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1. Embed this notice
   Aral Balkan (aral@mastodon.ar.al)'s status on Thursday, 20-Jun-2024 15:14:31 JST Aral Balkan

   For eight years Fedora has been shipping GNOME with a broken screen reader!

   EIGHT YEARS!

   (Wayland has been default on Fedora for eight years – since Fedora 25, released on 2016.)

   And a hundred-billion-dollar corporation like IBM ships operating systems today based on it with a broken screen reader.

   What is an ableist culture? One in which the people who call this out get ostracised.

   #ableism #fedora #redHat #IBM #gnome #cosmic #wayland #a11y #system76 #linux https://fosstodon.org/@soller/112646375569571307

   • Embed this notice
     John M. Gamble (jgamble@fosstodon.org)'s status on Thursday, 20-Jun-2024 17:31:20 JST John M. Gamble

     in reply to

     • xbezdick

     @xbezdick @aral

     What?

     Red Hat was a 3.4 billion dollar company at the time of its acquisition by IBM. You don't reach that solely through unpaid volunteers.

   • Embed this notice
     xbezdick (xbezdick@masto.ai)'s status on Thursday, 20-Jun-2024 17:31:27 JST xbezdick

     in reply to

     @aral Fedora is not IBM but a bunch of people mostly working on a project for free. Xorg is a security concern so the switch was justified even with not all features being present. Instead of trying to shame opensource developers and unjustly calling them IBM you can grab some issues and help working on them.

     Aral Balkan repeated this.
   • Embed this notice
     Aral Balkan (aral@mastodon.ar.al)'s status on Thursday, 20-Jun-2024 17:36:46 JST Aral Balkan

     in reply to

     • Matthew Booth
     • John M. Gamble
     • xbezdick

     @mattb @jgamble @xbezdick Billion-dollar corporation when it comes to the profits, volunteer-run effort when it comes to criticism. Good gig if you can get it.

   • Embed this notice
     Matthew Booth (mattb@hachyderm.io)'s status on Thursday, 20-Jun-2024 17:36:47 JST Matthew Booth

     in reply to

     • John M. Gamble
     • xbezdick

     @jgamble @xbezdick @aral Fedora is not Red Hat. Not in theory, not in practise.

     Aral Balkan repeated this.
   • Embed this notice
     Matthew Booth (mattb@hachyderm.io)'s status on Thursday, 20-Jun-2024 17:47:46 JST Matthew Booth

     in reply to

     • John M. Gamble
     • xbezdick

     @aral @jgamble @xbezdick If you'd levelled the same criticism at RHEL it might have been valid.

   • Embed this notice
     Aral Balkan (aral@mastodon.ar.al)'s status on Thursday, 20-Jun-2024 17:47:46 JST Aral Balkan

     in reply to

     • Matthew Booth
     • John M. Gamble
     • xbezdick

     @mattb @jgamble @xbezdick RHEL is IBM. It’s right there in the original post.

   • Embed this notice
     mihaios (mihaios@mastodon.social)'s status on Thursday, 20-Jun-2024 17:48:31 JST mihaios

     in reply to

     @aral
     I fully agree that accessibility is important and should be a priority.
     I must say, however, that I feel like your tone and attitude with regard to this situation are toxic, creating divisive comments instead of helping to reach the accessibility goal.

   • Embed this notice
     Aral Balkan (aral@mastodon.ar.al)'s status on Thursday, 20-Jun-2024 17:48:31 JST Aral Balkan

     in reply to

     • mihaios

     @mihaios Look up tone policing.

     Eight years of whispering appearently didn’t work. If anyone was even whispering, that is.

   • Embed this notice
     Aral Balkan (aral@mastodon.ar.al)'s status on Thursday, 20-Jun-2024 17:49:34 JST Aral Balkan

     in reply to

     • Matthew Booth
     • John M. Gamble
     • xbezdick

     @xbezdick @mattb @jgamble I’m sorry you’re offended. Imagine how offended disabled people feel by being excluded.

