Devin Prater (@devinprater@dragonscave.space)
dragonscave.spaceThread: About Windows 11's high system requirements. You know, a lot of blind people, who don't have jobs, live on social security and disability money, and who definitely don't have the newest computers, won't get Windows 11. This could have been a great chance for Linux to step up and say loud and proud "Because we support every person's ability to choose their system, and use and learn about computers, we will never force upon users what system they must run. And because we stand proudly with people with disabilities, all blind people are welcome in the world of free and open source software, where they can learn and create just like everyone else."
But no. Gnome, one of the most popular desktops on Linux, is trash with accessibility. KDE is working on it, but that'll take years. Who's ever heard of Mate? And who makes current software for the command line, for users and not other developers?
similar thread: https://lemmy.ml/post/61353
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Just mentioning for FYI reasons, for installation there is : https://wiki.parabola.nu/Installation_Guide#Blind_and_visually_impaired_users
I think the problem is somewhat comparable with what one can see with LineageOS. If you have or buy a phone which is not so popular and there is only one developer of LOS for your device it can happen that one day the developer will buy a new phone or start a different life and drops development. With Linux and related software project it is still pretty often hobby or community projects (See the development of Thunderbird going from Mozilla umbrella to community, and Ubuntu Touch being dropped by Canonical but picked up by ubports community). For example, if you are an open source developer and you live with housemates who are into Matrix and Signal for communication, it would be no surprise that you would want to work on that as well. Of course there are bigger projects like KDE (Gnome looks big but seems to suffer lately with a few projects, e.g. Evolution and Geary seem currently basically one person driven projects) which are not so much “hobby projects” anymore and could focus on this.
A possibly solution ? Reach out to blind people and work with them. For example : Start a new house community project with a few KDE projects living with a few blind people and a few motivated open source contributors for say one year. I am sure that things can be accomplished.
Well, honestly a lot of FOSS software has been lacking in usability in general, not even accessibility. It’s to be expected, as lots of software has basically been born from hobby projects and there is no unifying entity creating everything or defining human interface guidelines, besides perhaps GNOME and KDE.
The thing is that there is a big emphasis in FOSS software to “implement yourself” the features needed because most work is volunteer driven. So unless someone or some organization were to fund a developer or two to implement accessibility features, they don’t magically come into being.
I heard this “implement yourself” argument way too often. I really can’t understand such a thinking. It’s like selling a car and say, that everyone could change tires, including the mounting on new rims. 🤦 As if everybody is a software developer.
But here the car is free…
Doesn’t matter it’s still a product at the end of the day. Just because it doesn’t costs anything doesn’t means you shouldn’t get much/anything in return beyond the software.
Additionally think of it as a developer, don’t you want to keep the lights on? Food on the table and etc? Well how you gonna dope the donations? By becoming committed to your “consumers” and having them return the favors.
You know what they says, what goes around comes back around. :)
“something (such as a service) that is marketed or sold as a commodity” (Merriam Webster)
“object or system made available for consumer use; it is anything that can be offered to a market to satisfy the desire or need of a customer” (Wikipedia)
In short: paid software is a product. A volunteering effort is not a product, it’s a gift.
Complaining about a gift not being good enough is quite entitled.
The vast majority of open-source devs don’t get donations or paid for it. We keep the lights on by having a day job, with the open-source work being only a hobby…