Re: Privileges and practicalities [was: Re: [ELPA] New package: repology.el]

[Devin Prater <r.d.t.prater@gmail.com>]

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As a blind person, I feel that my ideas could help diversify things a
bit. Replies inline:

On 1/8/21 1:17 PM, Göktuğ Kayaalp wrote:
> On 2021-01-08 11:46 GMT, Jean Louis <bugs@gnu.support> wrote:
>>> Free software is a privilege, as it is.  It requires a lot of
>>> knowledge about computing praxis and culture, internet culture, legal
>>> stuff, and politics.
>> How privilege? I don't see how is free software privilege. Not for
>> me. It should be basic human right for users to have control of their
>> data, and not to let other companies or individuals control my data.

I am a completely blind person, with 0.2% of Python programming
knowledge. I switched to Linux (again) to see how accessibility has
progressed in the two years since I'd tried it last. I can tell you that
while privileged sighted people go on and on about KDE and how awesome
it is, and Gnome, I can barely use either distribution. KDE is making
progress, but for now only the default launcher will be usable... in the
next version to be released. Gnome used to be great, but now even its
Control Center is just awful to use with Orca,
<https://help.gnome.org/users/orca/stable/introduction.html.en> the
screen reader for graphical desktops.


Now, GTK4 *says* it has accessibility fixes
<https://blog.gtk.org/2020/10/21/accessibility-in-gtk-4/>. And I hope
so; it's not in stable Arch repos yet so I've not tried it. However,
even the latest release of Gnome's Control Center is slightly more
accessible, yes, but it appears to me as if everything is in one *long*
list; every single item is in tab order, and that's just a mess. QT has
gotten better; indeed, Mumble is one of the most usable QT programs I've
come across.


You may then say, well what about the CLI? Sure, it's okay, until you
get into TUI programs that use ascii graphics, or programs that redraw
the whole screen for just a simple update. The non-uniformity of TUI
programs makes them quite hard to use in many cases. There are some
programs that are pretty good, like Emacs (with Emacspeak) and Mutt, so
not all is bad there.


It just feels so frustrating when FOSS folks talk about how inclusive
FOSS is, how open and inviting it is, and then I try a Discord GTK
client and find that it's nearly useless because of no list items being
labeled correctly. And yes, I do intend to report the bugs and problems
I find, but I may be ignored, or given the "oh it's someone else's
fault" like with the Manjaro installer. And then there's Gnu's own
Accessibility Statement
<https://www.gnu.org/accessibility/accessibility.en.html>, which has a
statistic from 2005, and reads as if it were updated ten or more years
ago, as Silverlight and Adobe Flash haven't been a big issue in many
years now, as HTML5 has superseded flash at least. I know that Gnu may
have a shortage of documentation writers, and I could at least help with
editing, but the lack of up-to-date information, and the favoring of
Gnome as a good accessibility standard, is just another slap in the face
for blind people who run across this and see how out-of-date the
information is.


> {snip}
> Free software is a privilege if you don’t have the time to learn a whole
> new culture.  Free software is a privilege if your hardware can’t run
> it and you don’t have the money to buy stuff that does (for most people
> even a dongle is a serious investment).  Free software is a privilege if
> you don’t get to make decisions about what software to use.  Free
> software is a privilege if a clan of so-called software freedom
> advocates are censoring vital information because they happened to like
> so, saying nonsense like:
>
>> We have fully free software that need not ever interact or cooperate
>> with non free.
> This might be partially true for a software developer working only on
> free software, but it’s a privileged position because very little people
> have the chance to learn enough to do that and an even little
> opportunities exist for those who do put in the time.
>
> Meanwhile the rest of us plebeians have to make Zoom work on our
> computers, use sub-optimal hardware, and figure things on our own.
> All the while the likes of you see themselves entitled to judge the
> morality of our choices and obligations.