   • Embed this notice
     xbezdick (xbezdick@masto.ai)'s status on Thursday, 20-Jun-2024 17:49:36 JST xbezdick

     in reply to

     • Matthew Booth
     • John M. Gamble

     @aral @mattb @jgamble I was using Fedora pretty much from day 1. I remember hour and hours spent packaging and helping with Fedora development as an student. I worked on Fedora while slaving hours in an startup and after I joined RedHat I pretty much stopped working on it as I have other things to do. It's offending what you say there. And I will repeat my self - where are the tracking issues, what did you do for them being fixed?

   • Embed this notice
     Dan S (datn@xoxo.zone)'s status on Thursday, 20-Jun-2024 19:41:21 JST Dan S

     in reply to

     • Matthew Booth
     • John M. Gamble
     • xbezdick

     @mattb @jgamble @xbezdick @aral Red Hat is liable for the Fedora Project's actions.

     https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fedora_Project#Governance

   • Embed this notice
     Aral Balkan (aral@mastodon.ar.al)'s status on Thursday, 20-Jun-2024 19:49:43 JST Aral Balkan

     in reply to

     • fyberpunk

     @fyberpunk Yes, this comment is a perfect example of the ableism in open source in general and in the GNOME project in particular.

     Screen reader doesn’t work? “Oh, just use a different display environment to the one that ships and is supported by default. No biggie, bro!”

     “Oh, any by the way, we’re going to drop support for that display environment: https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Changes/KDE_Plasma_6#Why_drop_the_X11_session”

   • Embed this notice
     fyberpunk (fyberpunk@mastodon.social)'s status on Thursday, 20-Jun-2024 19:49:44 JST fyberpunk

     in reply to

     @aral So to get a functional screen reader, you need *checks notes* two extra clicks on the login screen to get X11, which works better or worse depending on your needs around many aspects of the desktop, which is why the choice is still there. Yes it's an ableist culture that allowed screen readers to remain broken on Wayland so long. GNOME is not a perfect project. But your comments sound like they're seeking to sow division around a volunteer project I'm a member of.

   • Embed this notice
     :ihavenomouth: (inginsub@clubcyberia.co)'s status on Thursday, 20-Jun-2024 19:52:10 JST :ihavenomouth:

     in reply to
     @aral what is the use case for a working screen reader?
     Fish of Rage likes this.
   • Embed this notice
     Alexandre Oliva (lxo@gnusocial.net)'s status on Thursday, 20-Jun-2024 22:01:36 JST Alexandre Oliva

     in reply to
     I know exactly how that feels.
     JavaScrippled web sites are show stoppers for me. I feel completely excluded.
     It's an accessibility issue for me, because of my rare disabilities, and I'm going to court to fight governments, banks, and whatnot, for not tending to it.
     You, however, don't consider this accessibility feature important, and you have even dismissed it before, because other design goals trumped it.
     how would it feel if I were to call you out and shame you for not tending to an accessibility need, labeling you ableist for making choices in your developments that are not compatible with my accessibility needs?
   • Embed this notice
     Dana Fried (tess@mastodon.social)'s status on Friday, 21-Jun-2024 05:10:36 JST Dana Fried

     in reply to

     @aral accessibility is a P0 feature for any product; you shouldn't ship a product without it; a product without accessibility is fundamentally broken.

     If X11 is a "security concern" then maybe creating a whole new product and launching it in a broken state wasn't the right answer (Wayland is an absolute nightmare for me, but for other reasons, so I share some of your pain).

     Also the fucking _gall_ to ship a broken product and then say, "well, you could always contribute patches to fix it".

     Aral Balkan repeated this.
   • Embed this notice
     Dana Fried (tess@mastodon.social)'s status on Friday, 21-Jun-2024 05:11:15 JST Dana Fried

     in reply to

     @aral like, "oh yes, now that my linux no longer allows me to get anything done effectively, I will be happy to use my broken system to fix my broken system, great plan, A+, no notes"

     Honorable mention to "we're creating a library that (at some unspecified future point) you can compile into your application to fix the problem; no, this will not fix every other application on your system or any legacy software, why do you ask?"

