FOSS and Disabled Communities Out of Touch 263
Yinepuhotep writes "Newsforge has a thought-provoking article on the lack of communication between the FOSS community and disabled persons." From the article: "How can the FOSS community address the issues of the disabled? The most urgent task is to improve documentation. Perhaps you can make it a personal goal to be able to configure your favorite FOSS tool blindfolded while someone reads your improved instructions aloud. Your local LUG could organize ways to connect volunteers to assist disabled users with installations. Be sure to contact local disability rights groups to let them know what you're doing. They may also be able to provide more feedback about needs in your community."
Re:Gimme, Gimme, Gimme (Score:5, Informative)
I don't know about that, but MacOS X (starting with 10.4) is designed to be installable by a blind person.
Re:what about blind people? (Score:3, Informative)
For the blind... (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Gimme, Gimme, Gimme (Score:4, Informative)
A good example is webpages. Having them be standards compliant is important for users with disabilities. The standards compliance also helps regular users on text-based browsers, and regular users in general.
Coding without seeing the screen (Score:2, Informative)
Check out the video at channel9 (click the source link above). There's especially one really good question/answer combo in there, I'll transcript it:
[ Start: 08:50 ] Interviewer: How could the software be improved for you? What would you tell the Visual Studio team, for instance, to do to make the software better.
Kenneth: Visual Studio has been very difficult for me to learn with JAWS. JAWS company itself does not specifically support Visual Studio as of now. And they're really working hard on adding the support to the JAWS software. So I think as of now that's the main thing that's holding back the accessibility levels, that JAWS itself hasn't really fully incorporated it. But I think Visual Studio relies very heavily on colored text, for symbolizing things. So rather than having the text that's related to one thing versus another isolated in different locations on the screen, they're all in a list and the different categories are symbolized for different text colors and background colors. I think that makes it a little bit difficult to sort things out on the screen with a screen reader.
So that would be one thing I could suggest, but I think we're primarily waiting on JAWS. [...] As long as they're continually aware of the accessibility levels of their software and test them for that aspect of the usability. Then I think it'll continue to be usable, as long as the specialized software such as JAWS evolves along with it. And so I think that they're working hard at companies like JAWS and their competitors to stay current. And sometimes they fall behind, and I think for specialized programs like software development that aren't as common as say Word processors that sometimes are not as up to date. [ End: 11:12 ]
define: JAWS
"JAWS (an acronym for Job Access With Speech) is a screen reader for the visually impaired." (Source [wikipedia.org])
Issues with Moodle (Score:2, Informative)
Talking to Niall Sclater [sclater.com], Virtual Learning Environment Programme Director at The Open University [open.ac.uk] on what they're having to do to Moodle [moodle.org] to bring it up to scratch for their large community of blind users was very interesting. The OU have 100,000 students, 10,000 of them with a registered disability, basically they're have to completely redo the accessibility of Moodle.
There was, however, no suggestion that any of the alternatives, commerical or open source were any better.
cheers, thingie
If you're interested in hearing Niall speak on such issues, or have a pointed question to ask him, why not register for our up-coming Open Source and Sustainability 2006 [oss-watch.ac.uk] conference
...and standardization (Score:2, Informative)
Guidelines exist for software as well but are rarely used for some reason. A few examples that would help all users:
I believe that following these and other specifications would make life much better for all users. These guidelines will make sure your software works with most assistive technologies as well.
There are also a lot of open source developer tools to help you test your applications. E.g.:
One step forward two backwards (Score:2, Informative)
The disabled users in Massachusetts do have a point:
I'm not saying that is right or wrong, but that is where we are. If you force a switch to other platforms and applications, you do need to ensure that at least the current (and pretty awful) level of accessibility is maintained. And that's not just developing accessible FOSS applications, but providing training and support to the users, including the special needs evaluators & trainers. It's not a trivial task.
My own PhD research into improving the accessibility of mass-produced mobile devices (phones, pda's, psp's etc) is based on open and international standards. All work products (as far as my university allows) will be released under the GPL or eqivalent. So I'm not anti-FOSS at all, but one step forward and two backwards isn't progress. Unless it's managed properly, switching platforms and applications (to FOSS based ones, or to any others) can cause real problems for disabled users.
Crock o' Shit (Score:5, Informative)
- Even Slackware gives the option to install a speakup kernel.
- KDE has text-to-speech, though only the frontend in earlier versions.
- KDE also enables you to resize the screen easily, helping those with less severe vision problems.
- Check this out [sourceforge.net]
Nothing in FOSS can be taken and presented as An Official Display of How Good It Is And Always Shall Be. Most things are work in progress.If there's a lack of communication, it's the fault of the disabled community. Or are FOSS developers to spend their time researching potential user groups' needs instead of coding? I imagine that disabled rights groups have already provided the necessary information, and are just waiting for the tools to appear, because from what little I've seen, they're very good at doing their part. If they haven't done that yet, tough luck. Unless they want some sighted programmer to just guess?
