[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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