Re: Can the community work with Gnome to improve GTK+ a11y?

[Jason White <jason jasonjgw net>]

Bill Cox <waywardgeek gmail com> wrote:
> I just can't find a way to
> diplomatically deal with people who are not passionate about
> accessibility.  What I hear so far is "reformat the patch", "submit it
> as a Gail bug, not a GTK bug", and "I don't think thats the right
> approach".  What I need to be a passionate supporter of GTK
> accessibility is a developer who says "your approach sucks, but I
> fixed it, and committed an accessibility upgrade".  

It's normal in free/open software for someone who reviews a patch to request
that the submitter improve it to make it acceptable by the project. In other
words, what you received was a code review. I expect this is how they would
respond to any patch you sent, accessibility-related or not.

If you want more than a review, (for example, assistance in the design or
writing of the change) then you'd presumably have to engage on a mailing list
or IRC.

I don't think this is a case of "not being passionate about accessibility",
but rather a question of different expectations as to how patches submitted in
bug reports should be handled. From what I've seen on mailing lists over the
years, the responses you received are just a normal part of the course for
open software development. If you went ahead and did what they asked of you,
or tried to fclarify it appropriately, you would probably make more progress.