On Wednesday 14 April 2010 23:39:15 Greg Freemyer wrote:

On Wed, Apr 14, 2010 at 5:35 PM, Jeff Mahoney wrote: <snip>

...

...

And finally, where can I post suggestions so that they will be implemented in some future release of the OS?

https://features.opensuse.org/

That used to be limited to team members.

Is that still true?

Not anymore for over a year now. Everybody can submit a feature, Andreas -- Andreas Jaeger, Program Manager openSUSE, aj@{novell.com,opensuse.org} Twitter: jaegerandi | Identica: jaegerandi SUSE LINUX Products GmbH, GF: Markus Rex, HRB 16746 (AG Nürnberg) Maxfeldstr. 5, 90409 Nürnberg, Germany GPG fingerprint = 93A3 365E CE47 B889 DF7F FED1 389A 563C C272 A126

Hi, On Wed, 14 Apr 2010, Karsten König wrote:

Am Mittwoch, 14. April 2010 23:13:10 schrieb Christian:

...

OK, this is my last message to this list and noone seems to be willing to help. This is so simple for you opensuse user's. If logged out from Gnome, how many times should one press the tab key in order to get to the login button or is there some keyboard command for enabling this button? And finally, where can I post suggestions so that they will be implemented in some future release of the OS? This is important, at least to me when it comes to accessibility. Many thanks, Christian

I am downloading the gnome image right now, it's 11 pm here and every student seems to be awake in the dorm downloading something, so I can only try again tomorrow, it will take hours to download now =(

Try ftp5.gwdg.de directly. 500 MBit bandwidth reserve currently. You would not get it all, but the filesystem has reserve currently too.

I am normally no GNOME user but KDE so I can't just test it.

Still you found the blinux list already, it seems dead though, I cc'ed bryen, afaik he is also visually impaired and works on gnome a11y from time to time.

It was a no-good decision by Novell/SUSE some long time ago to release their only one "truly" blind worker. I have an almost blind collegue, and he states that since that point, blinux support at Novell/SUSE got slowly steadily rotten. SUSE - The Linux Experts - has "set free" their only "blinux expert" who was expert by own patience - the best expert one can think of, sorry, but true and proven. I hope there is a chance to regain expert status at this field back, and my almost-blind collegue even more than me, I guess.

Suggestions can be posted to https://features.opensuse.org/ with a novell account, I don't know how accessible the opensuse pages are, if you need help just write to the list or me and I'll forward your suggestions.

I remember SuSE beeing very proud about a11y for visually impaired users, but I can't judge about the current state =(

"Was". "Is" would be a self-illusioning statement by non-blind deciders which would vote it blindly. But expert status for the biological, not the real blindness would be a better gain.

You asked if brttly includes USB support in the current release, sadly it's not even included in 11.2 but only in vuntz (Vincent Untz) personal home project, so if you add his repository you can download and install it.

Also I suggest mailing to opensuse-gnome as well, maybe some of them are not subscribed to this list.

Viele Gruesse Eberhard Moenkeberg (emoenke@gwdg.de, em@kki.org) -- Eberhard Moenkeberg Arbeitsgruppe IT-Infrastruktur E-Mail: emoenke@gwdg.de Tel.: +49 (0)551 201-1551 ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Gesellschaft fuer wissenschaftliche Datenverarbeitung mbH Goettingen (GWDG) Am Fassberg 11, 37077 Goettingen URL: http://www.gwdg.de E-Mail: gwdg@gwdg.de Tel.: +49 (0)551 201-1510 Fax: +49 (0)551 201-2150 Geschaeftsfuehrer: Prof. Dr. Bernhard Neumair Aufsichtsratsvorsitzender: Dipl.-Kfm. Markus Hoppe Sitz der Gesellschaft: Goettingen Registergericht: Goettingen Handelsregister-Nr. B 598 -------------------------------------------------------------------------

Hi, On Wed, 14 Apr 2010, Bryen M. Yunashko wrote:

On Wed, 2010-04-14 at 23:57 +0200, Eberhard Moenkeberg wrote:

...

On Wed, 14 Apr 2010, Karsten König wrote:

...

Am Mittwoch, 14. April 2010 23:13:10 schrieb Christian:

...

...

...

OK, this is my last message to this list and noone seems to be willing to help. This is so simple for you opensuse user's. If logged out from Gnome, how many times should one press the tab key in order to get to the login button or is there some keyboard command for enabling this button? And finally, where can I post suggestions so that they will be implemented in some future release of the OS? This is important, at least to me when it comes to accessibility. Many thanks, Christian

I am downloading the gnome image right now, it's 11 pm here and every student seems to be awake in the dorm downloading something, so I can only try again tomorrow, it will take hours to download now =(

Try ftp5.gwdg.de directly. 500 MBit bandwidth reserve currently. You would not get it all, but the filesystem has reserve currently too.

