completely impressed with linux's accessibility

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA512 hi all. I couldn't sleep, so am up early. I wanted to write in to basically apologize for yesterday's completely unclear rant. I had an idea what I wanted to say but I was so frustrated I didn't ge tit out, I'll explain in just a minute. I've just completed converting another windows user over to fedora, always cause for celebration, and I just installed lots of updates with gnome software. You guys have done a fantastic job with gnome software by the way. I'm in the process of tracking down the one anaconda accessibility bug, and will file a bug when I have. How do I submit a patch? I don't have access to the git repository so can't push directly. The only purpose of that rant was to ask 3 questions. 1, When there are accessibility issues, how do I get developers who don't know anything about orca and at-spi interested in fixing them? Issues I often run into are developers complaining about the lack of good up to date documentation or simply that accessibility is hard. 2, how do I deal with persistent bugs? There is a persistent one at the moment with orca and terminal applications. It will sometimes fail to announce incoming text. Apparently the cause is something in vte, which all or most terminal emulators depend on. 3, how do I deal with the inevitable "just switch to windows, it's perfect" or "just switch to mac" developer? I also wanted to clarify some of my points. I only get frustrated enough to rant when a bug is persistent. I don't immediately go, oh my god there's a bug, then go onto the irc channel in a rage to attack the developer for not caring about us poor blind people. I only get that way when a developer seems disinterested in fixing a bug, tries to sell me on another platform or is hostile "why would I fix accessibility issues, I don't need that" is the usual response that can get me worked up. If I'm going to be part of the fedora community I've got to adjust my attitude. I think accessibility should be at a low level so there don't have to be as many layors between orca and what is on screen, but I'm no developer. I want to help developers fix their issues, not whine and complain about them. Most accessibility issues are really easy to fix. Simply do the following and it will work ninety percent of the time. If you're using a toolkit, such as gtk or qt, use stock widgets. Those all provide the proper accessible names and labels that orca needs. If you use custom widgets, provide AccessibleNames for your controlls, and set the correct role type. Remember to set focusable to true on controlls such as buttons, lists, etc so that orca won't skip them. Fedora tools already do this, and as a result I've had zero issues with any of the gui tools fedora puts out, great job! If it helps, now comes my explanation, poor though it is. I've been under a lot of internal pressure lately. I've been hearing about little else but windows 10 this, windows 10 that. I'm worried that this might be a threat to gnu/linux, because microsoft seems to be addressing some of the big issues that gave us an edge, although they're still not open source. When windows publications do review linux or linux laptops, they always seem to find something wrong with it. The thing that set me off yesterday was a complaint about scaling issues. Something to do with chrome not scaling right, and how this of course works fine on windows. I get so tired of the "windows just works" argument ... I got discouraged, and started circling. This got me thinking about how blind windows users have little interest in linux accessibility, and that got me thinking about how hard a time I have trying to get some developers, but by no means all, to fix accessibility issues. Linux is very personal to me and I believe in the open source principals. It's hard to go into anywhere, a mall, a store, etc where windows, and apple feature prominently. Store employees generally no little to nothing about linux, and I ... I don't know exactly. I want linux to be the thing on the news. THe thing people talk about, rather than ridicule or blow off. Linux? WHy would I use that, I use windows. Linux accessibility really isn't that bad. If I weren't surrounded by windows everywhere I turn I might be able to just relax for a while. It's ahrd to avoid though. And I'm rambling, this is a desktop fedora list. If I haven't damaged my reputation completely beyond repair, I'll straighten up and try to stay positive. A little reassurance off list wouldn't be unwelcome though. How do you long tiem linux users deal with "windows" people? Some of you likely use windows, and I don't fault you for it. I personally dislike windows but I don't mean all windows users when I mention windows. I mean the die hard, zealot, windows walks on water type of people, not the person that uses windows for gaming or because there's an app that only works in windows person. Off to get some coffee so I can start ironing out that anaconda bug. Thanks for reading Kendell clark Sent from Fedora GNU/Linux