Re: Accessibility

[Whistler <whistler blinksoft com>]

Something everyone has to understand is X is not a graphical interface
like Microsoft Windows.  It is a Graphic protocal more than an interface.
I have just finished a programming class for Unix I have taken many others
but this was especially interesting becaue we covered X and what it realy
is.

Like someone has already posted in order to get all that pretty drag and
drop stuff you ahve to have a Window manijor where as in Microsoft we have
to code a speech system to deal with each individual program  in X we only
have to create a Window manijor that will work for all systems.  For
example there are window manijors that work for both kde and gnome and
there are some that only work for one or the other or none there are other
systems than kde and gnome.  At anyrate All that we need is an accessable
Window manijor and all programs excepting graphical drawing programs will
be usable.

That of corse is over simplification but what you ahve to understand is X
doesn't send graphics it sends commands to your client on your machine and
tells it it wants a box drawn your machine if it is a dumb terminal a
braile out put or speech out put has to decide what it does with those
commands.  Of corse with X it doesn't care if your machine is the same
machine it is running on or some machine in Eastern bolgaria and it
doesn't care what kind of graphics output you have it just knows when it
gets requests it sends commands to display what we do with those commands
are up to us as programmers.

Ken /whistler

On Wed, 18 Aug 1999, Walt Smith wrote:

> Bear in mind that where issues like this are concerned, commercial factors
> will *always* play the dominant role.  It's a sad but true fact that blind
> computer users are always going to be a tiny minority and that as the
> popularity of any operating system increases, we become a tinier and
> tinier minority.  This is what happened with Windows ... decisions get
> made based on their effect on the largest number of individuals
> potentially affected and based on that criterion, blind people don't even
> make a blip on the marketing radar.  At the moment, Linux is in the
> position of not being anything like as widely used as Windows, but that
> could change.  The sooner blind users get in the door and get their basic
> technical needs addressed, the better.  Whether this particular train is
> already so far down the track that we won't be able to reverse any
> problems we may find with architecture, for example, remains to be seen.
> My perception is that the overall Linux community is more accessible, on
> an individual basis, and that to some extent, at least, the old spirit
> that was so much a part of the computer culture twenty years ago still can
> be found.  If Linux ever truly takes off commercially, though, you can
> forget this culture because as with anything, dollars always speak louder
> than needs.
> 
> -- 
> Walt Smith - Raleigh, NC
> ka3agm netcom com
> 
> "I'm extraordinarily patient provided I get my own way in the end."
>           - Margaret Thatcher
> 
> 
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