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FOSS and Disabled Communities Out of Touch
Yinepuhotep writes "Newsforge has a thought-provoking article on the lack of communication between the FOSS community and disabled persons." From the article: "How can the FOSS community address the issues of the disabled? The most urgent task is to improve documentation. Perhaps you can make it a personal goal to be able to configure your favorite FOSS tool blindfolded while someone reads your improved instructions aloud. Your local LUG could organize ways to connect volunteers to assist disabled users with installations. Be sure to contact local disability rights groups to let them know what you're doing. They may also be able to provide more feedback about needs in your community."
Hmm, it would be a worthy project to make the man pages be able to read themselves aloud.
Patents Drive Free Software as Hurricanes Drive Construction Industry
The article headline is a bad joke, right?
Slashdot: Playing Favorites Since 1997
This is definitely a challenge for all developers world wide. However, this is nothing new, or unique to FOSS, just an old problem approached from a new perspective.
As mentioned in the article, this leads back to an earlier Slashdot news post, on the Consistency/Efficiency debate.
I would be inclined to lean towards consistency myself, and side with the disabled folks, but how can you create new and exciting platforms while still being maintaining familiarity. If you ask me, the web is an excellent case study in creating exciting new products, while simultaneously establishing conventions.
Perhaps this article shouldn't be taken as a call to turn all of the FOSS software into retail clones, but to concentrate on bringing innovative features, while still maintaining a consistant and familiar interface.
Can a blind person install and configure windows, iis, SQL server, exchange, and active directory?
Once your favorite OSS tool is installed can a blind person use them?
How about other types of disabilities? How about if a person is blind and deaf? Or is missing both arms? Or is a quadrapeligic? How do we help them install and use linux?
It seems to me that you have to draw the line someplace. If somebody wants to put forth the effort then great but honestly why don't we concentrate on getting the documentation so that a reasonably intelligent non disabled person can use it first. Then we can worry about the blind.
In the mean time if a blind person wants to run linux please have them contact their local LUG, I am pretty sure somebody would step up to the plate. Another option might be to buy a pre-installed linux machine, lots of companies sell them.
evil is as evil does
... poke an OSS developer in the eyes today!
http://outcampaign.org/
What, you mean computer software isn't written by republicans?
How well does commercial software meet the needs of the disabled? I think all software needs to be updated, but surely it isn't just FOSS developers that are out of touch with the needs of the disabled.
Coincidentially, I would imagine that good old command-line interface, which is well developed in Linux, compared to *cough cough* some OSes, would be the best for blind people in terms of accessibility.
dmwaters, a really cool blind lady, is an IRCop on Freenode. I wonder what she'd have to say about the article.
Until the Singularity, I consider all of us quite disabled. What is this ultra-low bandwidth interface known as the "keyboard" doing around?
It's not just FOSS. The computer world as a whole has largely ignored them. There have been several notible attempts to make them equals (the W3C for example), but the problem is that software interface people are 1) generally not disabled and do not understand what it is like to be disabled, and 2) generally aren't even experts at all, but tossed in from the software development or marketing department. As a result they're often clueless about accessability (hell even usability is a serious problems in many cases).
This isn't limited to FOSS. For a perfect example, see Netscape.
The FOSS community has enough trouble getting things working for the able bodied let alone the disabled...
rimshot
thanks, I am here all week... tip your waitress...
It strikes me that the open-source community is, by and large, an "every man for himself" environment. People create software that helps them solve the problems they have; they fix issues in that software that affect their usage of it. To a certain extent the highly organized, high-participation projects can alleviate that, but even there, if there's a dearth of volunteers for a particular task, what're the chances it'll actually get done?
That's not to say that all accessibility enhancements must be made by the disabled; there are of course a few charitable developers out there who'd be willing to take on these tasks for the greater good, and there are the friends and relatives of the disabled, who are in some sense "closer to the front line"... Realistically (or perhaps cynically) though, unless capable open-source developers are suffering without it, or unless someone sits down and pays for the development of it, the accessibility of open-source software is always going to be a low priority.
Don't like it? Do something about it yourself, or create a charitable foundation to pay for other people to. Such is capitalism, and such is human nature.
I'm what the state calls "Visually Disabled". Some people would rather just say I'm retarded, or even "useless". All are terms I often hear, despite the fact that I was born normal with better then 20/20 eyesight.
Like it or not there is a large rift between the needs of the disabled and the people willing to take the extra time to address it. Disabled people, no matter the affliction, all have the same problem today: Only the people who need the extra interface flexibility are the ones interested in doing anything about it. And 99% of the time, they still cant because what they need is required to be able to build that very same system. Its a recursive dependency.
We need a better focus on software based voice systems. Speech recognition, and yes better generation, it all needs to be there and sound good and be fast doing it. And yes, sounding good matters. I always laugh when I hear (google for festival, flite, blind linux) people talk about "eye candy" or "improved frame rates". They dont matter, and its just useless junk to me and others who lack the visual functions to care about how crisp the screen looks; What I and every other visually disabled person wants is "Ear Candy", the type of synthed voice that sounds like she or he really exists, so we dont get fed up with listening to that horrible robot voice all day and go crazy.
