Re: What does it mean to be inclusive
Hi Devin,
thank you very much for your response.
I guess we were restricting our focus to Debian contributors. You add
the point of view of users, which widens the perspective.
In that context the "increase the cross section" discourse indeed
makes sense, because we need not worry about people whose needs are
already being covered, they're already fine with us. Rather, we can
concentrate our efforts on those who actually need improvements.
And the insight of people with specific needs is important to help us
figure what those needs are and how they can be solved. In this sense,
a user who gives feedback is already a contributor.
You have my sympathy for your accessibility needs. Unfortunately, the
only package I'm currently maintaining is a Tetris-like game and I'm
afraid it can't be playable at all without sight, but if I'm mistaken
on that and there's anything I can do to make it more accessible, I
look forward to your suggestions (feel free to contact me off list).
Gerardo
Il giorno mar 22 feb 2022 alle ore 16:22 Devin Prater
<r.d.t.prater@gmail.com> ha scritto:
>
> For me, inclusion means working with everyone to make Debian as useful an operating system as possible for as many people as possible. I love that Debian is one of the *only* Linux distributions that has a good accessibility wiki, plays the beep to allow me, a blind person, to press s then enter to start the installer with speech. I also love that Mate, pretty much the only really accessible desktop environment out there, is selectable in the installer. I do wish accessibility was more of a priority for more package maintainers, like Thunderbird, which is really slow to use with Orca when there are lots of emails in a folder, or Steam, KDE, Gnome, stuff like that. But that's not really up to Debian.
> Devin Prater
> r.d.t.prater@gmail.com
>
>
>
>
> On Mon, Feb 21, 2022 at 3:12 PM Gerardo Ballabio <gerardo.ballabio@gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> Sam Hartman wrote:
>> > I agree that Debian has committed to being open and inclusive. However, for me that means something different than you say in your second sentence. To me that means we've committed to being open to as large a cross section of people--as diverse a cross section of people as possible.
>>
>> > The difference in how we interpret things is whether we're focused on
>> the individual or the aggregate affect.
>>
>> It seems indeed that we may have a different concept of inclusion. For
>> me, you aren't really being inclusive if you aren't welcoming all
>> people, not just those who increase a cross section. And you aren't
>> really welcoming a group if you aren't welcoming every individual
>> member of that group.
>>
>> That doesn't mean that Debian should be forced to keep people who
>> misbehave (don't respect the CoC) or don't align with its core mission
>> (don't respect the Social Contract). As I see it, that is a completely
>> different issue.
>>
>> But this is deviating from the point that I was trying to make, that
>> is, that Debian can't use the "we are a private group" argument as a
>> waiver from the (moral, if not legal) obligation to treat people
>> fairly (and I read your original message as acknowledging the need for
>> fair treatment, so I thought we were on the same side). So forgive me
>> if I don't want to go further on this subthread.
>>
>> Gerardo
>>
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