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Making open source software accessible to all
Why open source needs accessibility standards

As the user base of open source software continues to grow, developers have the responsibility of making their software accessible to all potential users, including people with disabilities. While programs designed specifically to provide accessibility exist in the development sphere of open source software, most applications have little to no native accessibility support.
A definitive step forward in improving the convenience of open source software is to consider a wider variety of input and output peripherals available to potential users. While developing a program for use with a mouse, keyboard, and computer monitor is an obvious standard, user experience designers need to look at less conventional methods of hardware interaction. Designing an application with the intent of the user employing a screen reader requires an entirely different development procedure and focus.
In Remote usability evaluations with disabled people, Helen Petrie reasons that many developers have little experience with peripherals employed by those who are disabled, and thus do not have a theoretical framework available to assist in developing for such technology. However, with exposure to assistive technologies, it is possible for designers to be more inclusive and aware of issues with the relative technology.
In Reframing accessibility for the web, Anne Gibson suggests software developers and quality assurance teams use a test matrix pertaining to numerous input and output peripherals to help regulate accessibility testing. There are numerous procedures that allow for this.
For example, the guidelines and standards for a quality assurance team's design review can be modified to more broadly encompass accessibility issues. In doing so, usability testing becomes an aspect of ordinary testing practices, which results in consistent scrutiny for accessibility issues (as well as normalizing concepts around computer and web accessibility) at the cost of potentially inhibiting the speed of the overall development.
Another prospective (and less time consuming) approach to testing assistive software is to utilize automated accessibility checking tools. While this reduces pressure on team members to spend excessive time in the testing phase, complications also affect this method of testing.
This approach marginalizes the importance of making familiar and understanding computer accessibility concerns, and also reduces effectiveness of the testing process considerably. In The evaluation of accessibility, usability and user experience, Nigel Bevan writes, "Although [automated accessibility checking tools] are useful for screening for basic problems, they only test a very limited scope of usability issues."
A core tenet of the free software movement is to enable every computer user to cooperate and contribute as equals. Improving the accessibility standards at which open source software is developed not only progresses the fundamental concepts behind this philosophy, it further legitimizes open source developers’ place in the software development community.
Providing users with accessibility options widens the potential audience of the software, and should exist as a common practice in all software design and production.
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Thank you for bringing this up. I have only limited use of one hand and struggled after Ubuntu moved away from the old Gnome - which had an easy to use sticky keys plugin that highlighted when it was in use. Thankfully MATE supports this fully but I worry that as the years pass as new desktop environments evolve I will be left behind again. It seems like a trivial thing to most people, but without it I cannot type very well.
Thanks for bringing up this issue. I was hoping the article was going to highilght some proposed standards and those working towards this, things like standardised text to speech engines like SpeechHub. There are some accessible computing projects like Sonar linux around - but there is much work to be done. There's a good podcast episode which introduces the topic of accessible computing using linux -- http://goinglinux.com/shownotes.html#glp256 also Episode 259.
Vic
Hi, Shaun.
An excellent brief article, highlighting the issues that need to be addressed. I know this needs a coordinated response to the problem, but I wonder whether it would be a good start, for people to raise a bug against the top distributions? A table of the top distributions can be found at the right of Distrowatch's home page (http://distrowatch.com/).
Perhaps the bug could be something along the lines of 'To be an inclusive distribution, <Insert distribution name> needs to assess whether it meets the needs of users with different abilities'. The detail could then follow, in the main body of the bug.
Cheers,
Chris.
My quote above got stripped of some words; it should have read:
"To be an inclusive distribution, _Insert distro name_ needs to assess whether it meets the needs of users with different abilities"
Fingers crossed, this time.
Chris.
The nice thing about free/open software is that you can add the missing features yourself including accessibility features. That is not possible with proprietary software!
I support adding accessibility features to my code, but I don't feel it is my responsibility to try to add all of those features myself or worse try to anticipate all accessibility issues.
I write free software and I am living with multiple sclerosis so I appreciate accessibility!
This is a great reminder Shaun. As a Drupal Core Accessibility Maintainer, I definitely agree that all software need to pay more attention to accessibility. One big difference with open source software is that people with disabilities can be involved in the community and can have an important role in improving the code base. This involvement with people with disabilities probably had the greatest role in changing the culture within the Drupal community to embrace accessibility.