I saw somewhere recently (don’t remember if it was on Lemmy, reddit, or elsewhere), where a couple of folks were getting into it because a FOSS contributor didn’t recognize the importance of accounting for accessibility in design. They thought that projects as whole did not have a responsibility to account for those design considerations, and that anyone who wants to see those implemented have to do it themselves. While technically the truth in that this is all effectively volunteer work and developers work on what they want to work on, it’s something that could be alleviated by making it a core value of FOSS development. Asking questions like:
This is a point-click-drag interaction, but how would a person do this with a keyboard only?
These two components are identified using color, but what if a user is colorblind?
There are buttons labeled with iconography only, but what if a user cannot see it and uses a screen reader to interact with everything?
It’s tough because the disability community in aggregate face steeper financial hurdles for a number of reasons, and could perhaps benefit the most from freely available, accessible tech.
@omarciddo It’s especially ironic because these very Disabled people would be the biggest champions of FOSS if FOSS software was designed to be accessible from the ground up, or at least more development tools made it easier to do these things but the very people that could benefit the most from FOSS are completely shunned/left to fend for themselves constantly, while still unable to use your FOSS software at all, and then people wonder why big tech continues to capture that market. @foss
I saw somewhere recently (don’t remember if it was on Lemmy, reddit, or elsewhere), where a couple of folks were getting into it because a FOSS contributor didn’t recognize the importance of accounting for accessibility in design. They thought that projects as whole did not have a responsibility to account for those design considerations, and that anyone who wants to see those implemented have to do it themselves. While technically the truth in that this is all effectively volunteer work and developers work on what they want to work on, it’s something that could be alleviated by making it a core value of FOSS development. Asking questions like:
It’s tough because the disability community in aggregate face steeper financial hurdles for a number of reasons, and could perhaps benefit the most from freely available, accessible tech.
@omarciddo It’s especially ironic because these very Disabled people would be the biggest champions of FOSS if FOSS software was designed to be accessible from the ground up, or at least more development tools made it easier to do these things but the very people that could benefit the most from FOSS are completely shunned/left to fend for themselves constantly, while still unable to use your FOSS software at all, and then people wonder why big tech continues to capture that market. @foss