Re: [orca-list] Important: Web accessibility survey for screen reader users, situation in South Africa

[Alex Midence <alex midence gmail com>]

Oh, I'm sure there are some obscure screen readers out there with tiny user communities on Windows and the 
like whom it would make sense to leave out by name.  However, with Orca, what makes it hard to accept is that 
it is THE Linux screen reader for GUI platforms.  There simply is no other.  If you are a blind or visually 
impaired person running Linux and have a desktop environment installed, you are running Orca as a 
screenreader and magnifier.  There is currently nothing else.  Yeah, there's Emacspeak and Speakup but, they 
don't do the same thing.  One self voices an editor and the other is for the console, not the desktop.  

Truth is, this highly regarded player in web accessibility has taken it into their head that our user 
community is numerically irrelevant.  People come to them for advice on making their web sites accessible.  
Unless something is done to change their perceptions, Orca will not be taken into consideration for anyone 
who is designing a website.  As long as Jaws, Window eyes, NVDA and the mobile accessibility users can 
navigate it, they will consider it a task complete from there end.  This means at-spi and Orca have to rely 
more heavily to web accessibility standards and do more hacks than all the others because they aren't being 
met half way.  Most unfortunate.

Alex M

-----Original Message-----
From: orca-list [mailto:orca-list-bounces gnome org] On Behalf Of Willem van der Walt
Sent: Tuesday, July 28, 2015 2:56 AM
Cc: orca-list gnome org
Subject: Re: [orca-list] Important: Web accessibility survey for screen reader users, situation in South 
Africa

Hi,
I am afraid the situation in South Africa is no better than elsewhere.
People cannot afford the Windows/JAWS setup, but they seem convinced that they require it.
NVDA is gaining ground though.
I see a lot of this attitude as we are trying to bring a GNU/Linux-based note taker product to market.
"If it is not using Windows, it won't work in my environment." seem to be the main idea.
for those interested, look at http://www.sa-note.com

I also completed the survay under discussion, and simply do not accept the excuse of not listing all the 
screen readers available to simplefy matters.
The results would therefore be scued by design.
Kind regards, Willem



On Tue, 28 Jul 2015, _mallory wrote:

> On Mon, Jul 27, 2015 at 02:53:20PM -0500, Alex Midence wrote:
> > Their devotion to Windows is due to a series of factors.  Here's my educated guess:
>
> Also, many people get their first screen reader and possibly first 
> computer as a combo in school, where Windows is often default. This is 
> also why JAWS is still big, it was something an institution/company 
> who wanted to hire blind people would just buy as part of the deal.
>
> I'm sure what you get started with is a big influence: eventually 
> you're most productive there, and you generally need some reason to 
> switch.
>
> So an employee of a client of ours had to do just that, because his 
> company uses our software which includes a client written in GTK.
> He's still most productive in Windows and I believe he's simply using 
> a VM to run a *buntu so he can access the client in Orca.
>
> _mallory
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_______________________________________________
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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