Hi, I understand where Willie is coming from. Just because they have seemingly took the wrong path with Orca doesn't necessarily mean that they will stop accessibility work in all areas. However, when a company comes in and lays off the lead developer of Orca, not to mention the man who pretty much single-handedly kept Open Solaris one of the most accessible distros, without so much as a word to their reasons why or to the future of those projects, they should expect some harsh backlash. Will is like the accessibility version of a knight in shining armor, and along comes this evil monster who, unprevoked, attacked our knight. Of course people are gonna be mad as hell. So, if Oracle doesn't like blanket accusations hurled at them, they shouldn't take such foolish actions. I also understand that Oracle may choose to not cooporate with accessibility work in the future if they are met with such reaction. That is, of course, up to them. It's not like they are the only choice. MySQL is, as far as I can tell, completely accessible. I have had no trouble using phpmyadmin. Of course it's been a while, but I doubt it has changed much, it's a web interface after all. There's also something called postgerSQL or something like that. I don't know how accessible it is, but it is another alternative that may be worth checking in to and premoting if they take accessibility seriously. Storm -- Follow me on Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/stormdragon2976 My blog, Thoughts of a Dragon: http://www.stormdragon.us/ What color dragon are you? http://quizfarm.com/quizzes/new/alustriel07/what-color-dragon-would-you-be/ On Tue, 2010-02-23 at 18:26 +0000, Michael Whapples wrote:I have to say, in some ways regretfully, I am drawing the same conclusion. I say regretfully because with all the work done on opensolaris to make it accessible (I think Will did much of that from what I read), it was one of the best gnome systems for accessibility. Here are a few things leading to my conclusion: * Some time ago I had reason to contact oracle about a piece of software from them. In that contact I commented on what accessibility issues I encountered and what could be done to make it a bit better for accessibility. The response wasn't great, the software in question was an opensource package (sqldeveloper) and for this reason it did not fall under the same support for accessibility as other oracle products. May be Orca is seen the same way, I tried to put this behind me when considering the orca decision though. * I personally wrote to oracle on the Monday following Joanie's original open letter. My contact mainly voiced concerns for how this will impact on unix accessibility in general, but pointing out that it could impact negatively on the accessibility of solaris (it is worth considering what might the business reasons be for doing something). I asked for some clarification on how oracle intends to proceed with the accessibility of solaris as I was considering learning more about it but not wanting to learn something which may become inaccessible to me. At this point I have received no response. This seems bad and I intend to chase them up on this in a week or so if I don't here anything. We may not get responses we want to hear but that would be better than no response. * As most of my learning of the solaris way would be done on opensolaris, I decided to post a question on both the indiana-discuss and accessibility-discuss lists asking if anyone knew what the future is. I had one response, I am not sure that it represented the actual intent on oracle and was probably a personal view, but no other response giving any clear idea where it may go. As Joanie said in her open letter, you would hope oracle cares about its users, at the moment I feel they don't care about making there system usable by me, for that reason I will try and avoid their products where ever possible now, unless they prove my current feelings are wrong. What a contrast to the view I took on Sun's accessibility, which thanks to much of the gnome accessibility work, I approached with a favourable view. Michael Whapples On 01/-10/-28163 08:59 PM, hackingKK wrote:I have given up on Oracle. They don't think blind people deserve an opportunity to use computers for their daily work. For them blind people (and perhaps other disabled people ) don't need any improvement in their employability or standard of life. Let's try and find out alternative options which can keep orca alive and going on. Happy hacking. Krishnakant. On Tuesday 23 February 2010 10:36 PM, Aaruni wrote:Hi Joani, could you please give the url for the petitions? Thanks, Aruni. On 08/02/2010, Steve Holmes<steve holmes88 gmail com> wrote:-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: RIPEMD160 This is an excellent open letter. I could have never written anything as elegant as this. I've been away from my system since last night so have a bit of catching up to do. I have a blog that has been pretty much dormant til now so this will give me some ideas to post about:). On Sun, Feb 07, 2010 at 03:05:25PM -0500, Joanmarie Diggs wrote:Hey again. I wanted to thank those of you who left comments on my blog on this topic, and I'd encourage those of you who have not but who care about the future of GNOME accessibility in general, and Orca in particular, do the same. After all, I guarantee you that Oracle could care less about me; it is my sincerest hope that they care about you, the user. Also, for those of you with your own blogs who have written similar entries on this topic, please do not be shy about "shameless self promotion" in the form of adding