The State of Linux Accessibility 138
Dog's_Breakfast writes "This week's edition of DistroWatch Weekly News features a unique story entitled 'Linux Accessibility — What is it and Why Does It Matter?' The article was written by Robert Cole, a blind person with a computer science degree. Mr Cole points out that Linux offers an excellent set of free tools for seeing-impaired users. Putting together a similar set of tools on Windows would cost at least US$600, about double what a retail copy of Windows itself costs."
Re:Does it matter? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Orca good? (Score:5, Insightful)
I hate to say it, but that's the general consensus. And is it surprising that an expensive product put out by a software company is favored over an open-source alternative? The biggest problem with JAWS, from my perspective, is the whopping $1,000 price of admission for a target user group that has high unemployment problems already.
I have to give a shoutout to the NVDA project (http://www.nvda-project.org/), and would encourage your friend to give them a shot if he would like an open-source alternative to JAWS on Windows.
Re:Which side is up? (Score:5, Insightful)
Inserting the USB boot stick is quite easy for a Visually impaired person
Or rather, it's no more difficult for a visually impaired person. Even with two functioning eyeballs, it often takes three tries to fit the USB connector.
Re:It's super accessible (Score:5, Insightful)
Cobol is one of the most audibly readable languages there is.
"multiply a by b giving c" sounds a lot better than "c equalsign a asterisk b semicolon".
If I were to vote for the language that is the hardest to understand when read out loud (whether by machine or human), my vote would not go to perl, but lisp. With perl, at least you have the option to make it somewhat readable. Good luck balancing lisp parentheses correctly.
Not to mention typical block comments (in most any language), where you risk hearing five minutes of "asterisk asterisk asterisk asterisk..."