Re: getting orca included in gnome 2.16

[Janina Sajka <janina rednote net>]

Thanks, Kris, for getting at the real issue that I missed.
I must indeed agree with you. I, for one, am glad that there are dozens
of sopas at the store, and several airlines to fly across the Atlantic.
I understand it's harder to support choice in distributions and
desktops, but I believe it's essential so to do, if for no other reason
than it makes us think harder to get the important things right. It's not important that we all use the same 
email client, for instance, but it is
important that we can read email from anyone. I believe the latter is at
risk when we allow ourselves the ease of the former.

Janina

Kris Van Hees writes:
> On Sat, Jun 10, 2006 at 08:01:00PM +0100, Henrik Nilsen Omma wrote:
> > 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.
>
> Not to start a holy war, but a reasonable part of the audience that believes in
> an alternative to Microsoft Windows also supports the notion of *not* including
> various other applications and suites.  While Gnome is surely not an OS, it
> seems rather weird (and potentially dangerous) to me to end up with a situation
> where Gnome has an official screen reader, an official mail client, etc...
> By including specific official applications and suites in Gnome, you're bound
> to get into a situation where a large group of people will end up simply
> sticking to the officially included applications and suites, either by choice
> (easier) or as mandated by an IT department that takes the "we only run the
> officially included stuff" approach (all too comon).
>
> And in the end... why not simply leave Gnome to be the desktop environment it
> is, and let users choose what they want?  Why does there need to be one
> official choice, and optional alternatives?  I can see where the general public
> falls for this, and how from a "let's pretend the user is stupid" perspective
> this can be considered "user-friendly", but I would hope that we (as a special
> interest group) can express a genuine concern about this type of policy to
> the powers that be (and that make this type of policy).
>
>       Kris
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-- 

Janina Sajka                            Phone: +1.240.715.1272
Partner, Capital Accessibility LLC      http://CapitalAccessibility.Com

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Chair, Accessibility Workgroup          Free Standards Group (FSG)
janina freestandards org                http://a11y.org