On Fri, 2006-04-28 at 17:29 +0200, M. Fioretti wrote: > Mine is a *proposal* to each LUG to evaluate the possibility to do > something (see below) in its own area to address this issue, _not_ a > critique or an attack to any LUG. I have never heard of a *LUG* > turning away disabled or any other users, and I didn't mean anything > of the sort. > > OK, but: > > * has your LUG ever spent a little part of a meeting discussing the > fact that, without onsite assistance, many disabled users may have > many more difficulties than others to .... Coming from a background of knowing, and working with, many people with various disabilities since I was about nine, I'm yet to find many people with a good grasp of the issues around disabilities, and my own are rather limited to my own experiences. Even in special schools, where they supposedly have experts on this, they tend to have a narrow focus, and are often completely ignorant about some of the people they work with, concentrating more on how they want them to cooperate, rather than being truly assistive. But go to an outside group with no experience, they're not really going to know where to even begin. They'll probably start with preconceived, and incorrect notions. If disabled people want some kind of help, it is better for them to seek it out, in the manner that they want to. Whether that be looking for help in using it, or them teaching people who think that they're not disabled about what things could be improved or what they need. Not everybody has the same wants, or needs. The article referred to, way back, spoke about wanting consistent hotkeys. That's an example of a need, not an imposed idea about what will help you. If achievable it would mean that users can use different systems without too much difficulties. Using sensible hotkeys would go a long way to helping, too; some are just incoherent. While running a BBS, and participating with others, I met some more blind people (than I already knew). So I got to hear about computing related things that they found a problem, different from non-computing things I'd already experienced (there's a point here, about what you knew, and what you hadn't found out yet). During one discussion we found about a really stupid annoyance with many programs that would be easily fixable: Use normal language, with proper punctuation in message dialogues. Speech synthesisers read them out more intelligibly that way. It was little tidbits, like that, that were most instructive, practical and from the point of view of the users. Now, on the other hand, if I'd decided to be proactive, and see what I could do, I can see running into two problems straight off: Your own ideas might be well off the mark, and you're volunteering yourself for what could be a mammoth task. -- (Currently running FC4, in case that's important to the thread) Don't send private replies to my address, the mailbox is ignored. I read messages from the public lists.
