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Oracle Drops Sun's Commitment To Accessibility

An anonymous reader writes "What I feared has come true: after buying Sun, Oracle had a look at its accessibility group and made big cuts in it by firing the most important contributors to the Linux accessibility tools. This is a very sad day for disabled people, as it means we do not really have full-time developers any more." The coverage in OSTATIC has a few more details, including the caution: "This just shows that all too few companies are sponsoring a11y work. If one company laying off a couple of developers spells trouble for the project, then there were problems before that happened" (thanks to reader dave c-b for pointing this out).

8 of 220 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Retards by binarylarry · · Score: 0, Flamebait

    No, retards currently use Windows, it has great accessibility support.

    This about making sure retards can use Linux in the future.

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  2. Holy crip he's a crapple ! by Gothmolly · · Score: 0, Flamebait

    Survival of the fittest, my friends.

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  3. Re:*Physically disabled* by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Flamebait

    Maybe not lie down and take it. But I'd be happy if Microsoft ditched the features that I don't only don't need, but actively get in my way, and all y'all paid your own way to accessibility instead of riding on my pocketbook.

  4. Re:*Physically disabled* by swordgeek · · Score: 0, Flamebait

    "Are people with disabilities supposed to just lie down and take it?"

    Well in the Open Source world, that's exactly what EVERYONE who isn't capable or willing to fix their problems themselves is supposed to do.

    Don't like it? Fix it, hire someone to fix it, or shut the hell up. This is almost always (still!) promoted as a positive feature, but in reality is a significant disadvantage.

    Sorry, but the disabled community gets no special treatment on this issue.

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  5. Re:*Physically disabled* by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Flamebait

    -1 troll by nature. Probably some birther teabagger too.

  6. Re:Capitalism at work... by Al+Dimond · · Score: -1, Flamebait

    That's because OOo is a flaming pile of shit. High in the running for least inspired, most crufty, most flaky computer program I've ever used. Every version I've used has sucked in different ways, in approximately equal magnitude, so I don't really know what's lost if it's never updated again.

  7. Re:Capitalism at work... by VendettaMF · · Score: -1, Flamebait

    MySQl is used by people capable of thought and pattern recognition.
    MySQL is an important and useful tool for people who actually work with and on computers.

    OOo is a cheap and nasty (and almost non-functional) attempt to annoy Microsoft.
    OOo is used by people too cheap to pay for real tools to do their work.

    There's a bit of a difference.

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    kartune85 : Incapable of reason, observation or learning. A kind of dim, drab, flightless parrot.
  8. Re:Capitalism at work... by VendettaMF · · Score: 0, Flamebait

    >> Also wanting to run an OS which is different from the ones sold by apple and microsoft makes one cheap?

    Depends entirely on the reasons for which you wish to use it.
    If for some reason you need a selection of C/C++ dev tools, plus several scripting languages, and an OS that is effectively a server OS on your desktop then fair enough, though what someone whose work/hobbies require such for is doing making office-style docs in any app is beyond me.

    If on the other hand you just don't want to pay for your OS, and live somewhere that copyright is reliably enforced, and so choose the above OS, well, yeah, that's cheap and you're denying yourself a reasonable user experience through your cheapness.

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    kartune85 : Incapable of reason, observation or learning. A kind of dim, drab, flightless parrot.