...

I am normally no GNOME user but KDE so I can't just test it.

Still you found the blinux list already, it seems dead though, I cc'ed bryen, afaik he is also visually impaired and works on gnome a11y from time to time.

It was a no-good decision by Novell/SUSE some long time ago to release their only one "truly" blind worker. I have an almost blind collegue, and he states that since that point, blinux support at Novell/SUSE got slowly steadily rotten.

Not completely true.

Maybe. I tried to point out a special aspect. Let's see what you say in detail. It can't be much, you should know.

Actually, there were two blind users who were let go. But there is one that still exists on the mono-a11y team.

OK, but the most "general" one got released. With the consequences I have described from the view of my almost-blind collegue. Things got rotten since then, a fact if you believe the regarded users. A fact for me.

And he attempts to use openSUSE when he can, but does run into some difficulties compared to other distros out there. This is regrettable. Neither of the two that were let go were directly involved in openSUSE, nor is the one currently employed.

Aren't you stating here my much more rugger words above?

The problem, for me personally, is I don't want to completely rely on him, nor any other Novell employee to be the authoritative answer on solving accessibility issues. Reasons are:

1. Not all accessibility issues are the fault of Novell/SUSE. There are some real changes going on in GNOME, especially in preparing for the upcoming GNOME 3.0, affecting accessibility (or a11y). And that's an impact for *all* distros, not just openSUSE. The GNOME-A11y team, of which I am a part of, is trying very hard to meet these issues but without good funding, we are unable to ensure complete perfection by 3.0 release.

Formerly we had splendid "overall" support - guided by personal experience of the handicapped themselves. This is gone, "The SUSE Experts" have fallen down with this. You can't (and I guess you won't) argue against this statement.

2. I would never want to completely rely on any one person for their expertise of accessibility because it is truly a lot of work to put on a single person

Not "one person" is the aspect, but "at least one expert". The best expert got "set free", no doubt. A very bad decision long ago.

3. It is a misnomer of accessibility to say that to have a "truly blind" person would cover the issues of accessibility. Accessibility is a very BROAD area that covers MANY MANY types of impairments. What we want and need is a body of people that can participate in testing and providing guidance in effective openSUSE accessibility. For me, as a Deaf-Blind user, I pose unique challenges as my vision continues to deteriorate and my ability to read my screen gets harder each month. I can't use some of the traditional tools that other blind users use, like screenreaders that speak out the text on screen.

OK, but any "broadness" aspects of the current accessibility problems with Novell/SUSE can't lead to the aspect that the originally SUSE "sharpness" was no good. It was proven good (my collegue was all the old time able to fulfill his tasks under SUSE Linux or SLES or SLED, and it is worse since Novell did let that aspect fall. My almost-blind lost his autonomy with using SLED or OpenSUSE - which he has had with SUSE before. Guess which operating system is his first choice today - no SUSE in name.

It is education, not just actual existing impairments, that will help openSUSE move forward as an accessible distro.

It _WAS_ it most of the former time! The move you have in mind was gained formerly already and lost again and is still lost.

As an example, at the recent GNOME A11y Hackfest in California, out of the 15 people present, only two were visually impaired, and of that, only one is a developer. :-) But the rest of the team... WOW... sharp guys who really understood the needs and developed accordingly. Because they were educated as such.

Maybe a new beginning, at a lower starting point we already were. Re-contracting the "old" expert would be best, I guess, if Novell/SUSE still can win him after the pain he has received.

As we move forward into a stronger and self-sustaining openSUSE community, we must do away with the thinking that "Oh, Novell needs to hire more a11y users." Actually, yes, I'd love to see more a11y users be employed. :-) But the point I'm making here is, if we want to be a successfully accessible distro, we need not only skilled developers, but also community members and users to come forth and discuss their issues in a more prominent way.

Come on. "SUSE - The Linux Experts" has to overvive, regardless how big the role of the community ever will get. To see this importance, you can try to search the bugzillas of all Linux distributions with special keywords (any, but should be somehow special). You will see questions at all bugzillas, but solutions very, very mostly only at bugzilla.novell.com.

This is actually difficult at this time because we haven't really seen that many speak up or make themselves known as accessibility users in whatever form.

Yes, Novell's decision to fire "the handicapped" was initially false and at least now falls back, with a huge quality-downing to see even for the deciders who did.

This is actually a very timely topic as those of us with openSUSE who were involved with the recent Hackfest had our own meeting to try to address how to move forward on this issue. And last night I spent a couple of hours just mulling on this topic and what to do to choose our next step.

I hope this starts a long and invigorating discussion that instates openSUSE as an accessible distro (which sadly at the Hackfest/A11y Conference, it was deemed to be an inaccessible distro compared to others.)

