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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