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FOSS and Disabled Communities Out of Touch

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the cross-talking dept.

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."

2 of 263 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Gimme, Gimme, Gimme by murr · · Score: 5, Informative

    an a blind person install and configure windows, iis, SQL server, exchange, and active directory?

    I don't know about that, but MacOS X (starting with 10.4) is designed to be installable by a blind person.

  2. Crock o' Shit by caffeination · · Score: 4, Informative
    It's just another thing being worked on. It's not a case of being out of touch, as clearly there are several tools, mostly aimed at the visually impaired, which is what they really mean by disabled.
    • 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:

    he has not found "a distribution that boots" and detects "Italian speech synthesizers, or Braille terminals with the brltty driver."