disabilities

[Kenny Hitt]

Hi.
On Mon, May 24, 2010 at 02:08:11AM +0100, Phillip Whiteside wrote:
> don't complain to me that I only spend so much time on the matter - get onto
> the likes of http://www.w3.org/WAI/ it IS about time those with disablilties
> TOLD these people to stop bickering ...... except that you are all still,
> erm ..... bickering.
> 
I can't speak for others, but I have complained with the same result as you.
Please don't make the mistake of deciding all disabled people are part of some big group.
Even blind Linux users aren't part of the same group.  I see at least 2 different groups.
People who run Windows and play around with Linux and people like me who run Linux full time.
Our priorities are different.  I want access to the web, while the users who just play in
Linux want it to behave like Windows.
In my case I can't afford Windows, so I do my best to get by with Linux.
I do believe open source is better, so won't switch back to a model that forces me
to constantly pay money I don't have to companies who only want to make as much money
as possible just to keep access to the computer.
I'm not against commercial programs or companies making money.  I own several Cepstral voices,
but I'm against the price gouging you have in Windows access.

> Let me repeat what I intimated in my posts on that link, until standards are
> decided upon, people will not put in the effort to comply with them.
> 
I agree.  While these people are sitting on there ass, I loose access to more and more web sites each day.
I had to switch from elinks to Firefox last week because kgoradio changed there site.
All I wanted to do was download a mp3 file.  Aparently, the download area didn't look good enough
with the old page, so they updated it to something that won't work with elinks.
I'm not suggesting all sites consider elinks as a standard, but for simple things like 
downloading a file or filling out a simple form, the browser shouldn't make any difference.
What makes this worse is the Mozilla project puts there resources in Windows while I run Linux.
They made a change to Firefox a few years ago that really made sites less usable.
Dialogs no longer get focus in Firefox.  This forces you to tab around until you find them.
Since the existance of a dialog isn't always obvious, you can visit sites and not be able to use them
because you don't know what's actually happening.
This problem was brought up with the Mozilla developers with no solution.
They just ignored the problem and left it to the Orca developers to try to figure out a solution.  So far,
no success.

> I asked on the forum for someone to check and see if my coding was correct -
> I had exactly zero replies back.  How do you expect me to push forward
> people to include the minor code changes as they are learning when none of
> "you" are even prepared to see if it is correct?
> 
I don't know for sure, but there are likely very few disabled people on the standards committy.  There
is likely a token member, but the real power is with sighted people who consider this as just
some cool project and don't really get that there delay causes real problems for the disabled.

> So, I shrug my shoulders and say "well, at least I tried".
> 
> It is not my loss that you have gotten yet another person do that, it is
> your loss as a group.
> 
Actually, it is my loss since I don't know anything about web design or standards.
Once again, I'm not part of the "group" you are talking about.  I'm just a user who is loosing access to more and more
sites because some "educated" sighted people don't get it and don't listen.
The "educated" sighted people in this case are the web standards group.
BTW, my experiences with Firefox and Gnome are making me do the same as you.  I am finding myself
lumping all sighted people into the same group of fuckers who don't get it.
This is bad for both of us.

          Kenny