Re: [orca-list] Some bugs with perhaps possible fixing in master branch

[Robert Cole <rkcole72984 gmail com>]

I completely agree, Thomas.

I have been a member of this list for a few years now, but have become 
more active the past year-and-a-half, and I love this list. I love the 
fact that we can talk with developers, and that they ask for our 
opinions on things. For instance, there were different things which 
Joanie has done over the past few releases, and she always asked for our 
input. The same with Piñeiro and others. And the fact of the matter is 
is that they WANT software such as GNOME, KDE, XFCE, and so forth to be 
accessible, and to be made FREELY available to users as a better 
alternative.

I still remember starting out with Gnopernicus back in 2005 or 2006, and 
I must say that things have come a LONG way since then. And I look 
forward to where accessibility is going. I was very excited when I was 
able to completely install Ubuntu 12.04 using Orca; it was a wonderful 
experience. I know people who teach JAWS classes, and they always have 
to call someone in to do windows installations because there is no 
talking installer for Windows; it was always a big frustration to them. 
but when I try to talk with them about Linux, they always bring up the 
line: "But Linux isn't that accessible, is it? Do they have something 
like JAWS?" Honestly, I did not care for JAWS. when I did use Windows, I 
found NVDA, for my personal use, to be much more usable and functional 
than JAWS. I tried JAWS 9 with Thunderbird to no avail, but NVDA worked 
wonders.

And now in Linux, I am loving Orca. Although I still use magnification 
for some things, Orca is a BIG help to me when it comes to reading 
e-mails and proofreading them. It is just this mind-set that if it is 
not JAWS it is not good quality. Well, I'll stick with Linux and I'll 
stick with Orca for the GUI desktop environments and for work which I do 
in GNOME Terminal.

Anyhow...that's just my two cents.

Take care.

On 06/04/2012 03:58 PM, Thomas Ward wrote:
> Hi Jeff,
>
> Couldn't have said it better myself, and you are absolutely right.
> Freedom Scientific doesn't really have to put a lot of money into
> marketing research etc because they know that U.S. state agencies and
> most rehab centers will buy their product anyway. Plus with the SMA
> agreements that pretty much insures that Jaws stays in the lead, and
> they don't have anything to fear from Window-Eyes, Orca, Supernova, or
> anything else as long as the U.S. government keeps lining their
> pockets.
>
> I know from experience if a young college student asks vocational
> rehab to chip in and buy them an accessible computer they will get a
> vocational rehab special. Usually an inexpensive desktop system with
> Windows Home Basic on it, Jaws, Openbook, and probably toss Microsoft
> Office in with the system too. There are plenty of alternatives to
> Jaws such as Window-Eyes, Supernova, or NVDA but they don't even
> consider them. Instead of whipping out a thousand bucks for Openbook
> they could go for a cheaper mainstream OCR package like Omnipage but
> don't. Since the end user gets all this stuff for free its easier for
> them just to keep paying for their SMA than to come up for the money
> for alternative access tech. That keeps guys like Freedom Scientific
> in business.
>
> The government could really save themselves money if they purchased a
> new Del laptop or desktop preloaded with Ubuntu 12.04 with Orca,
> perhaps a commercial TTS package, and an open source OCR package, but
> they are never going to do that because if you start talking about
> Linux to their so-called experts you might as well be speaking
> Klingon. As far as their techs are concerned Jaws is the cat's meow,
> and sadly I've seen Jaws quality get steadily worse the last few years
> because they don't really do research on what their customers want or
> need. Which brings me to my point.
>
> With Orca we have a chance to focus on real accessibility issues that
> effect everyone. Ubuntu 12 can be installed from scratch using Orca
> from the live CD. Some work has been done to make Fedora's installer,
> Anaconda, more accessible. These kinds of accessibility features are
> far more important to an end user than the kind of crap such as
> ResearchIt found in Jaws. At least with recent versions of Ubuntu and
> Orca I can repartition my drive, install my OS, etc from scratch. Try
> doing that with Windows and Jaws.
>
> Basically, what I am getting at is the Orca developers' time is
> valuable and we should prioritize what features are most important to
> everyone. Is making sure that the logout dialog in Gnome 3.41 is
> accessible more important to us than having control+c state if some
> text is copied to the clipboard? Is Qt access more important than some
> other feature? These are the things we need to think about and
> prioritize so that the most important things get done first.
>
> Cheers!
>
>
> On 6/4/12, Geoff Shang<geoff quitelikely com>  wrote:
> > Hi,
> >
> > This is straying off-topic.  I will attempt to make it relevant so please
> > stick with me.
> >
> > In response to Alex' message asserting that JAWS features are implemented
> > due to demand, this may have been true once but it's not necessarily true
> > anymore.  Two reasons for this:
> >
> > 1.  They are the most used screen reader, particularly in the USA which is
> > their main concern.  As such they can pretty much do what they want.  The
> > other screen readers need to play catch-up and everybody knows it.
> >
> > 2.  Many people take out software maintenance agreements for major
> > releases of JAWS.  This entitles a person to the next two major releases.
> > Back in the day, these major releases were usually worth it, being notable
> > upgrades in performance or functionality.  But now, Freedom Scientific has
> > effectively made it a two-year support contract because they roll out a
> > new major release every single year.  This of course gives them a more
> > reliable income stream from SMA customers.  However, it also means that
> > they need to come up with enough new features to warrant a new version
> > designation, or at least to make it look like people are actually getting
> > something for their money.  So this results in highly dubious features
> > like ResearchIt that very arguably should not even be in a screen reader
> > being touted by FS as a major feature in JAWS 11.
> >
> > Now I say all this because we should take this into account if we want to
> > consider using the functionality present in commercial screen readers as a
> > gauge for what should be implemented in free ones.  My point is that the
> > wants and needs of the user are not the only things that drive commercial
> > screen reader development, and are quite possibly not the most influential
> > ones that do.  Since screen readers like Orca are not subject to such
> > commercial pressures, and particularly since they also lack the kind of
> > development man-power that commercial money can buy, we can and must think
> > more about the usefulness of various features rather than merely copy what
> > someone else decided to do.
> >
> > Cheers,
> > Geoff.
> _______________________________________________
> orca-list mailing list
> orca-list gnome org
> https://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
> Log bugs and feature requests at http://bugzilla.gnome.org
> Find out how to help at http://live.gnome.org/Orca/HowCanIHelp