Re: [orca-list] Orca and Arch again

[Jason White <jason jasonjgw net>]

Michael Whapples <mwhapples aim com> wrote:
> I think this covers so much of my discomfort with Linux, what
> actually is it? WARNING: I have been reading some open university
> material which actually touched on some of this, I will try and keep
> the intellectual talk out. By what I have written I mean the whole
> idea of Linux is freedom to choose, but its exactly that which makes
> it so hard to work with as what works on one distro may not work on
> another because they had another idea of how to do it. So I can see
> why you would suggest if people don't want to deal with low level
> accessibility issues then they may be best to group behind one big
> distro sorting that out, but doesn't that sort of defeat the idea of
> Linux?

I think the most benefit can be gained by working with upstream projects and
having any necessary changes incorporated at that level; these will then be
picked up by most or all of the distributions by default, or with a little
encouragement.

Trying to get everybody, or most people, behind a single distribution just
isn't going to work, for the same reasons that it hasn't been possible in the
past: different distributions have different audiences, different emphases,
and make divergent technical choices because there is sufficient community or
commercial demand for each of them. The major advantage of software which is
free as in freedom is that people can change and customize it as they wish,
and trying to discourage this is ultimately not going to be a successful
strategy.

The same holds for assistive technologies and alternative user interfaces -
this is why we have BRLTTY, Orca, Emacspeak, Yasr, SpeakUp, FireVox and
others. Yes, it does mean that resources are fragmented, but this is
inevitable, because people with the skill to innovate and write software
disagree as to what the best solutions are. However, it also opens the door to
innovations that wouldn't happen if most or all of the players were behind a
single approach or project. There is also plenty of scope for inter-project
cooperation, for example with respect to braille and speech infrastructure
(Brlapi and SpeechDispatcher, respectively).