Re: [orca-list] Trying Quantal Quetsal Alpha 3

[Jason White <jason jasonjgw net>]

Alex Midence <alex midence gmail com> wrote:
> Pdf's are important because a very large portion of the population uses them
> and you will encounter them in many situations.  It is a very popular format
> because it is cross platform and can be made very secure.  People encounter
> it all the time in their jobs and at school.  Oh, and just for
> clarification, I wasn't knocking the cli.  I use it all the time.  

In that case, pdftotext -enc ASCII7 -layout filename.pdf
solves the PDF issue (substitute -raw for -layout if the text is in columns;
don't specify ASCII7 if you require character sets other than English).
> The
> argument was that it was great that we had sooo many choices in Linux for
> interface and I chose to focus on the GUI where everyone else may have tons
> of choices but we as people who rely on accessibility do not and the
> accessibility benefits that could be derived if everyone focused on a
> smaller array of choices instead of being scattered to the four winds so to
> speak.  

I don't find those arguments persuasive, but ultimately that isn't the point.
The community is never going to narrow the range of options on offer. There
will always be a multiplicity of user interfaces, applications, tools and
design priorities for as long as people have the freedom to join with others
in writing and improving software and the means to do so. I, for one,
celebrate this diversity, since it is the spring from which innovation flows.

The accessibility infrastructure needs to be designed to be easy for
developers to integrate into their software, and well documented. Preferably,
almost all of the work should be done by default in UI libraries, with minimal
effort required of users of those libraries.