Deaf people

["Dan \"Effugas\" Kaminsky" <effugas best com>]

Oh, by the way Josh, I have not one but *TWO* deaf friends and it turns out
that 30 million americans--a damn large chunk of the population--suffers
from some degree of hearing loss.

Oh, and Linus doesn't have a sound card ;-)

I don't think there was ANY disagreement AT ALL in here when we suggested
that we provide usability for the disabled.  So maybe would should specify
that all apps that have critical sound effects also have visual
alternatives, at least available?  I can't describe to you the anger my deaf
friends have when they play a new game and there is no closed captioning.

I'm not saying trash sound.  I'm just saying that sound should either be
fluff or it should be supplementable.

-----Original Message-----
From: Josh Steiner <Josh@BerkeleyNet.com>
To: 'gnome-gui-list@gnome.org' <gnome-gui-list@gnome.org>
Date: Friday, August 14, 1998 11:51 AM
Subject: RE: PROPOSAL: UISG Notification Sample Length Standardization


>I have to also agree with those who are saying the 2 seconds is too
>restrictive.  What if my program was _based_ around vocalizing messages.
>In fact the more I think about it, a restriction like this is
>Baaaad(TM).  A close friend of mine is blind and naturally relies on
>auditory warnings.  I feel this time limit is arbitrary and could easily
>infringe upon valid designs, for instance if I personally made my
>program blind-aware and wanted to include informative sound messages.  I
>also have been considering designing games that are 100% dependant on
>audio, so this would entirely prevent these kind of valid applications
>from ever receiving a GNOME compliancy.  This is no good.  I understand
>your intentions, and I agree.  In most situations long winded movie
>samples and what-not as alarms would be very, very irritating and
>downright sleazy, but I feel that mandating this is too restrictive.
>Maybe put in a word of warning that unless it is a necessary part of the
>programs functionality, please restrict your sound sample length.
>
>Josh
>
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: John R Sheets [SMTP:dusk@smsi-roman.com]
>> Sent: Friday, August 14, 1998 11:06 AM
>> To: gnome-gui-list@gnome.org
>> Subject: Re: PROPOSAL: UISG Notification Sample Length
>> Standardization
>>
>> Bowie Poag wrote:
>> >
>> > The sound sampless which are provided by the application to use as
>> its
>> > DEFAULT SETTINGS, straight out of the box, cannot be longer than two
>> > seconds. If you want to put a sample in there longer than two
>> seconds,
>> > fine -- Thats your choice. But the application itself will never use
>> a >2
>> > second sample for notification purposes, by default.
>>
>> I don't think 2 seconds is long enough.  I agree with the other
>> people who said 5 seconds would be a better length.  I think it's
>> a good thought, but we shouldn't bear down too hard on this one.
>> It should be more of a friendly scolding than a fully-enforced
>> requirement.
>>
>> The style guide should have a section for (or a concrete way of
>> addressing) "Polite" styles, things that GNOME thinks are nice,
>> and civilized, but that aren't important enough to enforce.
>>
>> Does anyone (other than Bowie) feel that 5 seconds is too long
>> for a default sound sample length?
>>
>> Or perhaps sound events need to be separated into two categories:
>> user events and system events, each with different sound
>> lengths.  In this case, I would suggest 2 seconds for user events
>> (mouse clicks, etc.), and 5 seconds for system events (mail
>> notification, etc.).  However, I think a flat 5 seconds would be
>> just as good (i.e. simpler, less to bicker & fret over).
>>
>> John
>>
>>
>> --
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