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Re: [orca-list] Geany, SciTE and other Scintilla based applications
Before you pose another analogy, you need to ask yourself if it meets the criteria I've already set for a comparison. First, is it a genuine need? Second, does it place an unreasonable burden on the developer?
Of course, it's possible to come up with borderline cases. Adding accessibility to Scintilla may even be a borderline case. I don't know enough about accessibility programming to say. But borderline cases won't prove anything anyway. Should a historical building have to be remodeled to have wheelchair access? Maybe, maybe not. Either way, it doesn't invalidate the whole idea of requiring wheelchair ramps on new construction.
There are two seperate issues here. One is how best to approach a developer. I haven't said anything about that. I've only addressed the second issue which is the developer's morals (assuming the reports of his responses are accurate). I dunnno... You seem to be uncomfortable with me using the term SOB even behind his back. Whatever. I'll just sayhe is a NVNP from now on -- Not Very Nice Person. 

On 07/15/14 15:36, Mike Ray wrote:

Yes I accept the Mandarin Chinese analogy was flawed.

But the fact remains that taking Scintilla as an example, if *private*
software authors were forced to go down the route of never writing
anything which might exclude a percentage of the population, then
virtually nothing would ever get written.

What if I was to say that I need for Scintilla to include
speech-recognition because I haven't got any hands?

Legislation here in the European Union is getting very good at making
sure we as visually impaired people are not excluded from stuff.  And
the same goes for other types of disability.

But...what about a case example.  A small hotel in rural France which is
in a building built five hundred years ago and which only has four
bedrooms is forced to spend more than it's annual turnover to install
ramps and lifts for wheelchair access.

Net result.  Hotel closes or at the very best a great example of
sixteenth century architecture is butchered.  And what for?  So that
once in every five years or so one person in a wheelchair can get in.

Now...I have no problem with a huge hotel chain like Novatel or Radison
being forced to do this kind of stuff.  In the same way Microsoft, Apple
and Google Android should be forced to make provision for accessibility.

But some bloke like Neil Hodgson sitting in his back room and writing
something like Scintilla cannot be forced to do so.  The result of that
would just be to stifle his efforts.





On 15/07/2014 21:22, John Heim wrote:

Work with me here people.  Keep an open mind...

The analogy is flawed in two ways. First, it is not reasonable to
expect a developer to write documentation in a language he doesn't
understand.  Secondly, it is reasonable for him to expect the Chinese
to write their own documentation. It is not reasonable for him to
expect blind  people themselves to add accessibility to every piece of
software out there.

I'd really like to change the mindset of the blind community as a
whole. This social darwinistic approach to accessibility really hurts
our cause.  What we're asking is really no different from expecting
restaurants and stores to install wheelchair ramps and wide front
doors. It's no different than asking hotels to have a certain number
of  rooms with accessible bathrooms and to have braille labels on all
the doors.

It's a matter of having a genuine need and not placing unreasonable
burdens. These are principles outlined in the ADA. I believe they are
in the European Unions declaration of rights for the disabled as well.
In fact, they might even be in the document the United Nations just
approved a few weeks ago (the one the USA will never sign off on even
though it was based on our own ADA). This stuff is really not that
complicated once you get used to it. All you have to do is get over
the idea that there is something wrong with asking people to do the
right thing.

Still, everywhere I turn, I see blind people themselves seeming to say
it's not right to ask developers to lift a finger to make their stuff
accessible. Well, legally, that is true. Morally, it certainly is not.
I reject any moral system that says it's okay to turn your back on
people who genuinely need help. If you can help someone with a genuine
need, you should. You don't *have* to do that. But you should.









On 07/15/14 14:50, Mike Ray wrote:

And if he refuses to produce documentation in Mandarin Chinese, a
language spoken by a large percentage of the world's population, does
that make him a SOB?



On 15/07/2014 20:44, John Heim wrote:

Right, everyone has a right to be an SOB. I would never say otherwise.
But either he is an SOB or he doesn't understand the problem. Those
are the only 2 possibilities.

Yes, I am saying that anyone who flatly refuses to consider adding
accessibility to his code is an SOB. Either that or the problem hasn't
been adequately explained to him.

