I think it depends how far your program lets a user get. If it's kinda accessible, but not all the way, then usually a text editor is at least workable enough to find out what the code's doing to make this set of buttons here not work right, or whatever, and fix that. Canonical's one-guy-that-works-on-accessibility-when-he-gets-a-chance-outside-of-his-other-duties is blind. But if you can't do ANYTHING with it, to the point that you don't even know what it is that's missing, then it's going to be a lot harder to even get started. GTK apps will be screen-readable by default, unless you do something stupid when coding it to break that. Qt apps, if using base Qt classes, can use a KDE-specific screenreader (not the standard one), and any KDE widgets that are a little *too* customized won't work. For example, no KHTML web browser will work. Konsole won't work, so you can't compile your code.
Accessibility is more than just screenreaders.
Like I said, if you're blind but you can get through a text editor you can usually fix code. If your distro doesn't have a way to turn on dwelling (mouse-hover), how are you going to even get to the point of trying an application and finding something to fix in it? You can't click on anything! Or if your distro's virtual keyboard doesn't have scanning mode (press button when keyboard row you want is highlighted, press button again when key you want on the row is highlighted), and you are arthritic or otherwise have low mobility in your hands...it's going to be very difficult to type any code. And if you try to look for speech-to-text software on Linux distros, you'll just be given a list of text-to-speech programs, which are not at all the same thing. There's the barebones of voice-control available, but it isn't in a good state. If I can't get my Wacom tablet to work on your distro, and I have joint problems that make the stylus better for me than a mouse, that's going to prevent me from using the computer long enough (you know, without pain) to write a patch.
My favorite one is still the one where Ubuntu required that you open a terminal and type "onboard" to get an onscreen keyboard because you can't type...oh wait. That has finally been fixed. It was like that for about 2 years. Someone decided that accessibility tools were "clutter" in the menu.
Power management, mobile and firmware developer on Linux. Security developer at Aurora. Ex-biologist. mjg59 on Twitter. Content here should not be interpreted as the opinion of my employer. Also on Mastodon.
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Re: AP
Date: 2012-05-22 01:41 pm (UTC)Accessibility is more than just screenreaders.
Like I said, if you're blind but you can get through a text editor you can usually fix code. If your distro doesn't have a way to turn on dwelling (mouse-hover), how are you going to even get to the point of trying an application and finding something to fix in it? You can't click on anything! Or if your distro's virtual keyboard doesn't have scanning mode (press button when keyboard row you want is highlighted, press button again when key you want on the row is highlighted), and you are arthritic or otherwise have low mobility in your hands...it's going to be very difficult to type any code. And if you try to look for speech-to-text software on Linux distros, you'll just be given a list of text-to-speech programs, which are not at all the same thing. There's the barebones of voice-control available, but it isn't in a good state. If I can't get my Wacom tablet to work on your distro, and I have joint problems that make the stylus better for me than a mouse, that's going to prevent me from using the computer long enough (you know, without pain) to write a patch.
My favorite one is still the one where Ubuntu required that you open a terminal and type "onboard" to get an onscreen keyboard because you can't type...oh wait. That has finally been fixed. It was like that for about 2 years. Someone decided that accessibility tools were "clutter" in the menu.