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



If you haven't given Discourse a look in a while, I'd recommend checking it out.

In particular, over the last year or two it's gotten some screen reader improvements. Lists of topics/categories/posts are navigable by headings/tables. Posts are navigable by headings or regions. And, I believe in the last 6 months or so, focus position is restored to the last read message in a topic as is true for sighted folks, and pressing Back returns you to the topic you just read in the list.

For folks wanting a more mailing list experience, it's possible to subscribe to notifications on a category/topic basis as well. I think you only get the first message in a thread for a topic you haven't participated in, though maybe I'm wrong and there's a way to get everything.

If I wanted to start a new online group, I'd probably pick Discourse over a mailing list. I know it's had issues in the past, but it's also rapidly improving, and there's a topic somewhere on the meta forum where feedback from screen reader users is actively solicited and acted upon. Give it a try, and make suggestions for improvement if something is lacking.

On 9/13/2022 11:36 AM, Kyle via orca-list wrote:
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

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