Folks, some good news.
I’ve started a new section on the openSUSE Wiki focusing on
Accessibility (a11y) so we can exchange information and find people with common interests in raising awareness and making openSUSE even more accessible to the masses.
Why?:
I’ve been a SUSE user for about 4 years now, but didn’t actively join the community until the release of openSUSE 10.3. Immediately, on the first day I joined, JP Rosevear managed to snag me and introduce me to the openSUSE GNOME team, where I met Hans Petter Jansson. Next thing I know, I’m an active member of the team and HPJ and I are working together on accessibility issues. Awesome group of people there and I’m grateful for everyone on the team who has shown an interest in a11y issues. (a11y = a + 11 letters + y = accessibility)
One problem. as far as I could tell in those early months shortly after 10.3 was released, I was the only a11y user, and HPJ was the only active a11y hacker, despite our prominent mention of a11y in the IRC channel. I felt like we were an island, a very small island at that. It was next to impossible for us to produce some truly meaningful work because of our limited experiences and available equipment needed to test out our ideas.
Then, in the last few months, I started to see a trickle of others in the openSUSE community who were actively involved in a11y issues and solutions. Wait a minute, I thought. How come I am only just now finding out about all these great folk? Novell even has an initiative out with the Mono-A11y team?? And none of this is prominent? In fact, none of this is mentioned prominently on the wiki pages??
You can imagine how maddening this must feel to me. There were other people on the island, and I didn’t know about them! Well… no more! It’s time that all these great people had a place to call home. It’s time that the great Novell Mono-A11y initiative become more widely known. It’s time the world knew that Novell and openSUSE are very much into the cause of making their distro and software accessible to the masses.
So now, we have the beginnings of the Accessibility Wiki pages. There’s even a People Directory in there, and if you are an A11y user, contributor or developer, I urge you (hell, I plead with you!) to get yourself listed on the Directory. When we all know about each other and are able to freely exchange ideas and solutions, we’ll be able to make greater strides in A11y in the open source world.
What’s the big deal?
For those of you reading this article who aren’t a11y users, contributors or developers, you could be wondering, “This is all nice, but what does it have to do with me?” Quite a bit actually.
As HPJ once said to me, “There is a gradient between accessibility and usability.” This is a concept I have championed for many years. Improvements in your usability experiences often start out as accessibility improvements. Technological advancements often start out with a core group of a11y users and then expand out to the masses. For example, did you know:
- The Deaf community was the first segment of society to use wireless email messaging as a whole? By the mid 1990’s, nearly every Deaf person carried a RIM pager and emailed each other day in and day out. It wasn’t until the turn of the century when mainstream society began to adopt those wireless pagers enmasse. Lessons learned during the “Deaf Days” were important contributions to the larger adoption of that technology.
- These days, there is at least one videophone box set up in nearly every Deaf home. (I have two.) Again, the Deaf community is being the guinea pig for mainstream videophone technology. It is so ubiquitous that the FCC has even gotten into the game by developing regulatory standards to ensure these videophones become more accessible and interoperable as it gets adopted by mainstream society. And there’s already signs that mainstream interest is picking up.
These are just a couple of examples of my own. I hope others will also submit their cases for how a11y technology has contributed significantly to mainstream technology.
But there’s also the issue of adoption of openSUSE or any other open source distribution by large organizations. I can’t remember the exact story, but there was a large school district in, I believe Spain, that wanted to convert all its desktops to a Linux desktop. However, legally, they had to ensure that those distributions met accessibility standards. I think it was Uubntu that won out. Not sure. But the point is, the existence of laws ensuring equal access as well as the fact that it just takes ONE person in an organization to say “This isn’t accessible to me” to derail a distribution’s attempt to enter that market, makes highlighting the accessibility and capability of openSUSE that much more important. We all have an interest in growing the openSUSE community of users and new markets.
But, if we don’t establish a good meeting place, so we can become more aware of all the awesome thingst we’re doing within our own distribution, how can we effectively make the case to new users and markets? Hence, welcome to
openSUSE Accessibility Wiki. I urge all segments of openSUSE to join the family.
In any case, it has been a very interesting experience, and I’m proud to say that the website isn’t looking too bad. It could still use some work, but then again, what website doesn’t need work?