Ang: [oats-sig] Fwd: Exciting news: funding coming our way!

Steve, here is a naive question - I use KDE on Ubuntu, do any of the accessibility pros from this work ever cross over? If not, how does one know which one to support?!

On 18/02/2008, Simon Judge <simon.judge at nhs.net> wrote:
> Steve, here is a naive question - I use KDE on Ubuntu, do any of the accessibility pros from this work ever cross over?  If not, how does one know which one to support?!

No that's a very good question and I can only give my perspective
given that I am close to GNOME community and almost completely removed
from KDE. I do not intend to start flame wars just give a personal
perception from what I have experienced. Perhaps I will be corrected.

There are possible 3 levels to think about with Desktop a11y. Low
level Infrastructure for ATs to access applications (AT-SPI). A11y
options included in the desktop (themes and MouseTweaks, sticky Keys
etc ) and AT programs (Orca, GNOME Mag, GOK) which may be supplied in
the distro.

GNOME certainly has all 3 covered and my impression is that the GNOME
community are dedicated to a11y from the top as the new funding
indicates. In addition there is an active and focused team who have
produced much practical work (for example getting ATI-SPI included,
though not turned on by default quite yet). So its fair to say GNOME
are actively driving Linux accessibility forward.

Meanwhile KDE a11y also have a number of projects but my (possibly
incorrect) perception is they are a smaller less focused community and
may have less functionality already implemented. I have heard a number
of people expressing clear dedication to KDE a11y.

I'd say the 2 groups are largely separate but the a11y teams try to
play down the rivalry that exists between the desktops. The great
thing is that KDE have joined the the a11y.org teams along with GNOME
and have made it clear that they want to work towards a common
infrastructure. When AT-SPI is altered to work on top of D-BUS we can
hope that a common infrastructure will develop so that programs can
work on either desktop. The ideal situation is that a11y options and
programs can be used on either desktop and users get equal coverage.

So to summarise I'd say there is currently more a11y energy in GNOME
but that is infectous and KDE are active. Ubuntu might be the first
choice for easy desktop a11y out of the box but Kubuntu will no doubt
keep up.

So the choice as ever is down to personal preferences. Personally I
like GNOME's 'simple is best' approach but then I have not really
spent much quality time with KDE.

The ideal is to support a11y first and then help it be realised on all desktops.

Steve Lee