Here it is...Ubuntu Phone

[Christopher Chaltain]

Whether you advocate for greater accessibility in Ubuntu or not is a 
decision only you can make. I would not interpret the responses of two 
or three people though to be "all this talk of diplomacy and catching 
more flies with honey is what people want". First, two or three people 
is not all of this talk or what people want, it's just the opinions of 
two or three people on a relatively low traffic list. Don't blow it out 
of proportion.

For my part, the only point I made was that I don't consider Unity or 
Ubuntu Phone to be trivial or flashy. I think these were hard efforts 
involving quite a few people in an effort to make Ubuntu more popular, 
running on more devices and in the hands of more people. I know people 
have criticized Unity for being dumbed down, but I don't know what that 
means, and I'm not sure why it's a bad thing to make Ubuntu more popular 
and get it used by more people. Obviously, if you want to use the 
argument that Canonical is spending resources on bright new shiny things 
instead of accessibility then that will strike a chord with some Ubuntu 
and Unity critics, but I'm not sure it'll sway the decision makers at 
Canonical.

I also wouldn't be too worried about what I or are other people think. 
The goal here is to get Ubuntu more accessible in all of it's releases 
and on all of the platforms where it's supported. If that means using 
honey then that's what should be done, if it means using vinegar then 
that's the way to go. I prefer honey myself, but I know there's a need 
for vinegar too. If you're not comfortable being diplomatic, political 
or tactful, but you want to fight for more accessibility in Ubuntu then 
do what you're comfortable with.

At my previous employer, I got into quite a few debates with another 
blind person. I thought he was a bit hysterical at times and made 
outlandish claims. We debated quite a bit on our internal mailing list. 
I was surprised though when I found out how much he was appreciated by 
those working on accessibility within the company. I thought my more 
balanced and reasonable approach would have been more appreciated, but I 
found out that in the accessibility community you need the radicals, 
those calling out to man the barricades and the squeaky wheels.

For my part, I hope you take up the fight, and I hope you don't take the 
fact that I'm a different person with a different approach as a reason 
not to take up the fight yourself.

On 01/06/2013 08:21 PM, Nolan Darilek wrote:
> Great ideas and thoughts here, folks.
>
> To put my words in context, I've used Linux since Slackware '96 which,
> as its name implies, was released in 1996. I started using GNOME
> accessibility in the Gnopernicus days, and at the moment it is my
> full-time operating system of choice.
>
> However, my experience under Windows and NVDA is making me sit up and
> take notice. Firefox works very well. Similarly, I can run Chrome and,
> gods forbid, IE reasonably well. I have a level of choice that I don't
> seem to under Linux, and there are other areas in which Windows is
> excelling for me. I'm not saying that it's the best choice, or the right
> choice for everyone. I'm just starting to give it a serious look,
> because the latest state of having to reboot multiple times per day
> under Ubuntu because accessibility is behaving oddly is starting to get
> to me.
>
> I hope that this discussion leads to someone taking up this cause. I did
> some soul-searching over the last two days, and am not the one to take
> this up--if all this talk of diplomacy and catching more flies with
> honey is what people want, that is. Having pushed and advocated and
> developed for Android for the past few years, I'm burned out on the
> access fight, and no longer have much diplomacy left in me. Best of luck.
>
>
> On 01/05/2013 06:12 PM, Kyle wrote:
>> The spam system is completely automated and Akismet has been known to
>> mark quite a large number of false positives, so having a comment of
>> any kind marked by Akismet as spam is not at all uncommon. Having said
>> this, I'm not sure where the perception comes in that non-free
>> operating systems provide a better accessibility experience, or how
>> that perception will help further our cause. I have been using
>> GNOME+Orca+free GNU/Linux operating systems exclusively since 2009,
>> and I can't say that my experience with accessibility has been even
>> close to unfavorable, and it has improved quite rapidly just over the
>> past year, since I now have a level of access to qt applications that
>> I never even dreamed possible just 2 years ago, and that level of qt
>> accessibility far surpasses the level of qt accessibility on Apple
>> computers and devices, not to mention the fact that Firefox can't be
>> made to work with VoiceOver on a Mac, which is a state I find
>> extremely sad, albeit typical, from a company who continually receives
>> the highest praise for its lackluster accessibility performance. On
>> the Microsoft side, accessibility is also taking backsteps, as Windows
>> 8 is a nightmare, and is in fact seen by many Windows users, as a
>> complete joke as relating to accessibility, as well as many other
>> aspects of the OS.
>>
>> Does Canonical need to devote more resources to the expansion of the
>> accessibility team and the improvement of the accessibility stac?
>> Absolutely. Does accessibility need to be a primary concern for any OS
>> or desktop or smart phone environment? No question. But the best way
>> to make it known that this is a requirement is not by telling
>> developers and companies that it's sad that their competitor does abc
>> better when in fact, their competitor has bigger problems with xyz.
>> Rather, the best way to raise awareness of what we need in an
>> accessibility stack and a team of developers working on it is simply
>> letting them know that accessibility is a major requirement for any OS
>> or interface, letting them know what improvements are needed that
>> would help us to be able to use the OS or interface better, and
>> contributing to development of the codebase if possible, which is
>> something that can *never* happen on a non-free operating system where
>> even error reports fall on deaf ears.
>> ~Kyle
>> http://kyle.tk/
>
>

-- 
Christopher (CJ)
chaltain at Gmail
preportion.