[orca-list] VINUX-SUPPORT: RE: Ubuntu Unity Desktop to go to Mir and QT

[Alex Midence]

Hi, Luke,

Just to be clear, I don't think and have never thought you were part of the
problem.  What I do think is that it sucks that you are the only one having
to do all this work.  They really should hire you some help.  There is only
so much one person can do and a11y is a big job.  Apple has a full on team
working on Voiceover.  Google has Dr. Raman and his assistant and probably
others I don't know about working on Android accessibility.  If canonical is
going to expand into all these other markets, I don't see why they can't
hire you a couple of assistants to help distribute the workload.  However,
those decisions are beyond our control.  Speaking for myself, I am
personally very appreciative of all the work you have put in.  


Best regards,
Alex M

-----Original Message-----
From: Luke Yelavich [mailto:themuso at ubuntu.com] 
Sent: Tuesday, July 23, 2013 11:05 PM
To: Alex Midence
Cc: Christopher Chaltain; vinux-support at googlegroups.com; 'Ubuntu
Accessibility Mailing List'; orca-list at gnome.org
Subject: Re: [orca-list] VINUX-SUPPORT: RE: Ubuntu Unity Desktop to go to
Mir and QT

On Wed, Jul 24, 2013 at 01:33:34PM EST, Alex Midence wrote:
> Also, for the record, I fully recognize and appreciate all the hard 
> work of the developers of the Ubuntu community who freely give of 
> their time to make things accessible.  However, it was disappointing 
> to finally have gotten a very accessible port of Unity in 12.04 only 
> to be told that we were back to poor a11y in other versions of the 
> distro for at the very least 2 full years.

For the record, I was disappointed as well. I expressed my desire for Unity
to stick with using Qt at the time, given the accessibility advantages it
brought for one, and the fact that it would have made maintaining unity
easier as the nux GUI toolkit wouldn't also need to be maintained, and Qt is
well established etc.

I am the only developer working for Canonical who spends at least some of
the time working on accessibility issues. I say some of the time, because I
do have other duties, in fact the primary reason why I was hired was not to
work exclusively on accessibility, although the powers that be are ok with
me doing so.

Having said that, my big focus for the next 10-12 months will almost
exclusively be getting Qt5, Mir, and Unity as accessible an environment as
one person can possibly manage. Qt5 helps somewhat, but the specific parts
of Qt that are being used for the new Unity still have some rough spots when
it comes to accessibility, and there is also the changing graphics stack and
everythign that goes with it to deal with.

Given these changes, and given I am the only person who is likely going to
be working on all of this, I cannot really promise anything, given the work
that is required, and given the time and resources, or possibly lack there
of, available to do so. I do really appreciate that you all want regularly
updated, accessible distro releases that have the latest accessibility
crack, but please keep in mind just how many of us in the wider *nix
accessibility community there are, and also keep in mind how many of us are
involved with some form of active development in the area, and if you want
to dig deeper, think about the number of us working on GUI desktop
accessibility of some kind.

I try to take the approach of under promising, and at least delivering, and
if I can over deliver, than thats great.

In the meantime, there is the Ubuntu GNOME remix, with GNOME shell, wich
does work quite well these days. I'll do my best to try and fix any issues
people may notice with that release, given the accessibility tools and
infrastructure are shared with GNOME and Unity.

Thanks, and I really appreciate your understanding, and support.

Luke