Re: [orca-list] Our list will be moving to Discourse

[Kyle <kyle free2 ml>]

According to Christian Schoepplein:
> moving the list to a webbased service will be the most inaccessible 
> and most complicated solution, especialy if it is a discussion 
> plattform for and with blind users :-(. Allthough I know the 
> advantages of those webforums my expirence is that many blind people 
> will not longer use those plattforms because they are to complicated, 
> timeintensive and many unecessary content is presented on those sites. 
> We tried to move mailinglists for blind people to webbased solutions 
> years ago and they are dead now, the people do not longer use them :-(.


Just to play devil's advocate for a minute ...

https://forum.audiogames.net/

has been online for many years, and many blind people use it. I don't 
think they have an email list.


I do have my reasons for preferring email lists over web-based forums 
which I have mentioned, most notably the fact that they are easier to 
keep track of and easier to follow, but accessibility isn't the make or 
break issue, as accessibility of web-based applications has greatly 
improved over the years, and forum software is no exception.


> I'll try Discurse ofcourse, but I feel this is the wrong plattform for 
> us :-(. The people that made this decission did not have accessiblity 
> and inclusion in mind :-(.


Interestingly, Discourse has been touted as a highly accessible option 
as web forum software goes, right up until yesterday. Actually, I can 
see where a web forum could be a much better platform for discussing a 
screen reader than email. Consider the email options available to us if 
something goes wrong with Orca and Thunderbird or Evolution. Maybe it's 
only my opinion, but I find it much easier to sign into a web forum via 
w3m in a terminal or text-only console than trying to set up the likes 
of Mutt or even Alpine. Of course the forum software would need to be 
able to take text-based browsing into account, just like wiki software 
for displaying documentation,i.e. to install Arch Linux just as an 
example, but if done right, it definitely works in those emergency 
cases. Of course for something like that, Matrix, IRC or some other form 
of real-time chat may be the best of all options, but I can certainly 
see the benefit of having a web-based solution as well.


I haven't tried this in pure text mode, but it does seem that something 
that works very similar to groups.io is the gold standard here. If 
Discourse can do this, then it is obviously the best option, since it is 
fully free and open source, and is self-hosted rather than running on a 
specific company's website. The major advantage to groups.io is that it 
is fully web-based and fully email-based at the same time. I can join 
and leave groups via the web and email, and I can read every list I'm 
subscribed to and post on them both ways interchangeably. In fact, 
everything they do is fully usable both ways as far as I know. So if 
something goes horribly wrong with Orca, and I find myself in a terminal 
shell only, as long as I have access to w3m and either Speakup or 
Fenrir, I should be able to sign into the website and post to the list. 
Perhaps this web and email-based type of solution is what the GNOME 
folks are going for here, and if so, this could actually be a good 
thing. The email features of Discourse do look a little clunky to me 
from what I've been reading, but we'll have to see how things go I 
guess. For now, I'll probably play a little with it on one of my servers 
just to see how things work. The good news is that accessibility isn't 
the biggest problem here, just some ease of use considerations, 
especially as it relates to the ability to track discussions.

~Kyle