Re: Removing gthtml2 (was Proposed modules for 2.10 wanted NOW)

[Bill Haneman <Bill Haneman Sun COM>]

Mark McLoughlin wrote:

> 	I thought this had happened before now - I was confusing yelp with
> devhelp, though. So, for anyone else who doesn't know, 2.9.1 was the
> first yelp release using gecko.
>
>
> > Please DONT do this; if you use the gecko component, the help system
> > become inaccessible.
>
>
> 	Its an unfortunate regression in accessibility given the amount of work
> done on gtkhtml2 accessibility, but you would agree that its the way
> forward, right? You would agree that maintaining one less html renderer
> (and the accessibility support therein) is good, right?

Only when the remaining html renderer is substantially accessible.  That 
is not yet the case, and I don't see a committment in the GNOME 
community to make sure this happens for 2.10.  The existing GNOME 
accessibility team CANNOT make this committment, as we have our hands 
more than full already, without shouldering all of the regressions that 
take place as part of GNOME's "progress".

> 	Maybe it would have been better to wait to make the switch in yelp
> until the Mozilla a11y work has been completed, 

Yes, absolutely.

> but personally I'm not
> too worried about the help browser being inaccessible if the web browser
> is inaccessible.

If help is inaccessible, the whole desktop is useless from an 
accessibility point of view.  It's already true that some users will 
chose web browsers other than the 'GNOME' one, i.e. Mozilla/Firefox or 
even Links/Lynx instead of Epiphany.

If GNOME help regresses this much with respect to accessibility, I for 
one would not be willing to make any real claims for GNOME desktop 
accessibility at all.  This is a very serious regression for 
accessibility indeed.

- Bill

> Cheers,
> Mark.


--
------
Bill Haneman
Gnome Accessibility Project
Sun Microsystems Ireland