Re: Some thoughts regarding DW
Jutta Wrage wrote:
>
> Am 16.08.2005 um 06:06 schrieb Penny Leach:
>
>>> I don't understand why it 'might hurt people extremely' - it got fixed,
>>> people had a discussion about it. Why is that extremely hurtful?
>
>
> Runnng with open eyes around seeing how people always find thousands of
> reasons not to have accessibility and nothing have done wrong, might
> not influence you?
>
> A technical discussion about tthat might be interesting. But that kind
> of discussion, where you get thousand of arguments including don't use
> lynx, why things f´have not to be corrected, is not the right way.
>
> It is about the way how to handle such concerns. You might fix and
> discuss _afterwords_.
>
> I others feel fine with the situation that one feels as a beggar when
> pointing out accessibility issus, that is fine. I for me do not like that.
I need to comment on this because I am not happy with the way that Jutta is
taking a specific argument which she had with some people about problems with
lynx, which ended in her problems being solved, and using it to imply that
Debian Women does not care about people with disabilities. This is patently
untrue and I would hate for people in the future to read her archived posts and
believe them to actually represent the facts.
If I had to guess, I would guess that the Debian Women community would be more
than averagely concerned about accessibility of websites and software compared
with most FOSS communities. Certainly I know that enough of us have had
personal experience with disability, myself included, to consider such things as
being very important indeed.
As I understand the issue, nobody suggested that people should not use a text
browser. The only problem was, briefly, a problem with a particular browser
which was (and I assume still is) buggy. My clear understanding is that there
are browsers available which are suitable for people with different levels of
disability and which are also standards compliant. I don't think we should
assume that people with disabilities are unable to use the most appropriate
software for their needs, including upgrading to a better browser if necessary.
That is like suggesting that they are too stupid to do so, and I know that most
if not all of the Debian Women community would never suggest such a thing.
If anyone reading this, especially members of the Debian Women community, wants
help in working out which software they can best use to suit their individual
needs, please ask us about it. We will try to help, and if we don't know the
answer immediately we will try to point you in the right direction to find the
answer you need.
Additionally, if anyone has problems accessing our website, we certainly want to
know about it. If anyone would like to be more involved in the Debian Women
community or Debian in general but is prevented from doing so because of any
kind of accessibility problem that we have control over, we will do our best to
help you. Promoting people's constructive involvement in Debian is what we are
all about :)
Helen
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