Re: Is Debian appropriate for accessibility?

[Willie Walker <William Walker Sun COM>]

Hi All:

In general, I've noticed that people have an easier time achieving
success on Ubuntu than Debian.  As a result, I've recommended people use
Ubuntu if they were willing to give it a try.  These recommendations are
based solely on the desire to see users have success, and I have no
hidden agenda to push one distribution over another.

I apologize if I've offended any Debian folks out there.  People having
difficulty getting going on Debian should definitely bring their issues
to the attention of the Debian folks.  Without constructive comments (we
get plenty on the Orca list, and I thank our users for that!), it is
hard to know where you're doing well and where you are failing.

On a positive note, I'm really excited about Daniel Holbach's
announcement from 11-Dec where he mentions that Kartik Mistry is
stepping up to maintain gnome-orca for Debian:

https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/ubuntu-accessibility-devel/2006-December/000138.html

In order to have success with this, Kartik will end up being focused on
understanding the deployment of the entire accessibility stack for
Debian.  As a result, it is likely that we'll see more and more users
become successful on Debian as well, which is a GOOD thing for
everyone.  :-)

We should definitely try to rally behind Kartik to help him succeed.

Will

On Mon, 2006-12-18 at 07:29 -0600, Kenny Hitt wrote:
> Hi.
> 
> Debian can be accessible, but I found I had to build packages from source
> to get things working.  What I found was either badly out dated packages
> for some things needed for accessibility, or main stream Debian 
> simply doesn't have a package for a needed lib or app.
> I've had problems getting Orca to work in Main stream Debian, but it
> just works in Debian based distros like Ubuntu.
> Also, due to Debian's long release cycles, you end up with outdated
> software even if you run Debian unstable.  Unstable is still at Gnome
> 2.14.  Unfortunately, there are accessibility bugs that make Gnome 2.14
> not very usable.  The bugs are fixed in Gnome 2.16.
> 
> Probably the most important reason I don't spend much time lately trying
> to get my main stream Debian box running the latest Gnome and orca is
> that attitude I noticed from the main stream Debian developers.  They
> don't seem to consider accessibility bugs as important as the Ubuntu
> developers.
> Since access to my system requires a screen reader, I prefer to spend my
> time and effort on a Linux distro that considers accessibility
> important.
> 
>           Kenny
> 
> On Mon, Dec 18, 2006 at 08:39:16AM +0100, Jan Buchal wrote:
> > Hello,
> > 
> > I would like briefly reply to frequent notice about Debian and
> > Accessibility.
> > 
> > The core idea in these notes was that most problems with Accessibility
> > (orca, gnomespeech...) is in Debian and that will be better if users
> > will use another Linux distribution.
> > 
> > That's sure not true. :-) Debian and other distribution not response for
> > quality of separate application. That gnomespeech has not any effective
> > log mechanism for example or that orca not works and shows some python
> > traceback only. It is nothing opposite to orca but I would like show
> > that problems are elsewhere. 
> > 
> > On Debian works many developers who works in their free time for others.
> > Sure all is not perfect in Debian as well as in another distributions.
> > Additional, many distributions are based on Debian.
> > 
> > I would like please all for understanding and accuracy.
> > 
> > Have you nice day
> > 
> > -- 
> > 
> > Jan Buchal
> > Tel: (00420) 24 24 86 008
> > Mob: (00420) 608023021
> > 
> > _______________________________________________
> > gnome-accessibility-list mailing list
> > gnome-accessibility-list gnome org
> > http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/gnome-accessibility-list
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