One thing that most people dont understand as well is that most of us who are disabled in any way at all are dirt poor. It could be from medical bills, the lack of the ability to even work because of our disability, the fact that to most we are seen as less then human so people dont want to hire us for work we can do, or any number of other reasons. The fact is, most of us do not have much money and have a lot of free time on our hands. We could be open sources greatest contributors if the OOS community cared enough to do the things we cant to help us make the tools we need. Once our hungry minds have the option, you have no idea how much we will use it.
I'm very lucky. I worked as a independent consulted for 5 years, taught myself as much as I could while I still had better eye sight then I do now in my "good" eye, and make sure to keep lights dim or off when I dont have to worry about a sightie needing more light to function so I dont get eye strain or migraines that could keep me from working due to my photo sensitivity. I made a living with Linux offering support, administration services, and my skills as a code monkey against all odds for 5 years, before my current job, because I did not give up. Many of my fellow disabled did not have the chance to use even that much sight, or did not get the time I did at a young age to learn things the "normal" way before my accident. That gave me a slight advantage, as now I know both worlds.
Most of us dont have that. But then again most people dont understand, they cant. So everybody reading this, pick a day out of the week and go to bed the night before wearing a blindfold. Wake up with it still on and go through just one day without your ability to see. At all. Then maybe you will get a hint of what it is like for us, OOS's most eager and unwelcome members. And I say only a hint as that is all you will get; Because the first time you fall down, bump into something and break soemthing, want to cook a meal or need to take a piss, the first thing your going to do is take that blindfold off. Just remember that many do not have that option.
- d
"open source zealot" and "software engineer" are two entirely different occupations.
> What, you mean computer software isn't written by republicans?
Most republicans have the equivalent of an 8th grade education, so no, computer software is most likely NOT written by rethuglicans.
let's get the dev tools upto speed for disabled users...
and then they can damn well make the rest accessible
actually I am happy to see you, however that is in fact a banana in my pocket.
There is BLinux.
// file: mice.h
#include "frickin_lasers.h"
Free software is written according to developer's personal needs and interests. If I have a blind friend, I might try to test my Internet radio recorder with his/her screen reader. If not, oh well, I barely have time to finish a graphics-only, English-only version anyway. Given that disabled people have limited potential to be developers or to be rich enough to justify commercial support in most software*, the best bet would be government grants or charitable contributions of development money/personal time. It's unlikely that most FOSS can be made accessible, only a few "key" projects like Firefox and Open Office.
* This is not to reflect on their intelligence or discount exceptional cases, but you know it's just harder for these folks to do things.
It strikes me that Sun will be thinking hard about the best way to meet accessibility requirements so that they can win this bid.
We're working on it, but idiots keep throwing money at ximian!
The Farewell Tour II
One of the Rhodes Scholars I knew back in my PhD program is blind. He was one of our best numerical analyst and could code in C or MATLAB as well as anyone else. He had a device that he connected to his computer that would scan whatever line the cursor was on and then raise some pins to form Braille. To read math books, he would request the LaTeX source from the publisher. He made all of his graphs in GNUPlot. He could even scan a page from a note and have OCR translate it to ASCII. He had no trouble getting his work done.
Trigun, don't feed the anoynmous trolls! And being an extreme-right winger myself, disabled users sounds like a great underexploited market niche.
Slashdot: Playing Favorites Since 1997
Yes. However, what surprises me is that the Free Software community doesn't have stronger ties with community-centric organisations such as voluntary groups, human rights groups, etc. They're really natural allies, considering the ethical concerns that both groups take seriously etc.
The Open Source solution framework is, by all appearances, going to be a far better, overall, experience for blind users -- but it's going to take some time to ramp up to the point where it's operationally better than (or even equivalent to), the current solution that third-party providers have managed to back-hack onto Office.
In the meantime, it's going to take some work to convince these people that there's some long term value to helping the FOSS community get up to speed.
Free Software: Like love, it grows best when given away.
The most urgent task is to improve documentation.
Not for me it isn't. "Open Source" does not mean "good works for charity".
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PGP Key ID 0xCB8FF658
No, I'd say it is unique to FOSS, in the computer world. An army of software developers, independently scratching their itches, just doesn't tend to care about the needs and wants of other demographics. It's difficult to learn how to program if you're blind, and so, on the whole, the motivation is weaker for FOSS to cater to the blind.
The one exception I can think of is this blind guy in my college class who wrote some text-to-speech software for Linux. A great man.
What I would suggest is for a set of guidelines to be drawn up which would insure that a given program is usable by at least the most common disabilities. This would make it easier on people who want to make their software "disabled friendly".
Such documents already exist for both web designers and architects, so why not software designers?
Slashdot: news from nerds.
Standards Schmandards
Why?
Idntknwn.
We need full documentation, projects's papers, Foo's papers, planning's papers, economy's papers, open source business's papers, ...
Where are they those?
Idntknwn, many things are hidden.
Check out the video at channel9 (click the source link above). There's especially one really good question/answer combo in there, I'll transcript it:
[ Start: 08:50 ] Interviewer: How could the software be improved for you? What would you tell the Visual Studio team, for instance, to do to make the software better.
