Re: [orca-list] Vinux 1.3 Released!

[Labrador <labrad0r edpnet be>]

On Tue, Feb 24, 2009 at 10:32:51AM -0500, Bob Tinney wrote:
> I can remember when web sites were all coming out with text only pages to 
> make their sites more accessible to blind and visually impaired persons. 
> There was only one problem with these text only sites, they were not updated 
> as quickly as the mainstream pages and that is why I stopped using these 
> special pages.  

Concerning Vinux, it won't be updated synchronously with Ubntu; it will be
updated more than Ubuntu, since Vinux focuses on VI people's needs and is by
the way not bound to the famous six months deadline.

> We can all ask for special exceptions and special releases, 
> but anything special just removes us further from the mainstream, 

Not agree: it's the mainstream distro Ubuntu that haven't resolved some
stupid problems since October 2007 (7.10), so they push by not fixing bad
problems people to do two things:
- be quite and wait for the resurection/the miracle
- or building alternatives who fix problems and propose a better support
(once again its ununderstandable that the brailel autodetection have been
removed from Ubuntu, and tis is not an accident but a choice, a wrong
choice, totally!)

> and it 
> allows the mainstream to ignore us even more then they do now.

This may be nuanced:
- I'm not considering that Debian or Ubuntu or SuSE etc... are ignoring us
- there are just a few BIG problems and I'm urging for more than 1/2 year to
fix some, especially in Ubuntu: if nobody of the development team do so,
then they are risponsible that alternate projects see the day.
- Another important point is, that you probably forget that mainstream
distros are made for sighted persons, they can't focus as good as Adriane or
Vinux do for optimizing it for us; in some cases blind users will prefer the
alternate distros.
The Ubuntu menu is far from accessible:
        1) you have to choose blindly your country by x times right
           and y times up or down; is this accessible ? NO!
        2) idem for selecting the keyboard; is this accessible? NO
        3) F5 is the place for selecting Accessibility; once again its
           unapropriate to let people choose things blindly while in Debian
           at the CD/DVD boot: prompt you just enter brltty=bb,dd,tt
           and from that point what you feel is what you get, the menu is
           fully accessible.
Wall, as long as Ubuntu Accessibility doesn't resolve this issue there is a
need for alternate/better solutions, nothing more nothing less.

fix all these basic accessibility issues and then OK there is lesser reasons
for switching to an alternate (short term / targeted) distro.

I had prefered continuing using Ubuntu itself but since october 2007 its
finished, except with help of a sighted person. Well there isn't 24/7 a
sighted person near me, sorry! 

Labrad0r