Dear Release Team, I have seen in the archives you are going to have a meeting in the next days[1]. One of the topics in the agenda is module reorganization, where I would like to ask to review the module for accessibility: Orca (the screen reader). Rationale: Currently we have a fallback mode for users who might have hardware problems to run gnome-shell. The fallback mode would be useful also for blind of deaf-blind users (they do not need a display, nor an advanced graphic card). However, if we remove ORCA, we would not support those users. FWIW, ORCA works fine with GTK+ 3 (you can try it with gtk3-demo), and the support for WebKit+ has improved a lot since the last hackfest. Thus, users of epiphany, yelp and empathy can have a better user experience in comparison with getting stuck with GNOME 2. Where ORCA fails is in working with gnome-shell. But if we are providing a fallback mode, ORCA fits there. Beside it works with the remaining stack. Another potential issue with ORCA, also related with gnome-shell and the design conceived, is the number of user options it has. However, these are not like any other user option: there are different levels and grades of disabilities than can not be "automatically detected". So, it is like "what the user want", instead is "the disability the user have"; and, ORCA deals with the second concept. At last but not least, I know you guys are working hard to get GNOME 3 (the main experience) working (or even compiling or not crashing). Unfortunately, all a11y applications were put in the same bag in [2]. So, I am asking gently and humbly to you to reconsider the screen reader ORCA (as a single unit) at the same level as gnome-panel in the fallback mode. [1] https://mail.gnome.org/archives/release-team/2011-January/msg00016.html [2] https://mail.gnome.org/archives/release-team/2010-December/msg00004.html Thanks in advance. Regards, PS: There are more reasons but this email is long enough. -- Germán Póo-Caamaño http://www.gnome.org/~gpoo/
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