[ubuntu-uk] suck it and see

[Ian Pascoe]

Hi Norman

Well let's turn the tables on this thread - I use Windows in preference to
Ubuntu!

Now for those of you who didn't delete this mail straight away here's the
reason why.

As you may have gathered from a couple of other postings I've done I'm
partially sighted and use screen readers a lot to navigate my way around the
desktop - I have some residual sight but it's a strain .

There are two major problems with Ubuntu, and being fair as well, for any
Linux distro.  These are:

* A very small proportion of Linux apps are compatible with the various
Assistive Technologies
* There is no graphical web browser that is compliant .

However, that being said, FF3 is having LOTS of work done on it to rectify
this problem.  It is still too bleeding edge at the moment to make it a
viable alternative in Linux - Windows is fine.

The biggest problem is the former - the only way you can find out if an app
works with the assistive technologies is to download it.  Which cannot be
done through Synaptic as it's not compliant!

So I'm afraid that at the moment although I am a true advocate of FOS, I
have to still use Windows.  This is because of M$'s dictatorship actually
being a positive influence in that most applications that are written and
uses the normal MS APIs for GUI have this interface in built and therefore
is instantly useable.

To end on a plus point though, the guys working on Orca, the user interface
that links the Assistive Technologies together in Gnome, are doing
absolutely superb work even though a month or so ago IBM withdrew their
developer resource on the whole Assistive Technology project.  It wobbled
for a couple of weeks but things are back on track now thanks to the work of
the peeps at Sun and the commitment from the IBM developers to still work on
the project but in their own time.

In fact here's a challenge for you all to do on those rainy evenings.  Get
Orca up and running - it's part of the Gnome desktop from 6.06 onwards -
turn your monitors off, no cheating now, and have a go at doing some of your
normal tasks to see what I mean.  The voices are fun to play with as well if
you're running Fiesty.  And you may actually find it useful to have the text
to speech engine running as you write as it's a dam site easier to spot
spelling mistakes as you're using two different parts of the brain.

In fact the only area where you have no chance of using Linux at all is if
you rely on Speech to Text conversion - there was a proof of idea app built
by those nice people at Sun about 3 years + ago and that's where it's
remained.  A couple of projects have tried to take on the idea but
unfortunately failed.

I would go so far as to say that once FF is launched Gnome running on Linux
is going to be the platform of choice for the disabled worldwide and that's
not just on cost - my Windows compatible screen reader retails at ?350 on
top of any other apps required, but is on the fact that the stuff works and
works well without the long development times associated with Windows
products. (with the above bourne in mind).

reading this back the post seems a bit dis-jointed but you get the general
idea.

E

-----Original Message-----
From: ubuntu-uk-bounces at lists.ubuntu.com
[mailto:ubuntu-uk-bounces at lists.ubuntu.com]On Behalf Of norman
Sent: 21 June 2007 17:29
To: ubuntu-uk at lists.ubuntu.com
Subject: Re: [ubuntu-uk] suck it and see


It's really great to read about all the applications that folk use with
Ubuntu. It makes a wonderful change from kicking Windows and expounding
on its problems. Every time that that OS is mentioned it is drawing
attention to it and this, all good and true Ubuntu users, do not want.
The motto should be that Ubuntu is the greatest because of what it is
not because of what it isn't.

Norman


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