I would have to second that comment, making software that is both accessible and meets the needs of the user is not as common place as it should be. Props to you for highlighting this as it relates to Open Source, which will eventually raise awareness as a whole. The issue though isn't limited to application development of client / server or client side applications, it's a fundamental flaw in our thinking. We believe that everyone should do as we do and at deep brain level that can be seen extending to our abilities.

You mention in your article as an example, a Q/A team could increase its scope to test more advanced accessibility requirements, do you have any examples of some of those requirements?

I am aware that groups such as WAI (http://www.w3.org/WAI/) are working hard to create similar standards and objectives from an Internet purview; however I'd be interested in your thoughts from a more localized software perspective.

I'm glad I came across this article. I've been trying to raise awareness of the issues blind people in particular face when trying to use linux. I've been running into largely the same issues as in this article. Little documentation, developers assuming someone else will do it, or expecting money to fix what they should've done right in the first place. This last one is very much the minority, but it does happen sometimes. I'm a member of this website, so I'm trying to spread the word that accessibility isn't black magic. It's not hard to make something accessible. What we really need are more developers who know how the process works, less whining about how much trouble it is, and more coding. The accessibility community is severely understaffed. The people who keep linux usable are usually so overworked they don't have much time for much else. And I'll just put this out there. Myself, I'm not sure about other people, when I reach outside the linux community for help, I'm apauled at the response from other blind users. It generally boils down to "why do you want to improve that? It'll nver get anywhere, just use xyz" Which is usually one of windows or osx. That's not helping anything. Do others suffer from this indifference as well? A bigger problem is standards for "open access" are often predicated around antiquated technology. To de-geek that, the DAISy, digital accessible information system standard is the best we currently have in the way of accessible books, whether that be newspapers, magazines, etc. The standard is immensely complicated, long, dry, and explicitly specifies non open source friendly i.e patent encumbered audio formats for the only two formats the standard supports. Specifically, mp3 and wav. It also specifies an optional drm mechanism, which is part of the standard just enough so that daisy playback software can recognize a "protected" book, but cannot parse it without the "key" Every blindness company has their own implementation of this scheme, and each is incompatible with the other. It's a mess, and unlikely to get anywhere, so long as blind organizations and agencies assume everyone will just use windows. This is the issue. Any standard that's built around enabling disabled people to better access things almost always ends up including an "optional" drm mechanism. This is done, as far as I can tell, to appease the companies who treat all disabled people as potential criminals. Thing is, the drm mechanism usually ends up getting used, windows only software is written, and once again us linux users are left in the lurch because, why would anyone help support linux? Goes the usual argument Sorry for the rant, but it makes me angry when I try to solve these problems, only to run into the same wall of "there's not enough insentive" and "just use windows".