Kenneth: Visual Studio has been very difficult for me to learn with JAWS. JAWS company itself does not specifically support Visual Studio as of now. And they're really working hard on adding the support to the JAWS software. So I think as of now that's the main thing that's holding back the accessibility levels, that JAWS itself hasn't really fully incorporated it. But I think Visual Studio relies very heavily on colored text, for symbolizing things. So rather than having the text that's related to one thing versus another isolated in different locations on the screen, they're all in a list and the different categories are symbolized for different text colors and background colors. I think that makes it a little bit difficult to sort things out on the screen with a screen reader.
So that would be one thing I could suggest, but I think we're primarily waiting on JAWS. [...] As long as they're continually aware of the accessibility levels of their software and test them for that aspect of the usability. Then I think it'll continue to be usable, as long as the specialized software such as JAWS evolves along with it. And so I think that they're working hard at companies like JAWS and their competitors to stay current. And sometimes they fall behind, and I think for specialized programs like software development that aren't as common as say Word processors that sometimes are not as up to date. [ End: 11:12 ]
define: JAWS
"JAWS (an acronym for Job Access With Speech) is a screen reader for the visually impaired." (Source)
Perfect is the enemy of done.
Talking to Niall Sclater, Virtual Learning Environment Programme Director at The Open University on what they're having to do to Moodle to bring it up to scratch for their large community of blind users was very interesting. The OU have 100,000 students, 10,000 of them with a registered disability, basically they're have to completely redo the accessibility of Moodle.
There was, however, no suggestion that any of the alternatives, commerical or open source were any better.
cheers, thingie
If you're interested in hearing Niall speak on such issues, or have a pointed question to ask him, why not register for our up-coming Open Source and Sustainability 2006 conference
Guidelines exist for software as well but are rarely used for some reason. A few examples that would help all users:
I believe that following these and other specifications would make life much better for all users. These guidelines will make sure your software works with most assistive technologies as well.
There are also a lot of open source developer tools to help you test your applications. E.g.:
Standards Schmandards
I can confirm that as fact. I once was admin at a place where a (nearly) blind woman worked. Her hardware tools were a braille line which showed one line of the text console at a time and was read with the fingers, and a standard keyboard augmented with a few tactile markers at a few keycaps. On the software side, she used the shell (I can't remember whether it was tcsh or bash), vi and one of mutt or pine.
It was quite astonishing for me to see how fast she accomplished things.
She only used the screen magnification stuff for a single application with a very stupid X11-only (that is, non-text) interface, and didn't like to do that at all.
Sometimes all those screen readers and voice command systems for "modern" "accessibility enabled" GUI applications really appear just a fig leaf for software developers/companies who avoid the real problems of user interfaces -- and thus quite the opposite of progress.
The disabled users in Massachusetts do have a point:
I'm not saying that is right or wrong, but that is where we are. If you force a switch to other platforms and applications, you do need to ensure that at least the current (and pretty awful) level of accessibility is maintained. And that's not just developing accessible FOSS applications, but providing training and support to the users, including the special needs evaluators & trainers. It's not a trivial task.
My own PhD research into improving the accessibility of mass-produced mobile devices (phones, pda's, psp's etc) is based on open and international standards. All work products (as far as my university allows) will be released under the GPL or eqivalent. So I'm not anti-FOSS at all, but one step forward and two backwards isn't progress. Unless it's managed properly, switching platforms and applications (to FOSS based ones, or to any others) can cause real problems for disabled users.
Either this was sarcasm/satire, or "underexploited" was just an awful choice of words.
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
I've made transcripts of previous events I've organised so that deaf users can benefit. Having a sign language interpreter would be great, but the budget is usually not there.
Please help publicise swpat.org - the software patents wiki
Wouldn't the effort be better spent trying to fix the actual disability in the first place? We spend a frighteningly small amount on fundamental research, and it seems that almost every development comes up against the "moral" luddites who don't want any kind of medical breakthrough in case it offends their religion. *sigh*
- Even Slackware gives the option to install a speakup kernel.
- KDE has text-to-speech, though only the frontend in earlier versions.
- KDE also enables you to resize the screen easily, helping those with less severe vision problems.
- Check this out
Nothing in FOSS can be taken and presented as An Official Display of How Good It Is And Always Shall Be. Most things are work in progress.If there's a lack of communication, it's the fault of the disabled community. Or are FOSS developers to spend their time researching potential user groups' needs instead of coding? I imagine that disabled rights groups have already provided the necessary information, and are just waiting for the tools to appear, because from what little I've seen, they're very good at doing their part. If they haven't done that yet, tough luck. Unless they want some sighted programmer to just guess?
Another thing I didn't like about this article was its use of the phrase "disabled people". It's about THE BLIND, so just say THE BLIND. Deaf people don't have any fixable problems with computers unless some idiot decides to make their program depend on sound feedback. There's little we can do to enable a dumb person to use VOIP, short of recognising their speech and converting it to text. Reduced mobility users need to complain to their hardware vendors if there are no Linux drivers for their single-handed keyboards or whatever they may need. They are working on blind access. Work is slow because FOSS runs on itch scratching. People make software that they want. Companies work on software that they use.
I really want blind users to be able to have their needs catered for. I don't want them to need to send letters saying things like "Do you know that choosing Linux means excluding blind users?". But as in everything else, steps are being made. Unfortunately, it's quite a long journey:
Hmmmm, let me see... A small (but not trivial) sector of the community with too few resources to achieve something that many of them need, that the majority of society takes for granted and without which they are inreasing disenfranchised from the good life. Things that they probably have a right to access in a "modern" society. Sounds like a classic job for "The State".
