Re: Proposal: enable accessibility by default for GNOME

[Gerd Kohlberger <lowfi chello at>]

Dylan McCall wrote:
> "Mousetweaks requires Assistive Technologies."
>
> I used this as the first example in a little post I made regarding
> courteous software.
>
> Let's pretend for a moment I am a disabled person who has trouble with
> mouse buttons. I am trying to turn on a critical accessibility feature,
> and I think I see light at the end of the tunnel.
> ...
> Nope, never mind. Instead, this program decides to tease me! It throws a
> cryptic error message, telling me that it requires "assistive
> technologies". It essentially orders me to give it these technologies,
> and it refuses to do anything until I satisfy its demands. I can feel
> the confused phone calls starting already!
> In the layman's thoughts: Of course it "needs assistive technologies";
> it /is/ an assistive technology! This error message is lazy, cruel and
> unusual. It does not offer to enable assistive technologies, and it does
> not elaborate on what the heck it means to begin with. It simply refuses
> to work, leaving people to give up or phone their relatives. There is no
> reason for this evil, either; the software here has complete access to
> the necessary controls such that it should be able to transparently
> enable "Assistive Technologies" without the end user needing to think
> about it. At the least, it could have a button leading to the "Assistive
> Technologies" preferences or a kind explanation of what "assistive
> tecnologies" are if not the technology the user is trying to enable.
>   
Hi,

just for the record, the dialog looks like this:

---
Assistive Technology Support is Not Enabled

Mousetweaks requires assistive technologies to be enabled
in your session.

To enable support for assistive technologies and restart
your session, press "Enable and Log Out".
---

I fully agree that such messages shouldn't appear in the first place. 
Unfortunately this is the best we can do in the current situation.

Gerd