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Re: [orca-list] Important: Web accessibility survey for screen reader users

This all is important of course, but I still say that no matter what happens to accessibility short  of 
windows breaking lots of stuff putting NVDA, and 
the expensiove ones also on a par with 2008 orca the biggest factor will continue to be over all dominance of 
the home and small biz  markets. There are 
three flavors of windows who each have at least as much market share individually as does OSX which has 4-6 
times the market share as desktop Linux. 
Again I'm leaving out chrome-OS because I haven't had time to investigat estimates of it's market share, and 
although I suspect that enterprize usage is 
similar to that for small biz I've not looked at those stats in longer . 
One thing that will perhaps help Linux is the continued expansion of tablets in to more environments, i.e. 
android is what many will choose for 
different reasons. Windows is far behind there still, andthough honestly doing more right there than one 
might expect. I know, a large percentage of 
folks do not even know that android is Linux deep down inside, nor that chromeOS is for that matter, but in 
general I think people are opening up to 
alternative opperating systems. 
Also many software players are trying hard to make their products OS agnostic; not just available on more 
than one OS, but giving the user a very 
similar experience no matter whether on android or IOS or Chrome... 
Sadly some of that last will not help us much in the short run it seems, but over the last year we have seen 
Orca playing nicely with more and more 
web-apps.

As for Kendell's comment, well certainly truth there as well, but...
To a point Apple Macs have broken through   
Kendell said:

hi
This is partially true. It all comes down to the perception, accurate or not, that if you're blind you must 
use windows. How this got started I don't know, but in my experience linux can do most things as well as, 
and in some cases better than windows in terms of accessibility. Orca does a very good job at what it does 
and I'm continually frustrated that the blind community in particular is among the most stubborn and 
ungreatful of linux converts, often switching back after a few days because they "think" they need windows 
for something, and trying to convince them otherwise is like talking to an apple fan. I've honestly gotten 
to where I no longer bother with them directly,  I just focus on making linux better, putting as many open 
source tools into sonar that I can to support as much hardware as possible, especially apple devices, where 
the perception is that linux can't handle those devices, when in reality it can do most things with it, 
though not in a pretty gui interface. Note that when I speak of "blind people" I'm talking about the avid 
windows fans, not blind people that use linux in combination with windows, but rather those who will simply 
not acknowledge that linux is an option.

snip
I think apple got more of a foot in the door with people buying  over priced laptops and mac minis than they 
ever could have if it were not for the 
IPhone. 
Like it or not the IPhone has been a world wide game changer, IT and societal which led to people tryingother 
apple stuff.
In places where there's a chance that gov will buy blind people computer hard and software ideally blinks 
would ask voc-rehabforcomputers with Linux 
preinstalled. Of course unless you reallly dislike windows and are sure you won't need it it's pretty hard to 
turn down a free $100 OS, and probably 
free $1000 software even if you only use it once a month or once a season. Also most but not all blind people 
who are interested in Linux will have no 
trouble installing it, so.........
Maybe with windows10 taking some of the more or less major cash out of their OS a bit of that temptation is 
removed from the equation, but some Linux 
folks won't even want to deal with any gov.
I'm  warm and cool towards the FSF, but how about some very rich person or foundation giving them milliions 
to conduct a quality worldwide advertising 
campaign, (probably should not contain many clips from Richard Stallman speeches), and at the same time see a 
long term well funded project to work on 
Linux accessibility. 
The first one would need serious bucks, but in the overall  scheme of things the 2nd one could be done for 
very lilttle compared with a few months of a 
U.S. presidential primary run, or some of the crazier Mexican campaigns for that matter.
 I'm going way out in to what if teritory traveling on how about roads/will shut up now. 
     
-- 
     B.H.
   Registerd Linux User 521886


  Alex Midence wrote:
Mon, Jul 27, 2015 at 02:53:20PM -0500


Their devotion to Windows is due to a series of factors.  Here's my educated guess:

1.  Windows was the first GUI-based software that had a set of viable, production-ready screen readers 
consistently for nearly a full decade before anyone else came along with something on another platform.  
There was Slimware Window Bridge, Screenpower windows, Jaws and Window Eyes all competing head to head with 
each other from about 1995 until about 1998 when W.E and JFW pretty much elbowed everyone else away.  
2.  Apple, though it had Outspoken or Outspeak (I forget the name), didn't do as good a job with their 
screen reader and it stopped working after a while until they came up with VoiceOver about 8 or 9 years 
ago.  
3.  Around the same time Apple was coming up with Voiceover, there existed two solutions for Linux, 
Gnopernicus and Orca.  Not sure what happened to Gnopernicus but Orca took center stage and has done quite 
nicely though, for a while there, you had to really know what you were doing to use Linux.  You couldn't 
just have any old computer user and sit them down in front of a Linux machine and tell them to start 
working like you could and still can for Windows.  Lastly, the accessibility stack hadn't come as far as it 
has in the last 2 or 3  years.  

Simply put, windows accessibility has been around longer and in use by a group of folks who are leery of 
change since they can't be sure they will be as productive as they can be in windows and therefore get very 
hesitant to try Linux out.  Where Linux will have the greatest number of users IMHO is where windows is 
difficult to get without breaking the law and people are coming to it as their first OS.  With everyone 
else, it has a lot of catching up to do.  


Alex M


-----Original Message-----
From: orca-list [mailto:orca-list-bounces gnome org] On Behalf Of kendell clark
Sent: Monday, July 27, 2015 2:39 PM
To: B. Henry; _mallory; orca-list gnome org
Subject: Re: [orca-list] Important: Web accessibility survey for screen reader users

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B. Henry wrote:

In my  experience, and talking online contacts here as I've never 
traveled farther south than Guadamala, nor been west of Ontario in 
Ca., Linux is not markedly more popular  in developing countries, at 
least amoung blind users than in the U.S., and where it would gai 
would be in apple market share, not taking away from windows.
PPL mostly buy beg, borrow, or steal pirated windows and pirated jaws. 
Chromvox is used on four platforms, and with chromebooks having at 
least the market share of linux, (not talking servers of course, and 
not including chromeOS as Linux although of course it is), I would 
disagree that it's likely that more people use Orca than cromevo. I 
use cromevox on my Linux boxes as no  GUI browser besides 
chrome/chromevox give me access to any content that firefox does not. 
All the other GUI alternatives either work less well in general than 
firefox, and by a good bit across the board, or at best do not work on 
some sites that firefox does work on while not working anywhere that 
firefox does not. This may not be true on every possible webpage, but 
I've stopped testing any GUI LInux browsers until I hear of something 
interesting. Last one I tried was midori.



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