     Aral Balkan repeated this.
   • Embed this notice
     Devin Prater :blind: (pixelate@tweesecake.social)'s status on Saturday, 22-Jun-2024 01:03:30 JST Devin Prater :blind:

     in reply to

     • Dana Fried

     @tess @aral Something like: We just made a huge building for your use! It's just for *you*! It's *your* building!

     Person walks up to the building, there are no doors, no windows, just walls all around. Person can't get in.

     They go to the building maker, but are told "Well, that's okay, just build doors into the building. Not too hard, right?

     Aral Balkan repeated this.
   • Embed this notice
     Devin Prater :blind: (pixelate@tweesecake.social)'s status on Saturday, 22-Jun-2024 06:20:19 JST Devin Prater :blind:

     in reply to

     • Dana Fried

     @tess @aral Also, I've been telling people for the past four or so years I've been around Mastodon. I wrote a blog post [1] about it like two or so years ago. And for the last ten years, I've always stuck to using the Mate desktop or spin or whatever, because I knew Gnome wasn't very accessible. So I've always used X11, and broke my audio a few weeks ago on my Fedora 40 system trying to switch back from Pipewire to Pulseaudio, where Emacspeak is more responsive. I've been telling people that Microsoft is going to do something so crazy that people will switch to Linux, if not on mass, then at least more than usual. And Recall was it. And even if they don't launch it this year, we all know they eventually will. So yeah, the time to really pile on to accessibility was years ago. But no. Last year, someone who has been using Linux for the last, oh I don't even know, 15 years ago? Longer than I have, talked about why they decided to not even deal with the GUI anymore, and now they use an iPhone. Lol they've probably gone all Apple by now. And what did the Gnome folks do? Well, a person who I think is even a member of the Gnome foundation basically called them a liar, and when I asked for solidarity from the comunity, I mostly got nothing. No one gives a damn, and that's very obvious to me. I posted on the System76's MatterMost a few years ago, asking about accessibility, and all I got before I left was something like "Well we'll worry about that when we start working on more of the GUI." No, planning needed to start at the beginning, not when, more likely, they're about to ship it. These days, I'm more like it would be nice, but it won't happen. That's why we blind people make the most of Windows and the iPhone, and try to minimize corporate abuse.

     [1] https://scribe.rip/@r.d.t.prater/linux-accessibility-an-unmaintained-mess-8fbf9decaf8a

   • Embed this notice
     Robert Kingett backup (weirdwriter@tweesecake.social)'s status on Saturday, 22-Jun-2024 15:35:09 JST Robert Kingett backup

     in reply to

     • Dana Fried

     @tess @aral This is everything right here! And people really do wonder why we stick with big Tech as problematic as it is. I honestly can’t tell which is more frustrating these days. I think we are all well aware of the issues caused by big tech but I never seen such irony as The open source community. Well, if your system isn’t working, you could use the system that you can’t use to contribute code on the system that you can’t use. Blows my mind every time. When open source actually works collaboratively, and without the elitism, it really is the best way to make Tech. I’ve contributed to fantastic open source environments and tools and otherwise, but there’s just something about the community as a whole that percolates this kind of ironic accessibility view all throughout the projects that I encounter. Even though big tech could be better in their accessibility, at least they give us breadcrumbs. The open source community turns around and says, if you want it, you make this thing accessible, not me.

   • Embed this notice
     Dźwiedziu (dzwiedziu@mastodon.social)'s status on Saturday, 22-Jun-2024 16:00:37 JST Dźwiedziu

     in reply to

     • Dana Fried
     • Robert Kingett backup

     @weirdwriter
     This thread made me ask myself what this situation would be if instead “Patches welcome” we got “We need help with this”.

     @tess @aral

   • Embed this notice
     Aral Balkan (aral@mastodon.ar.al)'s status on Saturday, 22-Jun-2024 16:00:37 JST Aral Balkan

     in reply to

     • Dana Fried
     • Dźwiedziu
     • Robert Kingett backup

     @dzwiedziu @weirdwriter @tess It depends. If you’re a multi-trillion-dollar corporation like IBM, then the answer is “then hire the fucking help and pay them to fix this like you do for things you actually think are important for your bottom line.”