Re: [tdf-discuss] accessibility mailing list

Hi Friedrich,

At 15:14 29/11/2010, Friedrich Strohmaier wrote:
> Hi Florian, *,
>
> might be I don't understand "accesibility" well..
>
> Florian Effenberger schrieb:
> >Christoph Noack wrote on 2010-11-28 13.08:
>
> >> Sorry to ask - but who asked? (...)
>
> >someone from the audience at LinuxDay Dornbirn talked to me about our
> >accesibility plans. She was disabled herself, and proposed a separate
> >list with lower mail volume, where developers and people in need of
> >accessibility could exchange themselves.
>
> not a good idea from my point of view because ..
>
> >Of course, this only makes sense when we have someone taking care of
> >this - that's why I share this idea. :-)
>
> A mailinglist with bad balance of giving <-> gaining for *all* members
> won't work well and this is, what I expect here.
>
> [..]
>
> >I guess the main concern is, that especially for people in need of
>                                                          ^^^^^^^^^^
> >accessibility,
> ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
> does this mean they need support for reason of lacking accessibility
> efficience or does that mean, they are interested in getting involved in
> development for making that better.
>
> In case of the first I'd say a mailinglist isn't a good choice at all.
> It rather would be a candidate for "ask a question" support form.

I subscribe to a dozen accessibility mailing 
lists (mostly Web related) and find it hard to 
predict what the balance between users and developers would be.
As I said in another mail, accessibility in an 
authoring tool always has two aspects (UI 
accessibility and accessibility of the output). 
So I expect at least two types of questions:
 (1) UI-related:
   - questions to improve the accessibility of the Libo UI,
   - how to work around accessibility issues 
(and how to do certain things from the keyboard 
instead of with a pointing device),
   - how to improve whatever Libo developers can 
do to make extensions more accessible;
 (2) output related:
   - accessibility features in ODF itself (what 
is available and how to use it);
   - accessibility features in export formats such as PDF and XHTML.

There may be questions about how to use Libo with 
certain assistive technologies (screen readers, 
magnifiers, alternative iniput devices, etc.) 
although I think that many such questions are 
also discussed on accessibility mailing lists 
that are not linked to specific projects or 
software products (e.g. mailing lists where blind computer users communicate).



> >following large mail threads not related to that topic,
> >can be a problem - so a dedicated list indeed might make sense.
>
> This can be a problem for whomever. It's only solution is to get Your
> tools and Your communication partners help You achieving that task. This
> can be shurely be demanded by someone willing tho help development.
> Someone looking for advice is a completely different story and should be
> handled as such.

I don't think this is fair towards people with 
disabilities: they already face bigger challenges 
in education, in finding a job (with a lower 
salary, on average), in learning to use ICT (if 
they can afford it), etc. For certain user 
groups, especially those that completely rely on 
assistive technology, becoming efficient is a 
bigger challenge than for those without 
disabilities (check for example the videos on the 
assistiveware channel: 
<http://www.youtube.com/user/assistiveware>, e.g. 
"A pivotal role in the household").

(And let us not fall into the trap of 
generalisations; those who can cope with large 
volumes of mail can still choose to follow the general mailing lists.)

Best regards,

Christophe



> my 2�
>
> Gru�/regards
> --
> Friedrich
> Libreoffice-Box http://libreofficebox.org/
> LibreOffice and more on CD/DVD images
> (german version already started)


--
Christophe Strobbe
K.U.Leuven - Dept. of Electrical Engineering - SCD
Research Group on Document Architectures
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