Another thing I didn't like about this article was its use of the phrase "disabled people". It's about THE BLIND, so just say THE BLIND. Deaf people don't have any fixable problems with computers unless some idiot decides to make their program depend on sound feedback. There's little we can do to enable a dumb person to use VOIP, short of recognising their speech and converting it to text. Reduced mobility users need to complain to their hardware vendors if there are no Linux drivers for their single-handed keyboards or whatever they may need. They are working on blind access. Work is slow because FOSS runs on itch scratching. People make software that they want. Companies work on software that they use.
I really want blind users to be able to have their needs catered for. I don't want them to need to send letters saying things like "Do you know that choosing Linux means excluding blind users?". But as in everything else, steps are being made. Unfortunately, it's quite a long journey:
Re:Blind computer scientist. (Score:3, Informative)
B.
N.B. I am also not blind but have setup a box for a blind girl in our neck of the woods. Nothing stranger than a system WITHOUT a monitor.
B.
Re:Gimme, Gimme, Gimme (Score:4, Informative)
Interestingly, most of these items would benefit non-handicapped people just as much. Too many programs rely on a limited set of assumptions.
One example I've come across: the assumption that a monitor has 72 dpi resolution. In Windows, you can resize the standard UI elements to be usable on monitors with a higher resolution, but applications that use nonstandard UI widgets all too often ignore this setting. Winamp is an example of how it shouldn't be done: it's tiny on my 21" monitor running at 1600x1200. Photoshop palettes suffer from the same problem.
Re:Gimme, Gimme, Gimme (Score:3, Informative)
Now, places like Government where they need to know that they will always be able to open their documents are low lying fruit for FOSS software, anything that is liable to block that needs work.
Astroturfing??? (Score:3, Informative)
A few Linux distros were put together for the express purpose of making a distro for the disabled. Some, like Slackware, come ready for disabled users, having a "speak-up" enabled kernel on the CD, meaning you only need to type a few characters before it will start reading output to you...
The individual who they detailed in the article presumably already had someone set-up Windows for him, installing all the speech software necessary. His problem is that he'd have to install Linux (not hard really, hook-up a null-modem cable between computers), get speech-synthesis working, and he apparently doesn't understand English in the slightest, needing brazilian translation as well.
This frustration doesn't strike me as being any more serious than the standard Windows user trying to switch to Linux, when he's not familiar with it... They just don't want ANY CHANGES at all. I really don't see this as a disability issue at all.
I'm not blind ... but ... (Score:4, Informative)
... I do have this eye condition where my eyes focus differently in different colors. Where normal vision would see a white dot on a black background, when that dot is made up of 3 narrow band colors, what I see are 3 separate dots. They aren't too far apart, although the blue one is out of focus and fuzzy. When reading white text on a black background, I get a mix of colors. I can read it, but it causes eyestrain. Reversing that to black text on white background makes it easier on my eyes. That's how I'm typing on Slashdot right now. Every character I type has fuzzy color edges to it ... red on the left and bottom, blue on the top, green on the right, and yellow below the red on the bottom.
I deal with this in a number of ways. Since I do most of my programming, system administration, and network administration via the text mode console in Linux, I just change the colors there to better suit my needs. By making the contrast between foreground color and background color limited to a single color, where the other 2 colors have the same intensity between foreground and background, I can read text easily with no eyestrain for hours. So in that sense I'm taking care of myself, and I'm lucky enough to not be disabled in a way that prevents me from managing to do that from the starting point that's designed specifically for normal vision people.
That said, there are still some troubling issues that people need to be aware of and sensitive to. There are a few programs that operate in a text environment (can run on console, or under xterm, etc) that intentionally alter the color environment, and screw up my color setup. It needs to be possible to disable that. In one program I was trying, which erased all my color maps and substituted the defaults, someone suggested the monochrome option it had. In that mode it still erased all my color maps, and then showed me only white text on black background. That didn't actually help at all. What I need is for programs to either leave my colors alone, or at least provide an option (documented in the man page ... yes, I read those) to turn that off. And by "off" I don't mean not to use different color text for highlighting, I mean just don't alter my color maps.
It's worse in X. Not all the colors can be changed in one place. Each application has its own separate configuration for colors. It would help if there was a standardized place for all applications to check for color preferences and at least use them by default. And web pages are a bit worse because each web site, if it can even be changed at all, has to be changed separately. It's getting a tad bit better with more widespread use of style sheets and such.
I also have to be sensitive to the fact that there is a wide range of possible disabilities or just difficulties (what I classify my condition as) and that program developers just can't easily envision, or certainly can't readily test, how their software deals with all the possible needs of different users. I'm sure stuff I've written might be difficult or impossible to use by some others depending on their disability. But the better we can communicate between developers and users, the more we can both improve usability.
This condition I have is only a problem when the light sources are made up of discrete narrowband colors. A broad continuous spectrum doesn't really cause the problem because it just makes things a tiny bit fuzzy in a smooth way that is easy to focus on. Sunlight is almost perfectly continuous. Incandescent light bulbs are also just as good. This condition doesn't affect my ability to actually see; it merely causes stress and eyestrain when the conditions are worse. One of the worst things for me are fluorescent lights. Then everything I look at under that lighting has the problem. White LEDs are no better. Ironically, those orange-peach colored high pressure sodium lamps often used on streets and parking lots don't cause me any problems at all (though they ca