Re: [orca-list] GUI Redesign or clearup and modernization

[Josh K <joshknnd1982 gmail com>]

I think most people are still put off by linux is because of its lack 
for commercial software for blind folks not a whole lot of speech or 
voice variety or audio games, and also still having to go into the 
terminal to do some more advanced tuff. example on windows if i want to 
turn text to mp3 I get balabolka a gui application that will use any 
sapi5 voice sapi4 or speech platform voice in windows. in linux i have 
to hunt down terminal commands to do that. can I do that? yep sure I 
grew up with dos. command line doesn't bother me. but if given a choice 
between gui or command line i would mostly always choose the gui 
solution. Hopefully we will see the day when all desktop linux becomes 
much like an open source android OS easy, natural, and intuitive to use 
with many voice choices. I pick my OS based on what it lets me do and 
how its apps are, not so much because its GPL based. A year or so ago I 
used ubuntu for two or three straight months without touching windows. 
It did maybe 80% of what i wanted to do with the computer. but I missed 
the voice variety i got on windows and easy set up of audio games. so i 
went back to win7. I use android not because its linux based but because 
it has some of the best gps support I ever seen. I still keep a ubuntu 
disk around for some stuff like partitioning drives and keeping up with 
what's going on in the latest orca. I also considered linux for my son. 
but he likes to play roblox and setting that up in linux is still a pain 
and reports say it often crashes. don't know i can't see to play it. so 
I'll get him a windows7 core i7 laptop with a 128gig or maybe 256gig ssd 
solid state drive for games and put win10 on it for him. I think until 
linux really improves and supports major commercial software as well as 
the open source stuff it will always remain a fringe OS used by a few 
percent of people.

follow me on twitter @joshknnd1982

On 9/2/2015 8:00 AM, Christopher Chaltain wrote:
> I haven't been following this thread, but the post below either 
> confuses me or I just don't agree. I can't think of a single screen 
> reader where you don't need to know at least one key stroke before 
> starting, such as how to bring up the preferences. You either have to 
> know that key stroke or be familiar enough with the operating system 
> to know how to get into the preferences for an application, which I 
> think is what the post below is disagreeing with.
>
> Either way, it's an overly simplistic attitude to say that expecting 
> someone to read some information about an application before using it 
> is the reason so many people are put off by Linux.
>
> > On 9/1/2015 10:24 AM, B. Henry wrote:
> > > Well, it's not unreasonalble to ask users to read a bit of
> > > documentation to learn a keystroke or two when trying a new desktop,
> > > but unless I'm missing
> > > something folks like myself who use a window manager such as fluxbox
> > > and fill in accessibility gaps with custom scripts would be left out
> > > in the cold if
> > > an orca prefs window was done away with.
> >
> > I'm sorry, but I have to disagree.  I think that in this case, it is
> > unreasonable to expect people to be required to read documentation in
> > order to figure out how to set their Orca prefs.  That attitude in
> > general is why so many people, both blind and sighted, either are put
> > off by Linux, won't try it in the first place or give up without ever
> > installing it and giving it a fair chance.  I don't have a problem
> > expecting people to read a basic accessibility guide and I agree that
> > once people have learned the basics that they should be expected to read
> > the docs, but expecting them to read the docs before they even get
> > started is asking too much.  Other than your first statement, I agree
> > with what I think you're trying to say.  I think you're agreeing with my
> > previous post on the subject which is that regardless of what desktop or
> > window manager, there needs to be a universal keystroke to access the
> > Orca prefs.  I don't think people should have to read the docs to find
> > it, however.
> >
> > What would be good is for Orca to open the prefs window automatically
> > when it's started from a live environment so people don't have to hunt
> > around to find them.  Maybe could a command line switch like --prefs be
> > added for this?  I thought there was already such a switch, but I didn't
> > see it when reading "orca --help" on my Ubuntu MATE 15.04 system.
> > _______________________________________________
> > orca-list mailing list
> > orca-list gnome org
> > https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/orca-list
> > Orca wiki: https://wiki.gnome.org/Projects/Orca
> > Orca documentation: https://help.gnome.org/users/orca/stable/
> > GNOME Universal Access guide:
> > https://help.gnome.org/users/gnome-help/stable/a11y.html
> > Log bugs and feature requests at http://bugzilla.gnome.org