a link to your entry in the comments of my blog. Alternatively, send me a link to what you've written so that I can point to it within my entry. My hope is that what remains of this weekend continues to see voices of concern, in writing, in blogs and in comments. The next step would be to ensure that our collective voices get noticed by those who need to notice them. :-) Thanks again guys. Hopefully soon we'll be able to get back to the business of actually working on accessibility, rather than trying to prevent its demise. --joanie On Sun, 2010-02-07 at 11:14 -0500, Joanmarie Diggs wrote:Hey guys. For what it's worth, I just wrote a blog entry on Oracle's decision. "An Open Letter to Oracle on the Topic Of Accessibility" can be found at: http://bit.ly/oracle-a11y For the sake of convenience, here is the text of that entry: Dear Oracle: You don't know me, so please permit me a brief introduction: I'm Joanie. By day, I'm an assistive technology specialist working with individuals who are blind or visually impaired. By night, weekend, and holiday for almost four years now, I've been a GNOME community contributor working primarily on the Orca screen reader, a project led by Sun's Accessibility Program Office. Working with the engineers at Sun, both inside and outside of the APO, has been an honor for a variety of reasons, not least of which is our shared common belief: Access isn't a privilege; it's a right. Towards that end, Sun Microsystems strived to ensure that ALL users have access to software and information. Does Oracle plan to do the same? Sun Microsystems believed that these things shouldn't be denied to those who aren't employed, or who don't live in the "right" country, or who don't speak the "right" language, or who cannot afford to purchase thousands of dollars' worth of access technology. What does Oracle believe? Through its significant, ongoing contributions to the GNOME desktop, Sun Microsystems has made computer access possible for many individuals with disabilities, from all walks of life, all over the world. Will Oracle embrace the opportunity to continue this important work? My assumption was yes. In fact, I was feeling quite hopeful. After all, the past few years have been hard on Sun. But with Larry Ellison's promise of increased investment in the Sun brand, and Oracle's strong commitment to accessibility, things would finally be turning around: If one under-funded APO could accomplish everything that it has, what could the two combined and properly-funded APOs achieve? At the very least we'd be able to finally get a handle on all of the accessibility challenges facing GNOME 3. I was wrong. :-( Last week, Oracle laid off two more members of Sun's already-decimated APO. One of those let go happened to be both the Orca project lead and the GNOME Accessibility project lead, Willie Walker. I truly hope this was an oversight on Oracle's part, and one that will be rectified very soon. Because if it is not, and if no other company steps forward to continue this work, the accessibility of the GNOME desktop will become the open source equivalent of an unfunded mandate, doomed ultimately to fail. Oracle's decision threatens to leave many individuals with disabilities around the world without access to a modern desktop environment. I find that tragic._______________________________________________ Orca-list mailing list Orca-list gnome org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/orca-list Visit http://live.gnome.org/Orca for more information on Orca. The manual is at http://library.gnome.org/users/gnome-access-guide/nightly/ats-2.html The FAQ is at http://live.gnome.org/Orca/FrequentlyAskedQuestions Netiquette Guidelines are at http://live.gnome.org/Orca/FrequentlyAskedQuestions/NetiquetteGuidelines Log bugs and feature requests at http://bugzilla.gnome.org-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.4.10 (GNU/Linux) iEYEAREDAAYFAktvQQAACgkQWSjv55S0LfGjfQCff65oyDeaBRl4RrdBxsdUA87E El0An3hMwSg7ZFI7lCTiFEiUWpj8gof6 =reVS -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- _______________________________________________ Orca-list mailing list Orca-list gnome org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/orca-list Visit http://live.gnome.org/Orca for more information on Orca. The manual is at http://library.gnome.org/users/gnome-access-guide/nightly/ats-2.html The FAQ is at http://live.gnome.org/Orca/FrequentlyAskedQuestions Netiquette Guidelines are at http://live.gnome.org/Orca/FrequentlyAskedQuestions/NetiquetteGuidelines Log bugs and feature requests at http://bugzilla.gnome.org_______________________________________________ Orca-list mailing list Orca-list gnome org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/orca-list Visit http://live.gnome.org/Orca for more information on Orca. The manual is at http://library.gnome.org/users/gnome-access-guide/nightly/ats-2.html The FAQ is at http://live.gnome.org/Orca/FrequentlyAskedQuestions Netiquette Guidelines are at http://live.gnome.org/Orca/FrequentlyAskedQuestions/NetiquetteGuidelines Log bugs and feature requests at http://bugzilla.gnome.org_______________________________________________ Orca-list mailing list Orca-list gnome org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/orca-list Visit http://live.gnome.org/Orca for more information on Orca. The manual is at http://library.gnome.org/users/gnome-access-guide/nightly/ats-2.html The FAQ is at http://live.gnome.org/Orca/FrequentlyAskedQuestions Netiquette Guidelines are at http://live.gnome.org/Orca/FrequentlyAskedQuestions/NetiquetteGuidelines Log bugs and feature requests at http://bugzilla.gnome.org