Re: draft for Friends of GNOME campaign

[Robert Cole <rkcole72984 gmail com>]

Hello.

I was unsure as to whether or not my reply to this post would be 
helpful, but I figured that, just in case it could be, I would respond.

I fell in love with Linux when I took my first Linux class back in 2006. 
I knew nothing about accessibility at that time, but the professor of 
the class took the time to research the topic for me. I used the 
Gnopernicus magnifier in my first Linux system--Fedora Core 5. In late 
2006 I began using gnome-mag in Ubuntu. In 2007 I completely switched to 
Linux when I aw how stable both gnome-mag and the Compiz eZoom plugin 
were. I was at a point financially where I could not afford to pay for 
upgrades to my screen reader and screen magnifier under Windows. I have 
been happy ever since and have no regrets.

I will admit that when I found out that GNOME 3/Shell did not work with 
Compiz any longer I was quite disappointed as Compiz's eZoom plugin 
worked very smoothly when panning while zoomed into the desktop. I have 
been testing GNOME 3/Shell under a Linux Mint 12 virtual machine, and I 
find that the Zoom feature works wonderfully. It does not pan as 
smoothly as Compiz did, but this is while running on a virtual machine. 
If it is still not completely smooth in an actual environment, I ma sure 
that will be factored out in the future. I am not trying to complain; I 
am very grateful for what is present, and I look forward to what the 
future has to offer.

I have also begun to use Orca to reduce eye strain, and I love it. It 
makes my life much easier. I appreciate all of the hard work which is 
being put into GNOME. during its inception, I had read rants about how 
the developers had basically thrown "Accessibility" to the side. From my 
experiences in my Linux Mint 12 environment, I am glad to see that those 
rants were wrong.

So, from the point of view of a blind student soon to graduate with an 
Associate degree in Computer Information Systems, from someone who is 
financially pressed because of hardships in finding employment, I will 
say this: without the hard work of the GNOME developers, I would not 
have made it this far. I am nto exaggerating any of what I say, believe 
me. The accessibility of GNOME is the reason why I switched to Linux, 
and it is why I stay.

I am sure that some developers out there may feel like their work is in 
vain, but trust me...it definitely is not.

I will end this rambling on, and I do apologize for the long message. I 
just wanted to make it know that, at least in my life, the hard work put 
into GNOME has made a tremendous difference. It is something which I try 
my best not to take for granted.

If I can help with anything (I wish that I could help financially, but I 
can hardly afford to take care of my family) please feel free to contact 
me on- or off-list, whichever is most efficient and proper.

Thanks for everything which all of you do to make GNOME work.


On 11/28/2011 02:25 PM, Juanjo Marín wrote:
> ----- Mensaje original -----
>
> > De: Dave Neary<dneary gnome org>
> > Para: marketing-list gnome org
> > On 11/28/2011 08:04 PM, Karen Sandler wrote:
> > >    jjmarin and I are working on this text to promote the FoG campaign we hope
> > >    to launch next week. How can we improve it? Also, do you like "Make
> > 2012
> > >    the year of accessibility for GNOME" as a short tagline?
> > I hate to say it, but I'm not sure if Accessibility as an abstract concept
> > will sell.
> >
> > Do we have some examples of GNOME users whose lives were made measurably better
> > because of the a11y work we've done? Show-cases work wonders.
> >
> > >    With your help we can start tackling those goals. Let's kickstart 2012
> > as
> > >    the Year of Accessibility at GNOME and make the most usable desktop
> > >    environment the most accessible desktop environment!
> > Do we have any specific improvements (and the reasons why they're important
> > - or the people for whom they're important) to point to?
>
> Hi,
>
> I think is worth to crossposting the following message from the marketing list to
> the accessibility list to get some feedback from users about how useful the 
> accessibilty features of GNOME are in their lives and why it is important
> for them to keep working on this.
>
> Basically, there are a lot of accessibility tasks to be done in several areas. There
> are features to be implemented, for example, the gnome-shell Magnifier track focus 
> and caret, and more obscure issues in the platform, like peformance Improvements 
> which are important for getting a snapier user experience, just to name a couple of
> them. There are many tasks in the accessibilty roadmap [1] haven't been done yet
> because a lack of resources.
>
> Cheers,
>
>
>     -- Juanjo Marin
>
>
> [1] Two year 2010-2012 accessibilty roadmap. https://live.gnome.org/Accessibility/Roadmap
>
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