Re: Proposal: enable accessibility by default for GNOME

[Shaun McCance <shaunm gnome org>]

On Wed, 2008-07-30 at 12:00 -0400, Willie Walker wrote:
> Hi All:
> 
> I recently had a nice discussion with the release team about the 
> viability of enabling accessibility (i.e., the AT-SPI infrastructure) by 
> default for GNOME.  As a result of that discussion, I'm approaching the 
> broader GNOME community with a proposal to do this.  :-)

Sorry I'm late to this discussion.  Just got back
from my honeymoon. :)

The big motivating factor here is that a disabled user
will be able to use the desktop without having to figure
out how to enable assistive technologies without the aid
of assistive technologies.  That sounds nice, but I don't
see how just enabling AT-SPI et al accomplishes this.

For instance, if a blind user logs in, she'll still have
to navigate to the accessibility preferences to enable a
screen reader.  Granted, with accessibility already loaded,
she won't have to log out and back in.  But it's still five
or so completely blind clicks she has to manage to make.

Since you don't seem to be proposing enabling any particular
accessibility tool by default (and enabling them all would
be insane), what's the proposal for how to deal with this?
To an average user, the core infrastructure being loaded
doesn't mean anything if the tool she needs isn't there.

--
Shaun