Re: [orca-list] is ubuntu 11.04 worth a try with Orca?

[Alan Bell <alanbell ubuntu com>]

On 26/04/11 21:23, Anthony Sales wrote:
> Hi the problem is though that even if you have a 3D capable card, it may not support 3D until you have 
> installed it and downloaded the required drivers, and if there is no accessible Gnome fallback or 2D 
> accessibility with Unity, blind users are not going to be able to run or install Ubuntu themselves in the 
> first place, which means they won't be able to install the drivers - catch 22!
This is a very good point and certainly something I intend to test/file 
bugs about. One of three things could happen: The binary driver 
installation process could get smoother, or the free software drivers 
could get better so we don't need the binary nasties, or it could be a 
bit of a failure. This is all 6 months away and we really don't know 
what will happen with this, and some other things. It might be that the 
target of everything working just great in 11.10 could get missed. 
Ubuntu does time based releases so if something doesn't get in, it 
doesn't get in.

The other thing to note in general about Ubuntu and commitments to do 
stuff is the dual release cycle and the Long Term Support releases. This 
allows for a certain amount of wiggle room, more than you might expect 
(or want). Ubuntu 10.04 is an LTS and is supported on the desktop for 3 
years. That means that there is a supported desktop Ubuntu with the 
traditional Gnome panel until 13.04. That is the hard deadline for 
getting an accessible alternative, although you and I might want every 
release to be accessible. This long term support thing does mean that 
Ubuntu can claim to have a supported Gnome panel based release for 
longer than any other distro has plans for one (in theory, at the 
moment). That said, the current plan is to have 11.10 accessible with 
the 3d Unity (which should  run on the vast majority of hardware) with a 
fallback to Unity2d for certain hardware that can't do 3d - this 
fallback might not be very accessible. It might be that QML and Unity 2d 
will grow accessibility features (it is growing quite fast and is 
actively developed anyway so this is a real prospect) in time for 11.10 
or perhaps 12.04 (which is another long term support release so they 
want it to be quite solid).
So in summary I think we will have:

11.04 fairly solid 2d gnome panel, limited 3d Unity
11.10 fairly solid 3d Unity, limited Unity-2d
12.04 LTS really solid 3d Unity, fairly solid Unity-2d
13.04 no more supported gnome panel release so QML needs to be 
accessible, or you had best have 3d hardware.

Alan.