Installing accessibility packages by default?
Hello,
It has been suggested a few times (471410, 511329, 516723) to
add an "accessibility" item to tasksel, which would e.g. install
gnome-accessibility. The task would be automatically selected when
accessibility features was used during d-i itself.
However, Mario Lang raised:
`While it is a possible approach to have the installer explicitly
select packages for the users who are going to use the machine,
it is also obvious that an administrator might not know in advance
that a person with special needs is going to use this machine.
If we think this through, we realize that what would be most desireable
is to have accessibility infrastructure installed by default on a
default desktop, so that a person with special needs can just activate
it at login time if they need to.'
`What if, for example, you walk up to a friend/coworker and talk about
some issue. You end up wanting to show them something, so you'd
actually like to login on tehir Linux machine with accessibility enabled
so that you can work together on the project. However, since nobody
thought their machine would ever be used by a disabled person, the
necessary software would not be installed.'
`That is why I think ultimately, accessibility infrastructure needs to be part
of the default desktop installation. There are a few other scenarios as well,
like public workstations (for instance in universities) running Linux.
Currently, for them to be accessible, the admin staff needs to know all the ins
and outs of accessibility, or they at least have to make a conscious decission
about providing it to users. If accessibility would work by default,
the chance of success for disabled people trying to find an accessible
computer would be much higher.'
So, I'm asking: would it seem reasonable to ask tasksel to install
accessibility packages along desktop packages?
I have tried to install Lenny with a gnome desktop, I ended up with
2.3GB disk usage. Adding gnome-accessibility and brltty used only 83MB
more disk. The figures are probably quite similar in the case of a KDE
desktop and kde-accessibility+brltty. Considering the great help it can
be to a not-so-small part of our users, is it too big?
I have also tried with a base system: 560MB disk usage. Adding brltty
and speakup brought 21MB. Maybe that more a concern. I'd tend to think
that people installing a base system usually already know what they will
want to install, and installing the gnome meta package would pull
gnome-accessibility as it's Recommended by gnome-desktop-environment.
Samuel
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