[Accessibility-ia2] IAccessible2 on Linux demo download available

[Harald Fernengel]

Hi,

On Thursday 01 February 2007 06:02, Peter Korn wrote:
> Hi Harald,
>
> >>> ...
> >>>
> >>> At the Accessibility Workshop in Karlsruhe, the common message we got
> >>> from commercial vendors is that they can't afford to support AT-SPI in
> >>> their applications since the demand is so low.
> >>>
> >>> By making IAccessible2 cross-platform, I believe we have a chance to
> >>> break that vicious circle.
> >>
> >> What commercial vendors have said this to you?  What commercial vendors
> >> are seriously looking at bringing their products to UNIX/Linux?  In the
> >> past, market size of Linux/UNIX and the impression that "everything is
> >> open source and free" in that world have kept most commercial
> >> accessibility players away (BAUM being a notable exception).
> >
> > Given that by now there are several good commercial toolkits for Linux
> > and companies obviously buying them, I don't think that the freedom is a
> > stop-criteria.
> >
> > From what we hear, the trouble is more the split of Linux as a platform
> > with competing software stacks, resulting in an application looking
> > out-of-place on the other 50% of the desktops. Freedesktop.org is trying
> > mend this gap, and in my view we will all benefit by pushing those
> > technologies and making Linux as a platform more attractive.
>
> I'm sorry, I must not have been clear the first time, so I'll try again.
>
> What commercial AT vendors have said to you that what is preventing them
> from bringing their products to Linux/UNIX  is that we don't have
> IAccessible2 supported across most/all UNIX/Linux apps?  Names please.

Peter - let me explain again.

The message I got in Karlsruhe was that demand for Assistive Technologies for 
Linux is too low.

Let's define Linux:

1) Distro X running GNOME
2) Distro X running KDE
3) Distro X running my-custom-window-manager
4) Embedded Linux device running Maemo
5) Embedded Linux device running Sugar (OLPC)
6) Embedded Linux device running Qtopia (Greenphone)
7) Distro Y running text mode (geeks only option)

and probably more. Out of this list, 2 out of 7 would work with the AT vendors 
hard/software. Given that 7) is not that an attractive main-stream crowd and 
1) still has gaps, I can understand the reluctance of AT vendors.

This is what I wanted to imply, I'm sorry if anyone got the wrong message.

In my humble opinion, the way out is:
   1) Create a cross-desktop standard (freedesktop.org)
   2) Make it easy for AT vendors and application developers to support 
accessibility on Linux

On 1), I see quite some consensus. For 2), I'm currently compiling an overview 
of what I mean.

Harald