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Fedora: “The Fedora Quality Team is joining Week of Diversity with an Accessibility Test Week!

Much like other Test Days, the goal of this week is to put Fedora through its paces and catch as many accessibility related issues as we can for our disable users.”

Me: Fedora, your screen reader is broken.

Fedora guy: Patches welcome 👍

Me: *reaches for block button*

From the actually-what-you’re-referring-to-as-ableism-is-GNU/ableism department

Background: It’s not just Fedora. Every Linux distribution that ships with Wayland by default – and that’s almost every major Linux distribution – ships with a broken/unusable screen reader at the moment.

(Read that again until it really sinks in. Yep. I know. Uh-huh. Really.)

#Linux#a11y#wayland

@aral Nnno. It's because Wayland is a very clean and secure mammoth of software. What was possible in X11 is not in Wayland. Go back 3-4 years and try to sudo. Big fun.

So it's either ship Wayland for all now, while screenreader is broken or don't ship Wayland.

Needs of the many and all that.

Final note: You *can* switch to X11 and "fix" your issue in seconds. If you want to fix Wayland, you need to dig deep. Deeper than most developers.

@chris Yes, it was a matter of ship with a broken screen reader or not ship before fixing the screen reader. They chose the latter. Because accessibility is not a show stopper for corporations like IBM, Canonical, etc.

They should be getting sued right now.

@aral Dont get me wrong, why would that be a show stopper?

Critical kernel bugs, Data loss, bricked systems, breackage of DNF and such are show stoppers.

But even broken audio, sometimes broken NVIDIA compatability are GO for launch because you can patch that out.

Aral Balkan

@chris Why would lack of a working screen reader be a showstopper?

Because you see disabled people as people.

For the same reason lack of monitor support would be a showstopper.

@aral @chris I don’t think they’re listening because it doesn’t effect them directly

@cortex @aral I think they check if a majority is affected or at very least a core component.

@chris @cortex @aral this is the very definition of ableism. Congratulations. 👍

@aral I say it's a numbers game.

What percentage of their users use NVIDIA? Let's agree on ~50%. Yet, they still ship w/o working NVIDIA support in the past.

I am not sure how big the percentage of blind people is, but I would wager its less than 50%.

@chris
@aral
If you really want to put it that way, people have the choice not to buy/use NVIDIA. People have no choice to be blind or not.

@rvansleen @aral Please understand: I don't argue this is not important. I do argue the majority of all Fedora users are not affected. I would wager it's not even in the double digits.

What I am reading here is everyone (100%) have to wait for a release instead on X% only, while the rest can go and use F40?

The outcome is the same: Some stick with F39 for a wee bit longer. Or all stick to F39 for a wee bit longer. Releases have 9 months of support, y'know.

@chris Bloody hell man, just say “I’m ableist” and be done with it ffs.

Goodbye.

@chris @aral Having Nvidia is a choice. Not having sight isn't.

@shine @aral Running Debian stable or Fedora bleeding edge is a choice, too, y'know.

@chris @aral It's 8 years. And if you don't think that saying "if you are disabled, you need to use legacy software" is ableist then I don't know...

@shine @aral So you rather had that the entirety of the Linux Community would stop progressing for 8 years? Really?

@chris @aral Yes, I'm sure it would surely take 8 years to fix screen readers if it was considered a blocker...

@shine @chris @aral To me, this point is the most succinctly important of all the points made in this topic.

I've previously posted ignorantly about this topic, but this post helped me think differently.

It is ableist to say things are fine the way they are, because it's not fine for many disabled people. To say anything short of, "this should've been prioritized much more much sooner" is a problem.

@chris @aral Oh btw, current Debian Stable is 12. Wayland has been the default on Gnome in Debian since 10. So,

@shine @tammeow @chris @aral and using a machine with Nvidia when you are vision impaired might not be a choice either

Not every machine you use is your own

@shine @tammeow @chris @aral actually broken accessibility is often a show stopper for public institutions like libraries or government offices or heavily regulated industries like banking

They MUST provide accessibility by law and having it broken in modern software pushes them to use legacy Linux or simply Windows whether they want it or not

It *is* important for broader adoption for reasons you might not even realize

@aral @chris +1

Further, you don't need to be disabled to want to have a screen reader. It's quite helpful in general

@sounddrill @aral I can't see the original pot, why are we talking about screenreaders not being there being showstoppers? :)

@aral @chris Disabled "people" aren't people. They are objects made to satisfy my sexual urges. Breathing onaholes if you will.