Mailinglist Archive: opensuse-factory (507 mails)

[Halim Sahin <halim.sahin@xxxxxxxxxx>]

hi,

I would like to give some important notes/hints
about the opensuse accessibility

and I'm not sure which mailinglist is the right one
I know there are some support list for suse-blinux, but i would like
to give some accessibility hints in general

I know that "marco skambraks" was responsible for most of the 
accessibility issues until 11.1
AFAIK, Marco is now working full-time for the mono-a11y project
does opensuse have an "opensuse accessibility manager"?

here are my notes/hints:
Major accessibilityfeatures in opensuse 11.1:
Grub-menu with speech-support  (only available in opensuse)
Perfect Brailledisplay detection (serial/usb).
Detecting serial brailledisplays works only under opensuse distro.
Featureritch and userfriendly Consolescreenreader sbl (suse-blinux).
Unfortunately many other distros are using brltty as default textmode
screenreader.
But I know that many users of other distros are using sbl as well.
Usualy they have to build sbl from source.
Major features in suse-blinux sbl (missing in brltty) are:
1. attribute cursor tracking (yast, mc ...).
2. Customizable braille / keyboard keymaps
3. Application based userprofiles
4. suseblinux works with braille and speech, with braille, without braille
speech-only) and braille-only.

Orca (gnome screenreader):
In opensuse 11.1 orca has excelent braillesupport through sbl/brld (brld =
brailledaemon).

Most gtk Apps are accessible except firefox shipped with opensuse.
See bug #508611 under http://bugzilla.novell.com

Unfortunately many things are broken now under opensuse 11.2 milestone 3.
Unfortunately it looks like
that suse/novell does not longer improove the accessibility of opensuse.
The approaches in opensuse 11.1 were almost perfect.
The exciting new features like the braillesupport in (textmode/gnome) and
the talking grub menu
should be improoved to get a well working accessibility infrastructure in
the future.

Currently the following things are broken in opensuse 11.2:
1. orca braillesupport (brld/sbl).
2. firefox
3. unstable talking grub menu
4. Traditional gnome mainmenu should be activated by default (if a11y is
enabled).
5. Orca should respect language setting in groubmenu (gnome live cd).
   


My Questions:
1. who has the responsibility for accessibility support in opensuse.
2. does opensuse still invest into a wellworking accessibility (a11y)
infrastructure like other distros?
3. Is it possible to simplify bugzilla for opensuse?
currently it's hard to file bugs because there is no category for
accessibility.

Suse-linux 7.0 was the first out of the box accessible distro.
Opensuse 11.1 was another milestone for a11y.
It would  be nice to see that novell / suSE invest in accessibility 
in future distros.

Thanks
Halim

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