] Accessible software in Debian
On Mon, Mar 18, 2013 at 4:37 AM, Mario Lang wrote: > Hi. > > To make a rather complicated and long story short: Accessibility of > graphical user interfaces in Debian has taken a slight step backward > with the GNOME 3 rewrite. Squeeze was more stable regarding this. [snip] Slightly off-topic, but since you bring up GNOME 3 as a specific example of how Debian has regressed in terms of accessibility...how exactly has GNOME regressed? It still has AFAIK the same set of accessibility features [1] as it did previously with GNOME 2, and it is easily accessibly via an icon on the top bar of the shell (you can't even get rid of it without an extension), and the gnome-accessibility package is pulled in by a number of other gnome meta-packages in Debian. Admittedly I myself don't use any of those features, but I'm curious to know why you consider GNOME 3 not as accessible as GNOME 2 was (i.e. are they any specific features dropped in GNOME 3)? If this is about the fact that upstream has dropped support for non 3d-accelerated machines for use with GNOME, well, I don't think there's much that can be done about it. We can't force upstream to care about old hardware, after all. I disagree with the notion that being accessible means supporting old hardware. FWIW, Linux kernel 3.8 dropped support for i386, so the next stable Debian release is going to be even less "accessible" for users of ancient hardware. Regards, Vincent [1] https://help.gnome.org/users/gnome-help/stable/a11y.html -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-vote-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/CACZd_tBZu4C0iQ3a0QwN=OyY0V=seUmkXkUxR=OEt31=9d9...@mail.gmail.com
Re: [to all candidates] Accessible software in Debian
Hi, On Mon, Mar 18, 2013 at 01:55:16PM +0100, Thomas Preud'homme wrote: > As just said I don't have any peticuliar disabilities myself right now, but I > wholeheartedly agree that accessibility is important and should be important > for the project. Thanks a lot for this question to the candidates. +10 [OT] please note that accessibility starts with the ability to configure your system the way you need it. M-F'up to devel@? Kind regards, --Toni++ -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-vote-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/20130318131615.ga30...@spruce.wiehl.oeko.net
Re: [to all candidates] Accessible software in Debian
Le lundi 18 mars 2013 12:37:15, Mario Lang a écrit : > Hi. > > To make a rather complicated and long story short: Accessibility of > graphical user interfaces in Debian has taken a slight step backward > with the GNOME 3 rewrite. Squeeze was more stable regarding this. [SNIP justified rant about accessibility] (Note though that as a KDE user without disabilities, I can't judge for the special case you are doing against Gnome) As just said I don't have any peticuliar disabilities myself right now, but I wholeheartedly agree that accessibility is important and should be important for the project. Thanks a lot for this question to the candidates. Best regards, Thomas signature.asc Description: This is a digitally signed message part.
[to all candidates] Accessible software in Debian
Hi. To make a rather complicated and long story short: Accessibility of graphical user interfaces in Debian has taken a slight step backward with the GNOME 3 rewrite. Squeeze was more stable regarding this. While discussing this topic on IRC with other Debian people I was kind of shocked to read that basically every feature can be dropped anytime, and since accessibility is for a very small user group, that user group suffering from big rewrites is "normal" and acceptable. I'd like to know your opinion on this. Are people with disabilities something that we want to support, or is it just luck if "they" get a working system. As a Free Software community, should we make sure that the digital divide is not going to increase, or is accessibility just margin topic which we as a community do not really care about? If you think we should make sure to provide maximum accessibility to our users, do you have any idea what to do to ensure that? I realize the provokativeness of this mail. However, I feel I really have to ask this question publicly. When I read the reactions "quoted" above on IRC, my heart felt heavy, and I was seriously considering for a moment to leave Debian, since the attitude I've read there was really very discouraging to me personally. Actually, I didn't expect a rteaction like this from fellow DDs. I realize that accessibility is suffering from the same lack of manpower issues that most other free software projects have. But I am still enthusiastic enough to hope for some sort of solution that will work around the "small margin group" problem in one or another way. Do you have any ideas what we could do to raise awareness of accessibility issues, and maybe motivate developers who are currently not into accessibiility work in any way, to start caring about various issues around accessibility for people with disabilities. After all, we will all grow old, and our eyes and ears will eventually start to fail slightly. I guess at least then people will enjoy if their favourite desktops on Linux would help them to still be able to do quality work with their computers. And I dont mean just reading and replying mail, I mean everything else that people without diminished vision or hearing or mobility would want to do. If you wait until your body fails you, it might be too late to catch up then. -- CYa, ⡍⠁⠗⠊⠕ -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-vote-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/87ppyxhrbo@fx.delysid.org
