Re: [orca-list] Concern about Oracle takeover

[Steve Holmes <steve holmes88 gmail com>]

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Joanie,

For someone is not backgrounded in computers, you do an incredible
job! I mean this especially with things like the Mozilla programs -
Firefox and Thunderbird.  And you doing this in your spare time none
the less.  It also shows that if enough people could learn the
necessary background and bone up their programming skills, just maybe a
bucketfull of volunteers instead of a handfull might be able to help
keep Orca up to date and compatible with on-going software changes. 

Will's right in that if developers would take accessibility more
seriously from the start, things could be a lot easier all around.
That's where I tend to want to beat up on these toolkit developers.
I'm sure many if not  most, developers of end-user software use one of
the more popular toolkits to get the UI going.  If the toolkit would
expose all DOM information, the programmer wouldn't have to think that
much about it except for layout specifically.  

There seems to be a lot of concern expressed concerning corporate
sponsership or funding for full time employees but how many other open
source and free projects operate without any full time support?  I
realize some of the accessiblity frameworks are complex but maybe that
should be simplified or documented more so more people might be able
to climb on board.

I'm sorry if I'm trying to over-simplify this too much but given our
screwed up economy right now, I doubt we're gonna have much luck
getting big companies to care much about a11y let alone, pony up some
cash for some dedicated staff for it.  Just my thought here.  I mean
this is real proof that Free software is free as in freedom and often
free as in beer but that doesn't mean no work.  In fact, doesn't
freedom often come with expected responsibility? So with free or open
source software, we have to freedom to use, distribute, modify,
etc. so now we have the responsibility as a community of users and
volunteers to take care of it, contribute changes where skills apply,
advocate to developers of UI's and toolkits, etc.  And also, to
promote the availability of this project to other users such as access
technology specialists, rehab engineers and counselers and the like.
Like, how many blind people might get turned away from a job because
maybe the employer uses Linux and the rehab person thinks a blind
person can't work there because they don't have Jaws for Linux? 

It sounds like we need a movement here and an organization with
delegated duties.

For little starters and slightly off topic from this thread, Storm
Dragon wrote up a text thingy I download a while back detailing how
his orca-customization script works; I just read it through completely
a little bit ago and it gives me an excellent way to break the ice for
python and Orca scripting.  Looking at that, several of us might be
able to do some light-weight scripting to make Orca work even better
with some apps.  Like I want to make the insert key talk in editors
like gedit and OO Writer.
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