My hope is with you, but I guess it is not enough. Best would be to grab the "original" deciders for this current lack of potential and work which were formerly present and show them how much down they had decided - but I guess fluctuation at the management plane has left nothing/noone to grab, and the current management plane has no clue. Best wishes if you still "think positive" with the acessability aspect for handicapped - I can't currently, but would love my wishes to you could fulfill.

...

SUSE - The Linux Experts - has "set free" their only "blinux expert" who was expert by own patience - the best expert one can think of, sorry, but true and proven.

I hope there is a chance to regain expert status at this field back, and my almost-blind collegue even more than me, I guess.

...

Suggestions can be posted to https://features.opensuse.org/ with a novell account, I don't know how accessible the opensuse pages are, if you need help just write to the list or me and I'll forward your suggestions.

I remember SuSE beeing very proud about a11y for visually impaired users, but I can't judge about the current state =(

"Was". "Is" would be a self-illusioning statement by non-blind deciders which would vote it blindly. But expert status for the biological, not the real blindness would be a better gain.

...

You asked if brttly includes USB support in the current release, sadly it's not even included in 11.2 but only in vuntz (Vincent Untz) personal home project, so if you add his repository you can download and install it.

Also I suggest mailing to opensuse-gnome as well, maybe some of them are not subscribed to this list.

Community is not the solution against melting down "own" experts. See the bugzillas. Viele Gruesse Eberhard Moenkeberg (emoenke@gwdg.de, em@kki.org) -- Eberhard Moenkeberg Arbeitsgruppe IT-Infrastruktur E-Mail: emoenke@gwdg.de Tel.: +49 (0)551 201-1551 ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Gesellschaft fuer wissenschaftliche Datenverarbeitung mbH Goettingen (GWDG) Am Fassberg 11, 37077 Goettingen URL: http://www.gwdg.de E-Mail: gwdg@gwdg.de Tel.: +49 (0)551 201-1510 Fax: +49 (0)551 201-2150 Geschaeftsfuehrer: Prof. Dr. Bernhard Neumair Aufsichtsratsvorsitzender: Dipl.-Kfm. Markus Hoppe Sitz der Gesellschaft: Goettingen Registergericht: Goettingen Handelsregister-Nr. B 598 -------------------------------------------------------------------------

Hi Bryen and all, OK, this doesn't work. After the accessibility support is enabled I press ente rto log out and when I am logged out I press enter twice but it doesn't work. There is no password on the live CD? I suppose it's not. Many thanks, Christian On 2010-04-14 at 16:59 Bryen M. Yunashko wrote:

On Wed, 2010-04-14 at 23:13 +0200, Christian wrote:

...

Hi, OK, this is my last message to this list and noone seems to be willing to help. This is so simple for you opensuse user's. If logged out from Gnome, how many times should one press the tab key in order to get to the login button or is there some keyboard command for enabling this button? And finally, where can I post suggestions so that they will be implemented in some future release of the OS? This is important, at least to me when it comes to accessibility. Many thanks, Christian

On 11.2 (don't have Factory set up yet), I have the following steps: - Hit Enter (assuming your user is the first on the list) If not, then arrow key down to the user you wish to log in as. - Type password (hit enter) - You're logged in.

Assuming there's nothing drastically different with the GDM login in Factory vs. 11.2, this should work the same.

Now, about accessibility,

There are many challenges that openSUSE (as well as other distros) face when it comes to ensuring accessibility. Most, if not all, of our developers don't actually use accessibility tools and try their best from an unknown perspective to meet the needs of accessibility. The problem has been further compounded by the fact that we do not have many accessibility users come forward to specifically test accessibility on openSUSE as well as make recommendations for improvements.

I'm glad you've come forward and made yourself known as an accessibility user and we need more like you to speak up and give constructive feedback on what needs to be improved. I am also an accessibility user and have low-vision. I've worked along with Stephen Shaw to raise awareness and I'm very proud of our openSUSE-GNOME team for trying their best to make it more effective despite the odds against them.

There has been some recent discussion by those of us (very few of us exist!) about how we can make openSUSE even better as an accessible distribution. I'd love for you to come forth and join us on this discussion as we look into better ways to grow our accessibility community within openSUSE.

It can be frustrating for you, as well as for me at times. But please do know, that I vouch for the openSUSE developers in that they genuinely DO care about accessibility but have limited resources to make it perfect. Education and awareness will go a long way and we need more people like you to speak up and make yourselves known. For example, I didn't know about you until very recently. :-)

What will really help also is if we can learn about how you use computing in an accessible way. Accessibility varies by user. For me, I am a low vision user, and my method of usage is quite different than that of a completely blind user, for example.