It is not our own responsibility as blind people to add accessibility
to everything that comes along. That is no more practical than
expecting everyone to write their own network drivers or their own
boot managers.  We all use everybody else's code. We're not asking the
guy to write a screen reader. And we're not asking him to write
drivers to support our old MFM hard drive or something. We can't
upgrade to sightedness. It's not like we have a choice here.






On 07/15/14 11:54, Mike Ray wrote:

I think Neil is perfectly aware of what accessibility is and the fact
that there are plenty of people who would like to see it done.

Even to have written a control like Scintilla is a huge achievement
and
he is to be congratulated for it and making it open source.

But like the rest of us, he can make his own decisions about the
code he
wrote.


On 15/07/2014 17:40, B. Henry wrote:

For sure anyone has the right to be tired, have a different set of
priorities than we do or just plain be uninterested.
It's also possible that the guy just doesn't know what's required to
add accessibility code and doesn't have the time
for, or
can't be bothered with this right now.
Anyone who approaches him in what ever way should certainly
understand this and be respectful.
That all being said there's a good chance that the authorin question
isn't aware of the interest that screenreader
dependent users have in his software. Hearing that there are many
people who are interested may influence his priorities,
assuming he has any for this, i.e. he is  actively working on it
these days.
Don't be pushy, demanding, overly aggressive, but asking and or
making a brief case for this work may make a difference,
if not this week, maybe next year.
As stated, if you really want something done, well do it or find
someone who you can get to do it for you. Unless you have
money to pay to get it done this of course means finding someone who
cares and has the skills to fix things.
I've barely heard of the programs in question,so have no dog in this
fight as it were.
What applications are accessible that come closest to doing what
this software does?
Thanks,
--
B.H.

    On Tue, Jul 15, 2014 at 04:20:37PM +0100, Mike Ray wrote:

I wouldn't refer to trying to pressure Neil Hodgson into adding
accessibility to Scintilla as 'peer pressure'.  He wrote it, he
unfortunately has every right to refuse to spend time adding
accessibility.

Happily as it's open source there's no reason why somebody else
should
not do the necessary work.


I get as frustrated as anybody with inaccessible apps but we don't
have
a right to bulldozer authors into doing stuff they don't want to do.



On 15/07/2014 15:01, John Heim wrote:

Sounds like time for some peer pressure.  I'll have a go at it
soon as
I have some time. That probably won't be until at least next week.



On 07/15/14 01:49, Mike Ray wrote:

He just said no.

And then made some comments about Microsoft changing their
accessibility
interface which made introduction of a11y in the Windows version
difficult.

And something about any changes needing to be
backwards-compatible to
earlier gtk versions.

However he did express a willingness to incorporate any a11y
changes a
competent developer might add.

I think everything except the actual edit control, being standard
gtk
widgets basically work.  Although Scintilla code-completion and
call-tips are likely to be more of a problem, as they are on
Windows.

I will have a look at atk and how to interface to at-spi but I
know very
little about gtk or atk at the moment.

Mike


On 15/07/2014 07:23, Tony Baechler wrote:

Did he give a reason why?  I'm not a programmer, but could a
patch be
written easily or would that require a lot of extra code?  I'm
thinking that
Debian for example often ships source patches to fix bugs and add
features.
     Obviously, if it's a lot of work, it's not worth it, but if
the major
distros could ship a patched version with accessibility, that
could
be a
possible solution.

On 2014-07-14 04:21 PM, Mike Ray wrote:

Hello.

Today I asked Neil Hodgson, the author of the Scintilla control
which is
used by Geany, SciTE and a number of other gtk tools, if he
would
consider adding accessibility code to the gtk version of
Scintilla.

He said no.

Mike


--
Michael A. Ray
Analyst/Programmer
Witley, Surrey, South-east UK

The box said: 'install Windows XP, 7 or better'. So I installed
Linux

Interested in accessibility on the Raspberry Pi?
Visit: http://www.raspberryvi.org/

   From where you can join our mailing list for visually-impaired Pi
hackers

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===
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