Given than the the Free Software would be accessible for all future members of the state it is a classical "good" spend of State Funds for prosperity. The argument is strengthed by the idea that we are all made better off by the quiality of life of our most vulnerable (probably not the right word) members of society.
"The first thing to do when you find yourself in a hole is stop digging."
heh, a singular something that fits like a glove, adjusts to the persons physical capacity, does voice sight and sound. Getting a new person walking should take no more then thirty seconds. Hopefully, they'll be warned about stuff like "you should call the doctor if you have an erection for over four hours" or "how to properly be arrested".
"Always ask yourself what your product might look like in twenty years"
This is an additional reason to learn proper (X)HTML, CSS et al. They have very interesting accessibility features which cannot be matched by ad-hoc MSIE HTML.
BTW, while I'm evangelizing standards, every web developer, *especially* framework developers (Rails guys, I'm looking at you), should be required by law to read the damn HTTP RFC. Content-negotiation is so underrated; it could be very useful for accessibility. HTTP rulez, it's a shame that so few reconize it.
Prescriptive grammar:linguistics
Until I witnessed a 100% blind person using a computer, my
understanding of the problem was very flawed. With the
monitor turned off he could browse web sites, read/write
email, and puzzle through popup error messages. He used
a text to speech software package that read to him faster
than I could listen. The package also provided an interface
for configuring a huge number of custom hotkeys which he
programmed and used extensively. The way his brain adapted to a
sound based interface was amazing. I've never seen anything
like it.
Could someone please enumerate the types of tool required for each kind of disability? Perhaps some tools already exist and we can match needs with solutions. If not, then at least we have an idea of the types of things we should be looking into to address this.
*sigh* back to work...
Having read the article, I must say that the impression I got was not at all that the Open Source community is doing anything wrong here, but that the disabled - or at least the organisations that puport to be advocates for the interests of the disabled - are displaying clossal stupidity.
Open Source software is not less accessible, generally speaking, than Microsoft products: Heavy use of the command line (with GUIs often being only secondary interfaces to the same tools) may be annoying to some users, but works in favour of people with Braille devices or screen readers. As far as the GUI is concerned, the Gnome desktop for example has taken pains to support accessibility tools at the toolkit level (GTK/ATK). Solutions that work across applications are more easily implemented using the open, documented interfaces available in Open Source software.
It would seem that groups such as the Disability Policy Consortium have no interest in these advantages of Open Source software, let alone other advantages such as small price, available source code, etc. Instead they focus on such pressing matters as this (from the article):
"Even if Office 12 will force them to change anyway, the disabled representatives request that, as a minimum, 'all ODF applications have common functionality and [...] the same keyboard shortcuts'."
Of course, disabled persons can learn new keyboard shortcuts just as well as non-disabled people can, even though they probably use them more and sometimes cannot easily detect that something has gone wrong immediately. This issue is highly unimportant, and to think that applications such as AbiWord or OpenOffice may be thrown out of the competition because they aren't fully compliant on such mundane matters is mind-boggling. It is certainly not in the long-term interest of the disabled community.
"For now, Marini says that the only solution is to find somebody without impaired vision who is willing to help install Linux"
Seems like a hardware vendor problem to me as much as anything else. Maybe perhaps if they offered some *choice* in OSes at ye olde computer store? If the EU commission was *really* serious about MS and monopoly abuse, they would turn to the vendors and tell them to shape up "or else" (caveat:waste of time to consider the US DOJ in this regard). Once MS knew that their pre-installed lock in monopoly was at risk, they would improve their products, and that would also make FOSS products better, etc. It works across the board once you get serious about fixing monopoly abuse.
That's exactly the power of FOSS: Everybody is free to implement her-/himself what she or he needs. Demanding features is not how FOSS works, it's contributors that make FOSS tick. Step ahead, disabled persons, and don't just demand. It's better for you (a nice job and it feels great to contribute, believe me) and for the community (in accordance with the idea of FOSS).
Why is society so determined to ensure that everything is produced to a standard that addresses the lowest common denominator. I really don't see the point in accomodating disabilties by crippling software. The whole point of a disability is the fact it renders certain things impossible and the human race is dead from an evolutionary point of view when we start putting more effort into pandering to the disabled rather than striving for survival of the fittest. Why should development of products I want and can use be delayed because some differently advantaged person might be inconvenienced. Soon you won't be allowed to get an oxbridge physics degree for the simple reason people who don't understand guage theories or whatever can't. OK we can't actually advocate the proper evolutionary answer to these problems because there are too many bleeding hearts out there and the tyranny of democracy rules but we can at least stop crippling ourselves and our tools for no reason other than pandering to the disadvantaged.
This whole story sounds just about completely made-up to me. I've talked with a lot of blind people who use Linux, and they all say how great it is, and how completely impossible it is to use Windows.
A few Linux distros were put together for the express purpose of making a distro for the disabled. Some, like Slackware, come ready for disabled users, having a "speak-up" enabled kernel on the CD, meaning you only need to type a few characters before it will start reading output to you...
The individual who they detailed in the article presumably already had someone set-up Windows for him, installing all the speech software necessary. His problem is that he'd have to install Linux (not hard really, hook-up a null-modem cable between computers), get speech-synthesis working, and he apparently doesn't understand English in the slightest, needing brazilian translation as well.
