Re: Accessibility issues of GUI interface in Linux

["L. C. Robinson" <lcr cyberhighway net>]

On Wed, 18 Aug 1999, Richard Flint wrote (speaking of GUI
accessibility problems, and the supposed need to address them right
now, as part of the X or GUI toolset):

> I think that this is a great point you have brought up.  I am
> surprized that it was not brought up sooner.

Actually this comes up again and again.  You can get more insight
on this from the list archives.

> If our needs are to be considered they MUST be brought up NOW.

So the question is: "What if we don't get in and make sure
accessibility is built in to the GUI, right now?  Won't it soon be
too late"?

Actually this may be premature.  As linux grows in the marketplace,
many more blind programmers will come in, who can contribute custom
blind oriented solutions, like others are doing in terms of
emacspeak, mbrola, and other screen readers.  Eventually they can
turn their attention to more specific apps for the blind, or
patches to existing ones to allow for direct blind access.  These
will be better that awkward access kludges, and can leverage the
already existing source code: source makes a huge difference.

In the meantime, new users need to be told about the many existing
quality text mode solutions, which number in many hundreds, and can
solve almost all the usual problems.  See the FAQ for more info
about this.

Some day there will no doubt be a special linux distribution
adapted especially for the visually impaired.  We have already seen
discussion of this sort of thing, but there are not yet enough
people available to pull it off.  I believe we already have seen
some installation disks, but they were not general enough, and
maintenance/obsolence is a continuing problem with the presently
available manpower: that should change.

<snip>
> who knows, linux may lose the text interface.

Discussions about accessibility and X seem to come up again and
again, and the issue is touched on in the FAQ in more than one
place, though not too directly. 

So the Question is: "Is there a chance that linux will abandon the
[supposedly archaic, historical] textmode interface"?

Answer:  This cannot happen, and there is absolutely no trend in
that direction (quite the opposite); the text interface will always
be needed, even for sighted users.  We are actually seeing
accelerated development of text mode tools, and more apps that work
in both text mode and GUI mode.  Why?  Well, it has to do with
remote computer use and administration and the trend toward
networking, thin clients, web applications and web access, embedded
devices, powerful scripting languages, and many other related
issues.  Remember too, that GUI access technologies will always be
kludges to add some text mode capabilities to programs that weren't
designed for it, and can never hope to work as well as native text
mode tools; learn to use these instead, where ever possible, which
is most of the time. 

As a sidelight, I note that M$ is being forced to add Unix style
text mode and scripting capabilities to their server platforms to
compete -- actual direct ports, in some cases.

LCR

-- 
L. C. Robinson
reply to lcr cyberhighway net

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