You are welcome to email me privately or to discuss your concerns about approaches to accessibility or if you wish to start a thread on accessibility, the better place to do that is probably on our Project mailing list as that will get even more people aware of the issues, not just the developers and testers in factory.

Looking forward to hearing from you soon!

Bryen M Yunashko openSUSE Board Member (and accessibility user!) openSUSE Marketing Team Lead GNOME Accessibility Team Outreach

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Hi Karsten, First, many many thanks for doing this. Then it's not so strange that nothing seems to happen when I do this myself. I really hope that this can be resolved for Milestone6 of Opensuse. When you run the setup, did you chooce to have Orca starting automatically when you login? I suppose you did. Try answering no to that question and see what happens. If you are able to login without any problems, try running orca again with alt-f2. If this crashes the session, try running orca form a gnome-terminal when the accessibility support has been enabled. Many thanks, Christian On 2010-04-15 at 12:35 Karsten König wrote:

Heya,

ok I tried it now, when logged out the first selection possibility is to choose user, this will be livecd-user, hitting enter here will log you in without password question.

But I also tried following your routine.

On m5 pressing f9 on the boot selection screen freezes my virtualbox vm, might be due to the vm. First entry is openSUSE - Live, so will boot into the GNOME session.

After the gnome session started using alt+f2 to call orca, it will open a terminal and start setup with the language, reading out the text right away.

I awnsered all questions with yes, except language (54- de) and system (desktop)

When the last question appears (want to relogin) a new window pops open taking the focus :-( alt+tab once gets you back to the terminal with the setup question, pressing y now to logout gets you to the gnome login screen, hitting enter once will log you back in. Problem is now orca doesn't start, the application gnome-settings-daemon crashed and wants you to send a bugreport, no orca though =( alt+f2 doesn't work anymore and starting orca through the menu makes the gnome-session crash.

Sorry I this doesn't help you for now, we can try again with milestone 6.

Regards, Karsten

Am Donnerstag, 15. April 2010 01:02:35 schrieb Christian:

...

Hi Bryen and all, OK, this doesn't work. After the accessibility support is enabled I press ente rto log out and when I am logged out I press enter twice but it doesn't work. There is no password on the live CD? I suppose it's not. Many thanks, Christian

On 2010-04-14 at 16:59 Bryen M. Yunashko wrote:

...

On Wed, 2010-04-14 at 23:13 +0200, Christian wrote:

...

Hi, OK, this is my last message to this list and noone seems to be willing

to help.

...

This is so simple for you opensuse user's. If logged out from Gnome, how

many times should one press the tab key in order to get to the login button or is there some keyboard command for enabling this button?

...

And finally, where can I post suggestions so that they will be

implemented in some future release of the OS?

...

This is important, at least to me when it comes to accessibility. Many thanks, Christian

On 11.2 (don't have Factory set up yet), I have the following steps: - Hit Enter (assuming your user is the first on the list) If not, then arrow key down to the user you wish to log in as. - Type password (hit enter) - You're logged in.

Assuming there's nothing drastically different with the GDM login in Factory vs. 11.2, this should work the same.

Now, about accessibility,

There are many challenges that openSUSE (as well as other distros) face when it comes to ensuring accessibility. Most, if not all, of our developers don't actually use accessibility tools and try their best from an unknown perspective to meet the needs of accessibility. The problem has been further compounded by the fact that we do not have many accessibility users come forward to specifically test accessibility on openSUSE as well as make recommendations for improvements.

I'm glad you've come forward and made yourself known as an accessibility user and we need more like you to speak up and give constructive feedback on what needs to be improved. I am also an accessibility user and have low-vision. I've worked along with Stephen Shaw to raise awareness and I'm very proud of our openSUSE-GNOME team for trying their best to make it more effective despite the odds against them.

There has been some recent discussion by those of us (very few of us exist!) about how we can make openSUSE even better as an accessible distribution. I'd love for you to come forth and join us on this discussion as we look into better ways to grow our accessibility community within openSUSE.

It can be frustrating for you, as well as for me at times. But please do know, that I vouch for the openSUSE developers in that they genuinely DO care about accessibility but have limited resources to make it perfect. Education and awareness will go a long way and we need more people like you to speak up and make yourselves known. For example, I didn't know about you until very recently. :-)

What will really help also is if we can learn about how you use computing in an accessible way. Accessibility varies by user. For me, I am a low vision user, and my method of usage is quite different than that of a completely blind user, for example.

You are welcome to email me privately or to discuss your concerns about approaches to accessibility or if you wish to start a thread on accessibility, the better place to do that is probably on our Project mailing list as that will get even more people aware of the issues, not just the developers and testers in factory.

Looking forward to hearing from you soon!

Bryen M Yunashko openSUSE Board Member (and accessibility user!) openSUSE Marketing Team Lead GNOME Accessibility Team Outreach

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