This frustration doesn't strike me as being any more serious than the standard Windows user trying to switch to Linux, when he's not familiar with it... They just don't want ANY CHANGES at all. I really don't see this as a disability issue at all.
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
Is no one here familiar with Section 508 (http://www.section508.gov)? It's the section of the Rehabilitation Act that requires federal agencies to make the their information systems accessible to people with disabilities, and is widely accepted as a default standard.
I think the organizations that represent disabled people haven't realized that they should not deal with the FOSS community the way they do with Microsoft. FOSS development has mostly depended on someone needing/wanting/linking a certain functionality and then trying to code it. Whereas Microsoft will likely think about markets, good press and money.
I would suggest that the representative organizations set up a mixed team of blind and seeing software developers who could contribute to the FOSS community.
where's all that Karma?
ROMEO TANGO FOXTROT ALPHA
renaming "The Gimp".
;)
Just a thought.
#SickNotWeak
"One thing that most people dont understand as well is that most of us who are disabled in any way at all are dirt poor. It could be from medical bills, the lack of the ability to even work because of our disability, the fact that to most we are seen as less then human so people dont want to hire us for work we can do, or any number of other reasons. The fact is, most of us do not have much money and have a lot of free time on our hands. We could be open sources greatest contributors if the OOS community cared enough to do the things we cant to help us make the tools we need. Once our hungry minds have the option, you have no idea how much we will use it."
Job-Hunting for the So-Called Handicapped or People Who Have Disabilities by the person who gave us "What color is your parachute". Being "handicapped" is as much an attitude as it's a disability.
Stephen Hawking
Idiot.
#SickNotWeak
Do you think J.R.R. used LaTeX?
No, but I would bet that the Tolkien estate's current publisher has typeset the latest editions of The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings digitally and could (barring digital restrictions management issues) copy and paste the books into a text or ODF file to send to blind readers.
Shouldn't the Linux community first worry about usability issues for the 99.9% of folks who are not disabled? I'm all for accessability, but so many fully-abled people have problems with Linux usability already, if devs were to strap accessability options onto a difficult to use product it would leave everyone unhappy. Perhaps they should work on having an easy to use product, and then making it easy to use for those who are disabled. This way everyone is happy.
we can at least stop crippling ourselves and our tools for no reason other than pandering to the disadvantaged.
The government has a legitimate reason to invest in assistive technology: Empowering people with disabilities turns them from welfare recipients into workers who pay tax. Did you read the part of the article where Paolo Pietrosanti realized that "the disabled must be turned from costly assisted persons into taxpayers"?
He discusses particularly the opposition raised in Mass. wrt the (in-)compatibility of OpenOffice on Windows with the current Windows accessibility technologies (interestingly, OOo is better accessibility-wise on Linux than Windows!) However, it outlines a lot of stuff and is definitely relevant to this discussion.
--
Given enough personal experience, all stereotypes are shallow.
As one in the FOSS trenches I have one thing to say to you, "piss off!" Unless you contribute real money or code, you do not decide nor are you in any position to suggest in which direction we go.
"Some people would rather just say I'm retarded, or even useless." The disabled community does not need to be represented by a fool full of self pity. You managed to insult the developmentally disabled too, hypocrite! I expect to hear the same answer that a non-disabled person would hear when asking for new features. "Show me the money!"
Can you elaborate?
The various treaties that make up TRIPs, such as the Berne Convention and the Madrid Protocol, specify the minimum term of government-granted monopoly on a foreign national's works and inventions and the maximum amount of formality that a party state can require before the state grants such a monopoly. For instance, Canada would be in violation of the Berne Convention if it were to 1. instate a requirement of copyright registration before a copyright comes into force, 2. lower copyright terms below the current life + 50 years, or 3. (in the case of the present example) require specific functionality in computer programs before recognizing them as copyrightable.
... I do have this eye condition where my eyes focus differently in different colors. Where normal vision would see a white dot on a black background, when that dot is made up of 3 narrow band colors, what I see are 3 separate dots. They aren't too far apart, although the blue one is out of focus and fuzzy. When reading white text on a black background, I get a mix of colors. I can read it, but it causes eyestrain. Reversing that to black text on white background makes it easier on my eyes. That's how I'm typing on Slashdot right now. Every character I type has fuzzy color edges to it ... red on the left and bottom, blue on the top, green on the right, and yellow below the red on the bottom.
I deal with this in a number of ways. Since I do most of my programming, system administration, and network administration via the text mode console in Linux, I just change the colors there to better suit my needs. By making the contrast between foreground color and background color limited to a single color, where the other 2 colors have the same intensity between foreground and background, I can read text easily with no eyestrain for hours. So in that sense I'm taking care of myself, and I'm lucky enough to not be disabled in a way that prevents me from managing to do that from the starting point that's designed specifically for normal vision people.
That said, there are still some troubling issues that people need to be aware of and sensitive to. There are a few programs that operate in a text environment (can run on console, or under xterm, etc) that intentionally alter the color environment, and screw up my color setup. It needs to be possible to disable that. In one program I was trying, which erased all my color maps and substituted the defaults, someone suggested the monochrome option it had. In that mode it still erased all my color maps, and then showed me only white text on black background. That didn't actually help at all. What I need is for programs to either leave my colors alone, or at least provide an option (documented in the man page ... yes, I read those) to turn that off. And by "off" I don't mean not to use different color text for highlighting, I mean just don't alter my color maps.
