Just waiting on a #Linux distro to become as accessible as Windows to the Blind, and then I'll switch, because yikes. Link at end. Until then, sorry Linux, you still fail at accessibility compared to Microsoft. It's a shame, too! bleepingcomputer.com/news/micr…
Okki
in reply to Robert Kingett backup • • •Must be the wrong article 🤔
Have you tested the #Fedora distribution with the #GNOME desktop environment? They work hard to make it fully accessible.
I admit that the default synthesized voices are particularly awful, but they can easily be changed with Pied.
pied.mikeasoft.com
#accessibility #a11y
Pied
pied.mikeasoft.comTech Singer
in reply to Robert Kingett backup • • •Okki
in reply to Tech Singer • • •Linux doesn't mean anything. There are many different desktop environments (GNOME, KDE, Pantheon, Mate, Budgie, Xfce...). Each will offer a different experience and more or less good accessibility, depending on its resources.
The Yangsi Michael Dillon
in reply to Okki • • •Okki
in reply to The Yangsi Michael Dillon • • •If you just say that's not accessible at all and that's not true, that doesn't help anyone. It demotivates developers, and means there will be fewer users, contributors, bug reports and suggestions for improvements.
Okki
in reply to Okki • • •@anantagd @techsinger
I've tested the problematic examples in the article and everything seems to work on my side (but not being blind myself, I may have missed the main point).
I just think it would be more constructive to acknowledge the progress and point out what's still a problem, what needs to be improved.
Robert Kingett backup
in reply to Okki • • •Okki
in reply to Robert Kingett backup • • •@anantagd @techsinger
@jorge
One of the advantages of free software is that you can do whatever you want with it, without depending on the goodwill of a company.
So it might be simpler and more efficient to create a new Fedora variant (with BlueBuild), where the screen reader would be activated by default, with better quality synthesized voices, and a list of applications with good accessibility pre-installed.
blue-build.org
The easiest way to build your own desktop Linux images.
BlueBuildDrew Mochak
in reply to Okki • • •Robert Kingett backup
in reply to Drew Mochak • • •Okki
in reply to Robert Kingett backup • • •@objectinspace @anantagd @techsinger @jorge
If free software is far behind, it's only because Microsoft has 166k employees and $211.9 billion in revenue, with an entire team dedicated to accessibility. They have a user feedback team and an army of developers to improve and fix what's wrong. Free software is a small handful of employees and volunteers.
Okki
in reply to Okki • • •@objectinspace @anantagd @techsinger @jorge
And you can blame me if you want, but at the start of the discussion, we had an assertion that free software was absolutely not accessible (without the slightest detail about what was wrong with it). After a few exchanges, I now have the impression that with a Linux distribution configured from the outset for the blind, the situation would be quite different.
Okki
in reply to Okki • • •@objectinspace @anantagd @techsinger @jorge
And again, this is free software and we clearly don't have the financial resources of Microsoft.
At some point, if you want things to improve, you have to contribute in one way or another (development, bug reporting, creation of a new specialized distribution, etc.).
Okki
in reply to Okki • • •@objectinspace @anantagd @techsinger @jorge
I'd like to apologize if I've come across as too harsh during the whole discussion (English not being my mother tongue doesn't help either). I was trying to understand what was wrong, in good faith.
The Yangsi Michael Dillon
in reply to Okki • • •Okki
in reply to The Yangsi Michael Dillon • • •@anantagd @objectinspace @techsinger @jorge
I still regret that we misunderstood each other to this extent, since although I have no disability, I would really and sincerely like free software to be perfectly accessible to everyone.
Robert Kingett backup
in reply to Okki • • •Drew Mochak
in reply to Okki • • •modulux
in reply to Drew Mochak • • •I'm blind. My first linux distro was Debian 1.3.1. I used it by piping the output of the terminal to a serial port and plugging in a hardware voice synthesizer to it (you can imagine how well this did (not) work with curses output).
I've used Ubuntu, Suse, Mandriva (I think it was Mandrake at the time). There was a point when it almost, almost looked like Orca was catching up and becoming decent.
Then a long period of regressions which as far as I'm concerned has not finished.
It's not an issue of choosing the right distro or tweaking the right params. Using gnu/linux as a local OS for a blind person (remote access through ssh is another story) requires a degree of stubbornness and masochism I just don't have in me anymore. Believe me, I have tried.
Orca isn't a normal program. If (I should say when) it crashes, you lose access completely. So crashes must be extremely rare. If it's not efficient (and some of that is more of a DE issue, probably) the entire access is inefficient.
Now, where I differ with some people in this thread is in the notion that MS and Apple are good at this. They did a lot of good work, especially MS, but accessibility is far from a priority and they have regressions all the time.
And that's what worries me, because we don't have anywhere to go if things keep getting worse.
Please, when people tell you the accessibility sucks, listen. It is bad. There is today no way to run a gnu/linux system that's reliably and efficiently accessible. Hopefully this changes.
@objectinspace @gnomelibre @weirdwriter @anantagd @techsinger @jorge
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Lukáš Tyrychtr
in reply to modulux • • •modulux
in reply to Lukáš Tyrychtr • • •That's an important one. I haven't been looking into this too closely of late because it just annoys me, but the speed/latency of the accessibility event pump used to be a big one too, and general stability issues with Orca which is very crashy.
@tyrylu @fireborn @objectinspace @gnomelibre @weirdwriter @anantagd @techsinger @jorge
patricus
in reply to Lukáš Tyrychtr • • •only keyboard monitoring and screen curtain, and that it crashes sometimes, not more than voiceover, but it do'es
Lukáš Tyrychtr
in reply to patricus • • •patricus
in reply to Lukáš Tyrychtr • • •Lukáš Tyrychtr
in reply to patricus • • •Pierre
in reply to modulux • • •Is it possible/ efficient for some uses (not everything, I know, and not everyone) to simply use CLI display on a braille machine?
modulux
in reply to Pierre • • •It's possible and that's one way I use it. Even then, it's not so much fun with curses-based stuff, or complex tables, or lines that exceed 80 characters (which is the maximum a braille display will hold).
It's also a problem to be stuck with things like this because as the software world moves on, there are things that won't get a CLI interface at all.
@PierreM @objectinspace @gnomelibre @weirdwriter @anantagd @techsinger @jorge