Thread: About Windows 11's high system requirements. You know, a lot of blind people, who don't have jobs, live on social security and disability money, and who definitely don't have the newest computers, won't get Windows 11. This could have been a great chance for Linux to step up and say loud and proud "Because we support every person's ability to choose their system, and use and learn about computers, we will never force upon users what system they must run. And because we stand proudly with people with disabilities, all blind people are welcome in the world of free and open source software, where they can learn and create just like everyone else." But no. Gnome, one of the most popular desktops on Linux, is trash with accessibility. KDE is working on it, but that'll take years. Who's ever heard of Mate? And who makes current software for the command line, for users and not other developers?
Well, honestly a lot of FOSS software has been lacking in usability in general, not even accessibility. It’s to be expected, as lots of software has basically been born from hobby projects and there is no unifying entity creating everything or defining human interface guidelines, besides perhaps GNOME and KDE.
The thing is that there is a big emphasis in FOSS software to “implement yourself” the features needed because most work is volunteer driven. So unless someone or some organization were to fund a developer or two to implement accessibility features, they don’t magically come into being.
Yeah, I think, it’s also underestimated how difficult accessibility is, because e.g. as a seeing programmer you’re pretty much blind to the way a blind person perceives the world.
I try to make my software accessible, but beyond basic keyboard accessibility and fixing the warnings that for example Firefox tells me, it becomes really hard to know what I’m doing. I have no idea what a good UI in a screen reader feels like.
I presume, companies can bring in outside experts or send their developers on trainings. I have none of that and get 0 feedback on how good it is what I tried to do.
Right, yeah, if you’re working with a mature UI framework, a lot of things may already have a solution.
Unfortunately, that very quickly becomes a luxury when you want to work with new, interesting technologies, as tends to happen when it’s your hobby.
I was also specifically thinking of:
a webpage that I’m maintaining. I use semantic, simple HTML and try to fix all the accessibility warnings, but for all I know, it could be completely unusable for blind people.
a game that I’m dabbling with. This one is really hard. It feels like I’d have to build a different game to make it playable with a screen reader or with e.g. just a pointing device.
Don’t all GTK interfaces get screen-reader compatibility automatically from the built-in features of GTK? At least I thought they did based on what I read while I was working with it.
Well, honestly a lot of FOSS software has been lacking in usability in general, not even accessibility. It’s to be expected, as lots of software has basically been born from hobby projects and there is no unifying entity creating everything or defining human interface guidelines, besides perhaps GNOME and KDE.
The thing is that there is a big emphasis in FOSS software to “implement yourself” the features needed because most work is volunteer driven. So unless someone or some organization were to fund a developer or two to implement accessibility features, they don’t magically come into being.
Yeah, I think, it’s also underestimated how difficult accessibility is, because e.g. as a seeing programmer you’re pretty much blind to the way a blind person perceives the world.
I try to make my software accessible, but beyond basic keyboard accessibility and fixing the warnings that for example Firefox tells me, it becomes really hard to know what I’m doing. I have no idea what a good UI in a screen reader feels like.
I presume, companies can bring in outside experts or send their developers on trainings. I have none of that and get 0 feedback on how good it is what I tried to do.
Human Interface Guidelines should solve that. GNOME has their own ones, for example.
Edited: In GNOME, accesibility guidelines seems to be separated in https://developer.gnome.org/accessibility-devel-guide/stable/
Right, yeah, if you’re working with a mature UI framework, a lot of things may already have a solution.
Unfortunately, that very quickly becomes a luxury when you want to work with new, interesting technologies, as tends to happen when it’s your hobby.
I was also specifically thinking of:
I am studying WebDev right now.
Next year I have a subject for design guidelines and accesibility is a topic.
Don’t all GTK interfaces get screen-reader compatibility automatically from the built-in features of GTK? At least I thought they did based on what I read while I was working with it.
https://developer.gnome.org/accessibility-devel-guide/stable/