You shouldn’t have to defend your existence let alone what computing you do, this blog and its author is doing more for modern computing than anything else I’ve read this year. Keep it up, stay hopeful that things eventually improve.
This is just two people misunderstanding and talking past eachother.
The blogger wants to outsource living his life to other people, the commenter is getting hung up on pedantry too much to communicate what he actually wants to.
You're confused if that's what you think about the blogger. I know this guy and he's the most DIY person to almost a farcical degree. You try booting into a distro without your monitor attached and then contribute a patch, still without your monitor attached, see how you do.
The truth is, big tech corporations could probably skimp on accessibility as well, but they want their government contracts very much, and software used in governments, as far as at least the proverbial first world is concerned, has an accessibility bar it must meet. And it just so happens that these corporations have large chunks of money to invest in that.
If requirements for being in such lucrative markets loosen up, I'm willing to bet accessibility in Apple/Microsoft offerings will get defunded and rot away.
Of course you can question Red Hat and Canonical for not doing enough in the space, but truth be told, the grassroot open source efforts to make everything in open source more accessible amount to afterthoughts at best. How many GUI toolkit have appeared recently? How many of them are accessible? How many terminal applications gain TrueColor support and draw fancy stuff in the terminal? How many of them are of any use to someone who can't see your efforts in repurposing Unicode symbols to draw pictures in the console?
Nah. Apple’s commitment to pervasive accessibility features has been around for so long and has had so much investment into it it is clear it is in their DNA.
It’s probably the nicest thing about the company, and it stands out even more in the last ten or twenty years as the company becomes more and more scummy and despicable. It’s deep down and was established back when it was run by humans with deep empathy.
Linux is just a base that people stack other software on top of. Audio crash? Pulse or Pipe wire?
Then the dozens of desktop environments, each doing things differently, split between X11 and Wayland.
I feel like blind devs should get together and make a distro that, out of the box, has as many accessibility features as possible, because it seems a lost cause to wait for some other distro to pick the right combination of tools.
How about devs that are using speech recognition because their hands or arms don't work or are not even present?
Also, telling someone to use a dedicated distribution because of the disability is telling them they're not worthy enough to use any distribution that suits their needs beyond accessibility issues.
I'm fortunate to have enough hand function to use a mouse to point and click on big UI elements, but for writing, I use Aqua.
I highly recommend that if you want to understand what it's like to live with speech recognition, or even be mildly disabled, you rent Aqua for a couple of months. It's affordable. No need for a dedicated microphone; it works with the built-in microphones on your laptop, provided you have a relatively quiet room.
Once you've started using Aqua to get comfortable with how Aqua works, place a book on your keyboard to block easy access. Every time you touch the book to use the keyboard, send $10 to an accessibility developer. Alternatively, you could send the money to Aqua to encourage them to develop a Linux version of the desktop client.
So many quotable parts in the post, a must read for anyone, not just those working on software.
Internalizing the plight of someone with different needs and life circumstances (and this is not just about different abilities, such as sight) is how you actually support, work on, and provide more freedom to others. Took me a while to check my own privilege, but I believe I'm a better person for it.
pacifika|8 months ago
msgodel|8 months ago
The blogger wants to outsource living his life to other people, the commenter is getting hung up on pedantry too much to communicate what he actually wants to.
bovermyer|8 months ago
tarboreus|8 months ago
dgb23|8 months ago
I feel like we should be able to strive for things to be better while also appreciating what has been done so far.
WesolyKubeczek|8 months ago
If requirements for being in such lucrative markets loosen up, I'm willing to bet accessibility in Apple/Microsoft offerings will get defunded and rot away.
Of course you can question Red Hat and Canonical for not doing enough in the space, but truth be told, the grassroot open source efforts to make everything in open source more accessible amount to afterthoughts at best. How many GUI toolkit have appeared recently? How many of them are accessible? How many terminal applications gain TrueColor support and draw fancy stuff in the terminal? How many of them are of any use to someone who can't see your efforts in repurposing Unicode symbols to draw pictures in the console?
sneak|8 months ago
It’s probably the nicest thing about the company, and it stands out even more in the last ten or twenty years as the company becomes more and more scummy and despicable. It’s deep down and was established back when it was run by humans with deep empathy.
Toorkit|8 months ago
Then the dozens of desktop environments, each doing things differently, split between X11 and Wayland.
I feel like blind devs should get together and make a distro that, out of the box, has as many accessibility features as possible, because it seems a lost cause to wait for some other distro to pick the right combination of tools.
rickydroll|8 months ago
Also, telling someone to use a dedicated distribution because of the disability is telling them they're not worthy enough to use any distribution that suits their needs beyond accessibility issues.
I'm fortunate to have enough hand function to use a mouse to point and click on big UI elements, but for writing, I use Aqua.
I highly recommend that if you want to understand what it's like to live with speech recognition, or even be mildly disabled, you rent Aqua for a couple of months. It's affordable. No need for a dedicated microphone; it works with the built-in microphones on your laptop, provided you have a relatively quiet room.
Once you've started using Aqua to get comfortable with how Aqua works, place a book on your keyboard to block easy access. Every time you touch the book to use the keyboard, send $10 to an accessibility developer. Alternatively, you could send the money to Aqua to encourage them to develop a Linux version of the desktop client.
pacifika|8 months ago
potato3732842|8 months ago
throwawayqqq11|8 months ago
And the GNU/linuxers respond: "Then go FOSS yourself and fork it."
pickledoyster|8 months ago
Internalizing the plight of someone with different needs and life circumstances (and this is not just about different abilities, such as sight) is how you actually support, work on, and provide more freedom to others. Took me a while to check my own privilege, but I believe I'm a better person for it.
joshka|8 months ago
unknown|8 months ago
[deleted]
Rodmine|8 months ago
[deleted]