Re: [Accessibility] Organising a community of visually impaired programmers

[Christian Hofstader]

Bill,

I do think that GNU can take on this challenge and, in some ways, it was 
my primary reason for joining FSF full time. We have lots of things to 
do between now and the NFB convention but I think we can start building 
up a free software accessibility community at the same time.

The one thing that will, at the beginning, slow us down is that we don't 
even know all that is out there. Almost every day, I hear about some 
cool project going on somewhere on Earth that would fit into our set of 
objectives but hadn't been known outside of a very small community.

Can you send me the address to join the vinux mailing list?

HH,
cdh


On 05/26/2010 09:37 AM, Bill Cox wrote:
> I believe it is time for programmers with disabilities in the free
> software community to take the future of accessibility into it's own
> hands.
>
> For years, the community waited for paid developers at various
> organisations to provide excellent accessibility, and these developers
> did lay down an excellent framework.  However, as companies like Sun
> get bought by the likes of Oracle, and as tight budgets force
> reductions in accessibility teams, we've seen whole areas of
> accessibility decay.  The rush to push new glitzy technology out
> rapidly has led to non-accessible desktop managers and unresponsive
> sound systems installed by default by the major GNU/Linux distros.
>
> Fortunately, because these distros are built on free software, we have
> the power in our own hands to fix and improve accessibility.  There
> are enough of us to do the job, part time, if organised well.  GNU has
> made a powerful statement on accessible software, and I feel GNU is in
> a good position to help bring together the community of visually
> impaired developers.  Would this be an effort GNU would like to lead,
> and is this list a good place to get started?
>
> I think we should also try to include programmers with physical
> disabilities, who may use commercial speech recognition software
> because they have to, but who want to help build free software
> infrastructure to support them.
>
> I know this is a very general statement, but what I have in mind is a
> focused team tackling the various issues that degrade accessibility
> throughout the GNU/Linux infrastructure.  I'm keeping a list of bugs
> and desired enhancements.  If we had team members, we could get
> started right away.  I've helped turn the Vinux distro into a testing
> ground for those bug fixes and improvements, so we wont have to wait
> for release cycles to get our work into users hands, but what counts
> is getting the work done, not the Vinux distro.  It likely makes more
> sense for us to organise here, rather than on the vinux list, which is
> generally more about supporting users than getting this important work
> done.  Can GNU help lead this effort?
>
> Bill
>
> _______________________________________________
> Accessibility mailing list
> address@hidden
> http://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/accessibility
>
>
>    
Bill,



--
Happy Hacking,
cdh

Christian Hofstader
Director of Access Technology
FSF/Project GNU
http://www.gnu.org, http://www.fsf.org
GNU's Not Unix!