It's worse in X. Not all the colors can be changed in one place. Each application has its own separate configuration for colors. It would help if there was a standardized place for all applications to check for color preferences and at least use them by default. And web pages are a bit worse because each web site, if it can even be changed at all, has to be changed separately. It's getting a tad bit better with more widespread use of style sheets and such.
I also have to be sensitive to the fact that there is a wide range of possible disabilities or just difficulties (what I classify my condition as) and that program developers just can't easily envision, or certainly can't readily test, how their software deals with all the possible needs of different users. I'm sure stuff I've written might be difficult or impossible to use by some others depending on their disability. But the better we can communicate between developers and users, the more we can both improve usability.
This condition I have is only a problem when the light sources are made up of discrete narrowband colors. A broad continuous spectrum doesn't really cause the problem because it just makes things a tiny bit fuzzy in a smooth way that is easy to focus on. Sunlight is almost perfectly continuous. Incandescent light bulbs are also just as good. This condition doesn't affect my ability to actually see; it merely causes stress and eyestrain when the conditions are worse. One of the worst things for me are fluorescent lights. Then everything I look at under that lighting has the problem. White LEDs are no better. Ironically, those orange-peach colored high pressure sodium lamps often used on streets and parking lots don't cause me any problems at all (though they ca
now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
I don't know if there are good solutions for blind computing -- the very idea scares me from a UI perspective. :) What a problem! But it's quite intriguing actually...
My first thought is that I assume blind people don't need much in the way of graphical interfaces.
So you would think that Linux, or any Unix-like operating system, would quite automatically be much nicer for blind people than, for example, windows, seeing as you can actually GET THINGS DONE on the command line, an interface that I imagine is far friendlier to text-to-speech and brail systems.
And don't forget that "all people are not born equal" and therefore this must actually show somehow in a healthy world and society -- certainly this applies to software too! Nobody says that a person has the inalienable right to use software if they are not up to the task. It's not the FOSS programmer's fault someone is blind/deaf/crippled.
The illusion of egalitarianism is, after all, the greatest evil man has invented... you should never "level the playing field" artificially, as this hinders competition and gives undeserved slack to an already mostly unproductive lot of people. We will evolve more and more capable users if we firmly refuse to water down our software by yielding to the envious whining of those who can't get themselves what they can't earn for themselves.
I want to play Free Market with a drowning Libertarian.
Disabled users may be helping the FOSS community, or at least a large part of it, to finally acknowledge a general attitude problem.
The "attitude problem" here is with people who think the FOSS community owes them anything.
Very likely, many office workers would like to sue, or at least to stop, any manager who told them, "next month you will have to use programs you never heard of before, with a different look and feel, because of some policy based on obscure theories about software engineering."
And very many office workers would like to sue, or at least stop, when they're told to use Windows. That's the way the cookie crumbles. If you don't like your work environment, you can always quit.
The only "obscure theory about software engineering" that comes along with FOSS is that you use it if you find it useful, and that you can change it if you don't like the way it works.
Disabled users have the actual legal weapons to do it.
Well, I'm sure Pietrosanti can cause trouble for FOSS in government: he's a politician and he likes Windows, and that kind of person always finds a way to rally people against FOSS. But I don't think Pietrosanti has actually made a convincing case. While specific environments in Linux (Gnome? OOo?) may still have some limitations when it comes to accessibility, other parts of Linux are actually better than Windows from an accessibility point of view.
In any case, if you are disabled and you are genuinely interested in making FOSS work for the disabled, there is only one way to make that happen: contribute your time, your skills, and/or your money. Legal threats won't make a big difference in the long run because there is really nobody to sue; at best, you may be able to hold up adoption of FOSS in some environments a little, until people manage to meet formal accessibility requirements nominally but in a way you probably won't like.
The solution to accessibility in FOSS is not to improve communications between the disabled and FOSS communities, it's for the disabled to become part of the FOSS community.
Any disabled people are free to download and install the source code and modify it to meet their disabled needs.
Considering that Windows largely doesn't support that sort of thing out of the box (i.e. You need to have someone install device drivers in the first place) that while I DO feel for the man, I can't exactly call this a problem of FOSS. Anyone that does is selling something.
To be bluntly honest, statements like
Considering that Office 12 will most probably break their tools to use the system, the above statement is pretty damn pushy when you get right down to brass tacks. It's not that I don't want to help the disabled- if they're going to frame things in nigh impossible terms (i.e. "We don't want to have to change", but you're going to have to change anyhow- but your changes are a problem, never mind that they actually have a real potential of making things way better than you had previously...) how can there be any dialog or any meeting of the minds? There can't be. And, honestly, I don't think the Blind hold this position as their own. (I sure as hell wouldn't- I'd be raising hell right about now upon hearing this BS they put this forth as the position...)
I am not merely a "consumer" or a "taxpayer". I am a Citizen of the State of Texas
...though that'd tipped people off that there were things to listen to to solve the game. Not a bad thing mind, because I could have had them chasing their tails with fake sound cues, etc. and gave some sort of subtle visual ones to boot for the deaf to be able to solve the game. But then, what about the blind, hm? Heck, the blind would have difficulty playing poker or blackjack without some seeing eye help (No easy way to make braille playing cards- esp. ones that wouldn't make reading your opponent's hand easy.).
