Re: [orca-list] popularity of orca and brltty

[Luke Yelavich <themuso ubuntu com>]

On Sat, Sep 05, 2009 at 02:56:50AM EST, Josh wrote:
> You know I've noticed that this list is flourishing and the blinux list has far far fewer postings. Most 
> people on the blinux list are text console users who use speakup or yasr 
> mostly speakup though. So my question is this, is graphical Linux the way of the future for the most part? 
> And is its popularity due to its ease of use? I played with orca in a virtual machine and it works similar 
> to ms-windows. I hope Linux graphical user interfaces continue far into the future if this is the case that 
> orca is popular due to its graphical easy to use nature. 

Hi Josh
GUI Linux will always be with us from now on, so I think its more important to look at it from a blind/vision 
impaired user perspective. The console will always be with us, as many Linux systems such as servers and 
embedded devices will use a console, and no GUI. I think that if blind/vision impaired people wish to use 
Linux to access both offline and online content now and in the future, that GUI access is essential, 
particularly when it comes to web browsing, and the ritch content that is now on the web, that is accessible 
to us. As far as I know, a lot of this content is not 100% accessible to us on the console, even with the 
best console web browsers.

The console will always be important to us, particularly if X/GNOME fails, but just like the many 
blind/vision impaired Windows users who have had to embrace the GUI world to get work done, I feel we as a 
whole will have to as well, or be left behind.

Luke