[Accessibility] FYI: News Forge Article -- Mentions FSGA

Janina Sajka janina at freestandards.org
Mon Mar 20 10:14:24 PST 2006


Title

FOSS community, disabled users must learn to communicate
Date

2006.03.18 4:00
Author

Marco Fioretti
Topic


http://software.newsforge.com/article.pl?sid=06/03/13/1628249
Accessibility is an increasingly important issue for free and open  
source software (FOSS) developers and advocates. The International  
Organization for Standardization (ISO) has developed standards for  
ensuring that software is accessible to people with disabilities.  
Governments around the world often require that software procured for  
public use must meet or exceed accessibility standards. Disabled  
users and the FOSS community, however, still have a serious  
communication problem.

An example of the need for better communication between the FOSS  
community and disability advocates emerged last year, when government  
officials in Massachusetts announced their intention to transition to  
the use of OASIS Open Document Format for Office Applications  
(OpenDocument). FOSS supporters celebrated the announcement, noting  
that the switch would reduce public expenditures, guarantee perpetual  
access to data, and end discrimination. FOSS supporters, however,  
were unprepared for criticism from organizations that fight  
discrimination against the disabled, such as the Disability Policy  
Consortium (DPC) and the Bay State Council for the Blind (BSCB).
OpenDocument is a well-documented, modern, rich file format that can  
be used with any software program. Currently, OpenDocument is  
undergoing an accessibility review process. Some of its components,  
however, have already passed the W3C's Wide Web Accessibility  
Initiative (WAI).
Last November, FOSS and industry representatives met with  
Massachusetts officials and representatives from disability rights  
groups such as the DPC and BSCB. The meeting revealed that the FOSS  
community fails to understand or appreciate the needs of disabled  
users, and that the disability community lacks interest in FOSS.
According to an unofficial report on the meeting, FOSS supporters  
explained the relationship between the ODF, open standards, and  
accessibility standards. FOSS advocates also outlined the technical  
limitations of proprietary software such as Microsoft's products.  
They maintained that accessibility in Microsoft Office has often been  
the result of reverse engineering, which must be done with each new  
release using tools from third-party vendors. The FOSS advocates also  
pointed out that the adoption of a FOSS-based accessibility  
infrastructure would open more jobs to disabled users, in positions  
such as Unix systems administration and Web site design.
It didn't matter. Disability advocates confirmed the position  
expressed in the Joint Statement on OpenSource & OpenDocuments in  
Massachusetts:
Without advanced training to develop a qualified pool of talent, new  
hires for state government agencies with OpenSource, OpenDocument  
platforms will be everybody but people with disabilities because of  
perceived or real training requirements. People with disabilities  
will not be on hiring lists for years to come.
Actually, according to the report quoted above, the disabled users at  
the meeting just summarized this position in a clearer way, if one  
that might be shocking for FOSS fanatics: "Variety is bad, we don't  
want to have to change." Even if Office 12 will force them to change  
anyway, the disabled representatives request that, as a minimum, "all  
ODF applications have common functionality and [...] the same  
keyboard shortcuts".

In general, FOSS developers strive to meet accessibility standards.  
OpenOffice.org is compatible with the JAWS screen reader, for  
instance, though problems remain. The Free Standards Group's  
Accessibility Workgroup (FSGA) has asked for feedback on drafts of  
accessibility standards for Linux and Unix.

To understand the objections from disability rights advocates, we can  
look at the experiences of two disabled computer users in Italy,  
Fabrizio Marini and Paolo Pietrosanti.

A blind Italian Linux newbie

My first direct contact with accessibility issues was last summer,  
when I responded to a request sent to a local LUG by computer science  
student Fabrizio Marini. Marini needed someone to install SUSE 9.2 in  
dual boot mode on his PC and then download, compile, and install the  
driver for his Braille terminal. I volunteered to help with the job.  
Since then, another Linux user, Fabrizio Sebastiani from LUG Roma,  
has also worked with Marini, helping him master Linux.

Marini was very pleased, for example, when he managed to make GRUB  
beep at the right moment. Now he knows for sure when it's time to  
select the operating system; he no longer has to guess based on hard  
disk noises. Recently, Marini tweaked Mutt and Postfix configuration  
files in order to make email work under Linux. To do all this, Marini  
has also been relying on "Appunti di Informatica Libera" ("Notes of  
Free Information Technology"), a guide to GNU/Linux that is an  
astonishing 8,839 pages long.