In all honesty, games is an odd case- on one hand, they rely so much on being able to see, touch, and hear right at the moment that it's somewhat difficult to be catering to the disabled to that extent. That's not to say that they shouldn't be trying all the same- it's just that it's much, much more difficult to make games this way than it is to make something like OpenOffice or MS Office work for the disabled.
I am not merely a "consumer" or a "taxpayer". I am a Citizen of the State of Texas
I am disappointed that "eLocutor - The Hawking Communicator" http://sourceforge.net/projects/hawking/ [sourceforge.net] was not mentioned in this article. About eLocutor:"Under development for Prof Stephen Hawking and people like him. With control of a single click only, the solution user should Type, Speak, and Command the computer. We want to expand beyond English and MS Windows to multiple languages, multiple platforms".
Deaf gamers could find games with the 'deaf-friendly' check box - games that don't rely completely on sound, meaning they have visual indicators for events, and new missions or whatever flash up as text too.
Blind friendly? There wouldn't be enough games to justify keeping this data.
Mobility impaired.... complicated, because of the variety in this area of disablification. On further thought, again probably not worth having a box for this.
But the concept can be extended - violence, gore, sex, criminal acts, scary, murder simulator etc. There is something similar in use, but it's a useless piece of crap, to be perfectly honest. Phrases like "Contains scenes of moderate violence" are too full of superfluous prose. It needs to be a big blue grid with obvious ticks or color-coded symbols, and unfortunately this is not for the visually impaired, but for intention-impaired parents.
mbatf, foss lug omfg, wtf? stfu! gafl.
...consists of not only smalltime freebie devs, but big companies as well, with full time devs. There would be a LOT more incentive to make linux even better and more assessible for *all people*, not just the perfectly able or the not so able, IF the major hardware vendors would offer some Linux or BSD or whatever instead of just XP on the desktop. Then perhaps a point there. but they aren't doing it. A few smaller comapnies are, but none of the majors, where it counts.
Human nature is just that, we have governments because without them it gets pretty hairy. Governments are bad enough, but without them...well...just look to some places like the horn of africa or elsewhere that have little to no functioning government. It doesn't work out very well. Human nature is not all that great or altrusitic. It is somewhat, but it's not universal yet. If we didn't have regs, big companies would still be dumping unlimited toxic waste in streams for instance, "market forces" didn't mandate that, severe government regulations did after people noticed they slap refused to do it on their own. "market forces" were telling them to not give a care and just dump, they "made more money" that way.
As to whether or not people will do this or that voluntarily, the various industries and this exact problem prove that left to their own devices, you would never see any accessibility features in buildings, etc, so I imagine it's close enough in software as well. It's a teeny niche market, not much interest until it becomes more of a niche-and we don't want to see that if possible-or it is just mandated.
The "market" is not even close to perfect, when the market offers no choice or a choice of sucky or suckier.
Linux on the desktop, for sighted or blind, is going to continue to be an also ran until such a time as either large governments mandate choice and universal access, or humans become universally non greedy, and the latter I sincerely doubt is going to be happening anytime soon..
The point was, for the blind guy, he needed someone to help him just get it installed. Why is that again? If it CAME PRE INSTALLED ON HIS COMPUTER then he wouldn't have had that problem, once there he had enough to go on.
That is primarily the computer makers deal there, because MOST people get their OS preinstalled. and it is governments fault because they are not stopping the illegal computer near monopolies and collusion that is going on.
I can't fault the relatively poor distro vendors (compared to MS/Dell, etc) for not including this or that feature, they have come an amazing long way DESPITE the failure of government to actually regulate monopolies and closed cartels better.
If we only relied on "the market" we would wind up with one huge company owning the world, that's the nature of concentrated capital, it flows uphill until it is in fewer and fewer hands.
Personally, I think raw pure capitalism is just as sucky as total complete governmental control or total socialism. I think some place in the middle hits a proper balance. It would be *nice* if people were universally all just wonderful folks, but sadly, this isn't the case.
People with special needs have a lot to thank government for in mandating access. I remember before all those laws were in place, I have friends who got stuck at the bottom of stairs for instance with no ramps into buildings, *government buildings*, let alone private ones, places they had to get to. . The "market" did jack and squat, zilch, nada, to help them, it took passing laws to alleviate that dismal situation.
Computing is going to be the same, and now that it is so important in most peoples lives, we are starting to see more regs passed, because companies mostly won't do it if it only affects less than 1% of their customers. Heck, I still see "sorry get lost, windows/IE only" websites, hit one just the other day looking for small engine parts.
That's leaving out roughly 10% of potential custo
A tough place?
:)
Just follow the new GNOME path: remove all useful GUI-accessible options and features, and make people edit text files and registries instead, and BAM you're "user friendly". Take this to the extreme, and it should suit disabled people.
Or is there something wrong with the "logic" behind the GNOME HIG?
Fuck them! It's hard enough developing decent software without wasting all our time dicking with people that can't use a computer.
H.323 Cochlear implants coming up.
Wow!
I'm glad you're not in a position of power.
