[Kde-accessibility] Re: [kde-promo] Fwd: Free Standards GroupAccessibility Workgroup

[Gunnar Schmi Dt]

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Hello,

On Thursday 09 October 2003 12:36, Bill Haneman wrote:
> If we become too obscure or too specific we fail to communicate what
> we're doing.  Listing only blind users or those who can't use a keyboard
> fails to include a wide range of abilities and disabilities (and yes,
> that word is still valid in English ;-).
>
> I think it is reasonable to retain the phrase "users with disabilities"
> in our announcement since that term is still in common and accepted
> usage within the accessibility community.  It is not the preferred
> phrase in all situations, and the critiques are valid, but it is more
> encompassing than the more specific wording.
>
> Therefore I think the above phrase should be retained _along with_
> specific mention of "blind users and users who cannot readily use a
> keyboard or mouse".
>
As there were no more mails about our statement I would like to finish the 
discussion. I will use the following statement:

<statement>
Although there are many ongoing efforts to help persons with disabilities use 
Linux systems, most Linux GUIs are still inaccessible to blind persons and 
present many obstacles to people who cannot operate a standard keyboard or 
mouse.

We, do not want to support this social exclusion but rather see the support 
for handicapped persons as an important feature for every software. The KDE 
accessibility team knows about the problem and they are working on improving 
the accessibility of KDE.

In order to get a completely accessible system, applications that use other 
toolkits need to be accessible as well. In this sense KDE based assistive 
technologies need to interoperate well with applications using other toolkits 
and vice versa. We appreciate the foundation of the Free Standards Group as a 
forum to discuss possible standards for this with other projects involved in 
accessibility.
</statement>

I will send it tomorrow evening to the accessibility workgroup, so that it can 
be included in their press announce. Additionally Olaf Schmidt (my brother) 
wants to put it onto the accessibility.kde.org web site together with some 
additional information about both the LSB workgroup and the current state of 
KDE in respect to accessibility.

Gunnar Schmi Dt
- -- 
Co-maintainer of the KDE Accessibility Project
Maintainer of the kdeaccessibility package
http://accessibility.kde.org/
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