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   Casey Reeves (xogium@tech.lgbt)'s status on Friday, 09-Jun-2023 21:29:52 JST Casey Reeves

   So, this morning, after years and years of using the GUI in Linux, I gave up. The state of the GUI does nothing but deteriorate over time for accessibility, and it's exhausting. It's only getting worse. We're far, far away from what it used to be, years ago. Certainly, the QT framework has improved since 5 and now 6 came out, but GTK? Oh dear, oh dear... So, let's dive into it. #linux #xorg #wayland #a11y #accessibility #blind

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     pettter (pettter@mastodon.acc.umu.se)'s status on Friday, 09-Jun-2023 21:40:25 JST pettter

     in reply to

     @xogium I have to say that it's really disappointing, and somewhat ironic, that a large section of non-backwards-compatible changes were pushed through with arguments from accessibility, but that as they realized that they can just Do That Now, they just kept things moving and introducing bitrot and deprecating existing, stable tools, and dropped the accessibility angle altogether.

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     Casey Reeves (xogium@tech.lgbt)'s status on Friday, 09-Jun-2023 21:42:53 JST Casey Reeves

     in reply to

     But then, you may be wondering, why did it change? There are probably a lot of reasons why that is, but I can think of a couple.

     One, technology keeps on evolving. When GTK 3 got introduced, it took quite some time for the single GUI screen reader to catch up with it. Regressions were also a thing. Not to mention that the orca screen reader has only one really active developer.

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     Federico Mena Quintero (federicomena@mstdn.mx)'s status on Friday, 09-Jun-2023 21:42:53 JST Federico Mena Quintero

     in reply to

     @xogium Don't forget that circa 2010-2011, Oracle acquired Sun Microsystems and disbanded the accessibility team. They were responsible for GNOME's accessibility infrastructure. We went from about 10 full-time people working on accessibility to none.

     Emmanuele Bassi's talk on the history of accessibility in GNOME: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eNh0Xg8abj0

     My talk on the effort to bring the accessibility stack to modern standards: https://viruta.org/paying-technical-debt-transcript.html

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     Casey Reeves (xogium@tech.lgbt)'s status on Friday, 09-Jun-2023 21:42:54 JST Casey Reeves

     in reply to

     So, at the beginning, Linux started with console only for us blind folks. It is only in 2007 or so that the GUI really started taking off. Back in the days of gnome 2, the accessibility was extremely impressive. The UI was fluid, and every program in ubuntu (that's what I was using back then) was seemingly designed with accessibility in mind. Reality was probably different, but to me, it seemed this way. I loved it. Ubuntu 8.10 was the first Linux I ever used. Of course, QT was not even on the table yet when it came to accessibility, but, it was the glorious days of GTK.

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     tychosoft (tychosoft@fosstodon.org)'s status on Friday, 09-Jun-2023 22:01:45 JST tychosoft

     in reply to

     @xogium the AFB (American Foundation for the Blind) was forced to withdraw support and funding for various projects that worked on GTK/gnome 2 blind accessibility by an AFB corporate donor, and forced to fire the AFB CTO who ran these programs, Janina Sajka. The corporate donor that did this? Microsoft.

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     Alan Coopersmith (alanc@fosstodon.org)'s status on Tuesday, 20-Feb-2024 19:28:18 JST Alan Coopersmith

     in reply to

     • Federico Mena Quintero

     @federicomena @xogium Sun’s contribution to GNOME accessibility was not just on the development side either, but in things like applying for & managing EU grant money, testing against US Sec 508 standards, and serving on the various accessibility standards committees to ensure the standards gave free desktops a chance to meet US & EU purchasing requirements.