I love that a multi-billion-dollar corporation like RedHat/IBM can ship an operating system with a broken screen reader in 2024 (it’s not just them, it’s true for basically every major Linux distribution today) and, when you point it out, the response is “it’s no one’s fault… it’s all free labour… it’s FOSS, man”. And then: oh, and this charity is paying for one person to work on accessibility support to be implemented now… Anyone else see how fucked up that is?
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Jim
in reply to Aral Balkan • • •Aral Balkan
in reply to Aral Balkan • • •Why should it take @sovtechfund to fund accessibility work on the Linux distribution of a multi-billion-dollar corporation like IBM? Why the fuck isn’t IBM paying for it?
#accessibility #linux #foss #corporations #BigTech
Miroslav Kravec
in reply to Aral Balkan • • •@sovtechfund because corporations don't deliver Linux as a desktop OS as a product / don't provide it to consumers.
Corporations use Linux mostly for servers, or for their internal tools loaded with specific software to do a specific task.
Often, the tasks, for which they use Linux loaded gadgets, require people to not be visually impaired due to nature of work itself and tools just enhance it, and therefore accessibility is irrelevant in their context of use.
Aral Balkan
in reply to Miroslav Kravec • • •Jonathan Lamothe
in reply to Miroslav Kravec • •@Miroslav Kravec
Can you provide an example?
Miroslav Kravec
in reply to Jonathan Lamothe • • •@me production - manual labour tools, automatized machines and other controller devices with embedded Linux and touch panel.
For office work, I never saw a corporation to use Linux. Only Windows. They often even forbid Linux. In my experience.
To be fair, can you provide opposite example?
Jonathan Lamothe
in reply to Miroslav Kravec • •like this
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Miroslav Kravec
in reply to Jonathan Lamothe • • •@me elevator isn't counter-example.
It's a different topic, where I agree with you. It's not on-topic example, because use of elevator isn't mutually exclusive with being visually impaired.
It's the opposite, elevators should help visually impaired people to get up or down more safely.
Specific example, documents archivation process requires paying visual attention to what is being scanned, and then appropriately assigning categories, tags, etc,... Visually impaired people can't do that.
Miroslav Kravec
in reply to Jonathan Lamothe • • •@me similar accessibility issue is with car media and climate control systems.
Those are used even by not-visually-impaired people.
Missing physicals knobs make operation dangerous.
Jonathan Lamothe
in reply to Miroslav Kravec • •Edit: It appears I have somehow misread the post this was in reply to, and it is thus rather non-sequitor.
@Miroslav Kravec You think it's only cars that are replacing things with touchscreens? Also, blind people can't be passengers? I'm finding it very difficult to believe that you're debating in good faith here.
BTW, touchscreens in cars aren't even a good idea for sighted people. It forces them to take their eyes off the road unnecessarily, but that's yet a whole other can of worms.
𝓐𝓷𝓭𝔂𝓣𝓲𝓮𝓭𝔂𝓮 𓀤 likes this.
Adrian Roselli
in reply to Aral Balkan • • •Aral Balkan
in reply to Adrian Roselli • • •lebout2canap ⏚
in reply to Aral Balkan • • •> And then: oh, and this charity is
> paying for one person to work
>on accessibility support to be
>implemented now
Assuming it doesn’t fall through…
“We’re currently facing a major issue from the GNOME Foundation side. We hope it will be resolved before it impacts the coordination of the STF project, but if not, the future of parts of the project is uncertain.” thisweek.gnome.org/posts/2024/…
#149 Installer Installment · This Week in GNOME
thisweek.gnome.orgAral Balkan
in reply to lebout2canap ⏚ • • •lebout2canap ⏚
in reply to Aral Balkan • • •Exciting Updates on the GNOME Development Initiative and Sovereign Tech Fund – The GNOME Foundation
foundation.gnome.orgDianora (Diane Bruce)
in reply to Aral Balkan • • •Antacon
in reply to Aral Balkan • • •Charlotte Joanne
in reply to Aral Balkan • • •Syn-ACK, Pentagenerian :facepalm:
in reply to Aral Balkan • • •This is a cynical take, but the sad thing is that this is the way a lot of non-corpo FOSS devs react as well. It just seems way more egregious when a big corpo flush with cash does it.
One of the biggest negative attitudes I encounter in the FOSS community is the perception that "free" has become short for "free labor" in the minds of many people, and no longer carries the responsibility on the part of the dev to consider the users' needs for complete software because "they can just fix it themselves". It's become endemic to the community and IBM is just playing along because it's to their advantage to do so.
If non-corpo devs exhibit this lack of responsibility, why would we expect a multi-billion-dollar corpo to bother?
The fact that IBM is doing it (and the fact that nobody else up until now has even tried to address the problem by "fixing it themselves") just throws a gigantic spotlight on the root attitude problem. There are a lot of programs claiming to be FOSS that really should just be OSS.
Bill Hooker
in reply to Aral Balkan • • •Me, after years of complaining about proprietary OSs and software: that's it, I'm switching to Linux!
*switches to Ubuntu*
Me, reading about the various issues with different Linux distros: well this fucking sucks
CB Wright
in reply to Aral Balkan • • •Daimar Stein :tux: :comunista:
in reply to Aral Balkan • • •Aral Balkan
in reply to Daimar Stein :tux: :comunista: • • •Aral Balkan
in reply to Aral Balkan • • •Daimar Stein :tux: :comunista:
in reply to Aral Balkan • • •Aral Balkan
in reply to Daimar Stein :tux: :comunista: • • •