Re: getting orca included in gnome 2.16



Janina Sajka wrote:
Mike Pedersen writes:
We have been informed, however, that there can be only one screen
reader/magnifier in the GNOME desktop.

That's a rather outrageous attitude. Who made that decision?

Are they also prepared to have only one web browser? ONly one media
player? ONly one word processor? Only one email client application?
I think you may have misinterpreted this slightly. The idea is that there will only be one official screen reader in Gnome, as there indeed is only one email client (Evolution), one browser (Epiphany), one office suite (gnome office, using abiword and gnumeric). Distributions can, and do, change these defaults and users can install a whole range of options.

In Ubuntu we include Firefox instead of Epiphany, OpenOffice instead of Gnome Office, etc. I see no problems with that. Currently we have Gnopernicus installed by default and Orca as an option. For our next release we will likely change that so that Orca becomes the default and Gnopernicus the option. We still package and support a wide range of options beyond that though and we are actively working on several new accessibility tools from scratch.
Frankly, it's an insult. This kind of grudging support for accessibility needs to be stopped right now. In fact, it's a 
stretch to even call it "support."
This may be true in some areas of the open source world still, that accessibility is an afterthought, but we are working to improve that. An important factor in becoming better at this is learning to collaborate better and work together on common tools. Choice is good in principle, but the price of fragmented effort can be high.

Finally, I think you are complaining the wrong audience here (various accessibility lists). All these people are already on your side. If you want to make this complaint it should go to the main developer lists of gnome, redhat, ubuntu, etc. Though that said, I do actually think that gnome is right in their policy on this.

Henrik Omma
Ubuntu Accessibility Coordinator





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