There are examples of Open Source Software bettering commercial in accessibility.
A Q. I understand that this makes it the only off the shelf, inexpensive, mp3 player with such accessibility. Specialist units available at the time were much more expensive.
Rockbox, the replacement firmware for archos mp3 players, is not only a lot better than the original, but more accessible too. See http://www.rockbox.org/twiki/bin/view/Main/BlindF
This was due to the involvment of blind users in the development mailing lists. One or two initial blind users started using it when it got basic support for identifying where you were in the menus aurally (usefull to the sighted if your mp3 player is in your pocket), and with their feedback it quickly improved.
With Rockbox, input to the development team from disabled users was very well received, and I think this would be the case with very many OSS projects. OSS depends on community input and that doesn't just include coders. Clear descriptions of requirements; design discussions on mail-lists; testing of features, they're are all useful. If projects have disabled voices within their development community then I'm sure that accessible OSS software will result.
The person who wrote the Newsforge article, and whoever submitted this story to Slashdot is out of the loop, according to PJ of Groklaw. Here's the latest at GrokLaw on how FOSS and Disabled Communities are NOT of touch. Instead, FOSS is working with the disabled communities to provide a solution.
A lot of FOSS is said to have been developed to scratch an itch. A lot of the disabled probably can't scratch their own itch and would love FOSS to do it.
Oh, wait. They get the source. Let them scratch their own itch.
And you think someone using a text-to-speech system wants a recital of KDE's configuration screens every time they want to change anything? Simplicity is exactly what disabled users tend to need, be it because they're using a speech interface, or because their manual dexterity is limited.
free software lunatics tend to be out of touch with reality and obsessed with obscure stuff that nobody else cares about, which they will discuss for hours on end, and will look down on you if you arent 'into' it too.
the 'helping professions' tend to be pretty much the exact opposite of this.
its sort of like vegans and the ASPCA. theoretically they are the same but in reality they are like cocoa and dandelions.
Being an early 1600x1200'er (circa 2000), I abhor any UI that turns a useful product or website into a barber-shop pole. Surely anyone can see that the future is resolution-independent. I am hoping that either SVG or something similar becomes the dominant graphics file type.
The ideal situation is when changing monitor resolutions only makes your display clearer or more pixellated. Nothing moves or resizes.
Ah well.
[ReidNews]
Actually, the BSD people pretty much invented the modern Internet. Linux, Apache, Perl, and PHP have also contributed enormously to the modern Internet.
Linux zealots don't usually call in that debt, but you are actually quite right: the world does owe the BSD, Linux, and many other FOSS developers a big debt of gratitude; if it weren't for those people, you'd still be stuck on Compuserve.
Jim Abbott, Ray Charles, John Updike, Stevie Wonder, Chuck Close, Andrea Bocelli, Matt Luke, Paul Longmore.
That covers a pretty wide sprectrum and is far from ever being complete.
No matter how you split it, your perect species will never happen. Proportionaly, there are more so called normal people who are closer to genetic throwbacks than those with a disablity. Simply stated: Idiocy is far worse a crime against the species than diabetes.
#SickNotWeak
That said, the issue with blind access is not an OS problem. Microsoft has gone to no more effort to make Windows accessible than the FOSS community has gone to make linux accessible. The issue with Linux access for the blind is twofold: third-party vendors and the way blind people are taught computers.
Windows is usable by the blind not becuase Microsoft makes it that way, but becuase Microsoft shares their code with third-party developers who write and sell the software to make Windows work for the blind. Guess what? FOSS community shares it's code too -- much more than Microsoft does! The problem isn't that FOSS people haven't done enough, the problem is that no third-party developer has stepped forward to write the software that blind people need. Maybe they haven't found a business model that will work with FOSS. More likely -- the blind market is so small and the Linux market is so small and Linux distros are so splintered that there is no way to justify the amount of work it would take for such a small potential market.
In addition to the difficulty in mounting an effort for software for the blind, you have to look at how blind people are taught computers. There are a few that learn from their friends. But the vast majority of blind people I know (I've provided computer support to blind users for 15 years) are introduced to computers at school through Special Education programs, then receive further training after school through Vocational Rehab services. There are a growing number of linux software tools for the blind, but I know of no school system or voc rehab service that is prepaired to introduce these tools to their blind clients. They are all Microsoft based.
Linux may not be accessible to the blind, but the problem is not with Linux itself. The problem is that no big third-party provider has stepped up to write linux software, and no schools or training centers are prepared to teach linux to blind users.
This is extremely true. The "disabled", include paraplegics, the blind, the deaf, people with motor control problems, and a bewildering variety of others, and each group has different accessibility needs. Some (maybe even most) disabled people don't need any help with their software -- schizophrenics are probably fine, for example. Computers enable obsessive-compulsive behaviour in a way that is unparalleled :p . In general, even the least accessible software is a great boon to the disabled.
Haven't we stomped this out yet? vi is *not* modal. "i" does *not* put you into an insertion mode, but instead is a command which is terminated with escape. Similarly for the other insertion/replacement methods.
.).
This was well settled twenty years ago, yet we still hear this from the uninformed.
Admittedly, some of the newer variants have blurred things (I'm thinking in particular of vim's ability to use arrow keys and delete pre-existing text while performaning an insertion command . .
hawk