While proud of his accomplishments, Marini also feels that the  
situation is far from optimal. For instance, he has not found "a  
distribution that boots" and detects "Italian speech synthesizers, or  
Braille terminals with the brltty driver." For now, Marini says that  
the only solution is to find somebody without impaired vision who is  
willing to help install Linux.

After installation, Marini contended with the same problems other  
novices face. "Most Linux documentation is still too technical and  
difficult for newbies," Marini said. For blind users, there is the  
added burden of dealing with resources that aren't really accessible,  
including, ironically, some online documentation for Linux-compatible  
assistive technologies. Sure enough, when I read this, I did recall  
many a beginner's tutorial which was mostly a sequence of screenshots.

Marini is still testing speech synthesis and screen reader programs  
for Linux. His first impression is that, again, variety is not  
necessarily a good thing:

There are many projects, but all seem started with ambitious goals  
and then stopped more or less half way before being really usable. In  
my opinion, if more developers focused on only one product, or at  
least less of them, things would go better.
A political point of view

Paolo Pietrosanti, a member of the General Council of the Radical  
Party, became blind in 1993. This made him realize that "the disabled  
must be turned from costly assisted persons into taxpayers." Two  
years ago, the City of Rome announced that it would move some  
services to FOSS platforms. While GNU/Linux fans were celebrating,  
Pietrosanti asked in an open letter to Rome's mayor, "Do you know  
that choosing Linux means excluding blind users?" His arguments were  
similar to those presented in Massachusetts.

Pietrosanti has nothing against free software. "What really matters  
to me," Pietrosanti says, "is to establish and guarantee the right to  
access (both to information and to jobs), and the penalties when it  
is violated." Pietrosanti wants to ensure that open standards don't  
exclude disabled users from jobs and, if they do, he wants mechanisms  
in place so disabled users can sue to defend their rights.

Pietrosanti is equally indifferent to the heated debates over which  
operating system is superior. As he puts it, no one "outside of a  
madhouse would ever waste time figuring out which car model is better  
when the nature of the streets they will be used on must still be  
decided."

He gets to the heart of the issue when, just like FOSS supporters, he  
puts it in terms of freedom. "Proprietary or free (as in freedom)  
software are really the same to me. What matters is the actual  
freedom of each individual." As an example, his home page denounces  
the fact that, even in a digital world, blind users still aren't free  
to read everything -- not because of licensing issues, but because  
"this society is so insane that, not forcing all content to be  
available in digital format, practically forbids reading to blind  
users."

Pietrosanti says he can already do what he needs to do with his  
Windows system and software. What is the real issue, Pietrosanti  
asks: "The way the software was developed and distributed, or the way  
it limits or protects my rights?"

Conclusion

Both in Europe and the US, there is still much to do to reconcile  
disabled users and the FOSS community. Disabled users fail to  
perceive that they have the same needs and rights as everybody else,  
including full control of, and long term access to, government and  
their own private documents; or the fact that some types of software  
can create more local jobs than others, even for them. Such  
inattention can cost a lot in an all-digital world.

At the same time, there is no doubt that current FOSS-only platforms  
are not ready for many disabled users. Disabled users may be helping  
the FOSS community, or at least a large part of it, to finally  
acknowledge a general attitude problem. Pietrosanti's "actual  
freedom" reaction is not the one of a person with special needs. It  
is the same that most non-geeks would have when reading the GNU  
Manifesto, and this doesn't mean that they are stupid. Very likely,  
many office workers would like to sue, or at least to stop, any  
manager who told them, "next month you will have to use programs you  
never heard of before, with a different look and feel, because of  
some policy based on obscure theories about software engineering."  
Disabled users have the actual legal weapons to do it.

In the meantime, 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.

For the long term, we also need to lobby for more public funding for  
research projects that advance the development of the FOSS  
accessibility infrastructure. Another move that would solve a lot of  
problems could be to legally mandate that only accessibility software  
that also works with OpenOffice.org and Linux can be purchased with  
public money. If you have other suggestions, I welcome them. Please  
also let me know of any future cooperation between FOSS and disabled  
users.

-- 

Janina Sajka				Phone: +1.240.715.1272
Partner, Capital Accessibility LLC	http://www.CapitalAccessibility.Com

Marketing the Owasys 22C talking screenless cell phone in the U.S. and Canada--Go to http://www.ScreenlessPhone.Com to learn more.

Chair, Accessibility Workgroup		Free Standards Group (FSG)
janina at freestandards.org		http://a11y.org



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