Open Letter: How the FOSS Community May Help Disabled Users

[M. Fioretti]

On Thu, Apr 27, 2006 21:28:30 PM -0800, Kam Leo (kam.leo at gmail.com) wrote:

> Mr. Fioretti should take his advocacy to the Gnome, KDE, and UI developers.
> 
> Red Hat and Novell already have to comply with the Americans with
> Disabilities Act.
> 
> Does anyone know if the EU has an equivalent law that applies to Mandriva?

Thanks for your comments. However:

1) first of all, it doesn't matter where a company is based, only
   where it wants to sell its products. If Mandriva wants to sell in
   USA, or Red Hat in EU (to public administrations) they have to make
   sure they comply with the local rules. On top of that, blind USA
   users are just equal, in this context, to blind users from EU, Fiji
   Islands or anywhere else, so the solution must be the same.So,
   eventually it *is* a worldwide issue, it doesn't make much sense to
   look at it on a country by country basis.

2) I agree that it is an UI (= KDE, Gnome...) and file formats
   question, but:

   a) corporations are already working at that level, see groklaw link
   in my open letter.

   b) my proposals are more addressed to single LUGS and/or individual
   FOSS advocates.  FOSS can become as accessible as you want, but if
   the first reaction a disabled user gets when he asks for support or
   complains are like Mike's one, or the many similar others the
   article has got... there's no amount of UI work that will make the
   mass of disabled users switch to FOSS, or not oppose its adoption
   in the public sector.

Ciao,
	Marco Fioretti

-- 
Marco Fioretti                    mfioretti, at the server mclink.it
Fedora Core 3 for low memory      http://www.rule-project.org/

Furious activity is no substitute for understanding. --  H.H. Williams