Re: [emacspeak The Complete Audio Desktop] Web Accessibility AndUsability: Comin...

["David Ring" <n1ea@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

I agree with you, David.  I speak English and although Emacspeak is
more powerful than I know how to use, I find it difficult to remember
the keys and it is a real pain to have to listen to the tutorial each
time I forget what key I need to use.

For many users, what is needed is a good system with command line.

The computer boots - makes a noise or says "hello" and asks "What do
you want to do?  Mail, Write, Play Music, Web, Advanced"

Some of us are trying to interest people to make a "Seeing Eye version
of Puppy Linux" because it is small, lightweight and an active distro.

The topic is here:
http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic.php?p=162282#162282

Anyone who wants to help would be welcome.

I have some good ideas - but we need people with different braillers
and synthesizers to help out.

If we could convince someone to release ViaVoice again free of charge
to Linux, it would be helpful.

Best

David Ring
Green Harbor, MA
=30=
On Dec 22, 2007 7:38 AM, David Picón Álvarez <david@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> > well, the biggest hole in this space is that the blind user
> > community has gotten so used to broken tools that they now swear
> > by them and define accessibility by whether or not things work
> > with those tools. This is a dead-end that  I predicted 10 years
> > ago, but I'm still sorry to see that my predictions have proven
> > correct. For what I mean, see some of the comments / responses
> > that were raised by a related article I wrote on one of my other
> > blogs and forwarded to the wai-ig list.
>
> The truth is that Emacspeak has some issues that are very hard for blind
> users to deal with. One important problem is internationalization. The whole
> world doesn't speak English. Emacs was written at a time when
> internationalization wasn't a consideration, and modifying it so that it
> affords it would be a herculean task, but one that is nonetheless necessary
> if it is to be hoped that it will be adopted by non-english-speaking users.
> This is not just speculation, btw, many Spanish-speaking potential users
> have told me that the language is an important barrier. Jaws, IE, Windows
> are internationalized. Orca is internationalized and people are starting to
> use it.
>
> In addition, I have tried, I really have, and I'm a fairly technically
> competent user. I can write code. Yet I find Emacs such a difficult
> environment to master. The emacs tutorial doesn't have enough information
> and the emacs manual has far too much. Learning to use emacs
> competently--and if one wants to use emacspeak efficiently one must be able
> to use emacs competently--takes a very long time. Issues with having to use
> (or being recommended to use) versions from repositories, that sometimes
> break, don't make the experience any better.
>
> At this stage, I humbly propose that blaming the user is not the right
> strategy, and that some thinking should take place on what is to be done, so
> that people can more easily jump onto the emacs toolset, and become
> productive users with it. I have a few ideas.
>
> --David.
>
>
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