This is even more true for people with disabilities. Do you know what
most blind people use? Windows (7-10), because there is JAWS, a $1099
screen reader that is basically a bunch of scripts to work with Windows'
accessibility API and massage the data, all taped together and packaged
with high quality voices. Now you may say: "Well just install Linux."
Sure, but the bios are completely visual, and so is the boot manager. We
can get around this by using sighted family members, if we have them, or
proprietary "sighted help" services like AIRA <https://aira.io/>

  or Be My Eyes <https://www.bemyeyes.com/>. But we want to do this with
open source tools right? ... There's no other choice that I can think
of, and this is simply booting the Linux disk. This is worked around
with single-board computers, where the SD Card is the OS disk, and only
requires flashing the OS which can be done by... well... a non-free OS
like Windows. This can also be worked around by buying a computer with
Linux already installed, but that will likely come with Ubuntu, which
uses Gnome, which as stated earlier, isn't the most accessible option.


Windows  also has NVDA (nonvisual Desktop Access), which is open source.
It is a very well complete screen reader, with community-maintained
plugins (addons) for it that extend it immensely, with more voice
options and application support.


I say all this to setup what blind people, in the "blind community", are
expected to work with. All of our specialty software, from braille
translation to audio games, are on Windows. This has been worked around
a bit, with cups-filters having a braille translation system using
Liblouis and using Wine for audio games, but we still must use Zoom,
TeamTalk (like Mumble (Mumble isn't usable with Windows screen
readers)), Microsoft Office files, PDF's, and in the case of people who
like to read, EPUB files. This may sound like general computer use, but
the hardship is compounded by the inaccessibility of some programs, like
the Gnome and Mate document viewers. Sure I can load a file, but I can't
actually read the file.


All this isn't to say that Linux isn't usable. I've used it for almost a
month now without too many major problems. Google Docs and other messy
web apps have problems with Orca, but I can read books using Nov.el
(Nov-mode) in Emacs, write in Org-mode or Libre-Office, that kind of
thing. But for how much longer? GTK4 worries me because Gnome3 isn't
very usable. I mean, when you press the Hyper key, all you hear is
"window." That's like if you pressed Hyper and a blank screen popped up,
and you had to move your mouse to even get to the content, indeed, even
the purpose of the window. Many programs, like Gedit and Gnome-Terminal,
work well enough, but even Evolution has accessibility issues with even
*reading* and *writing* email. Thunderbird is our *only* accessible GUI
email program. But I use Linux because of the workarounds I can find,
not because it's a great, accessibility-wise, operating system to use. I
love being able to get podcasts, and even Youtube channel feeds, using
GPodder, writing and reading and exploring with Emacs, listening to
audio with filters and enhancement plugins with Audacious, that kind of
thing. But there will probably always be the threat of inaccessibility
looming over my head in Linux, because volunteers don't have to adhere
to a standard; they can just make their own without accessibility
considerations. And there are enough other marginalized groups, even
though the disabled are the most marginalized, that the disabled can
easily be forgotten, especially the blind.


>>> Most software, and most of popular software is closed source.
>> I did not count to say so. But what is popular it does not matter in
>> GNU project, what matters is that we do have fully free software and
>> operating systems.
> We don’t.  Nobody has.  Maybe, as the one who attempts to deny the
> experience of billions of people, it’s kinda on you to do the counting
> there.
>
>>> Most users of software _cannot_ avoid non-free software.
>> Whoever is informed well and decides so themselves can switch to fully
>> free software. People make decisions on their own.
> No.  If you have to use Zoom for your classes or meetings, you have to.
> If you need to use WhatsApp, you have to.  Nobody but a very small
> amount of people are free in making these decisions.
>
>> GNU project is everything else but not ivory tower. Otherwise you
>> would not be able to discuss here.
> Neat little non sequitur there.  GNU opens itself to the world and asks
> everyone to back its cause so you don’t get to pick who says what
> anyways.
>
>> What GNU project promotes is free software. GNU never says to its
>> users to use exclusively free software [...]
> If you make it hard to use non-free software one _has_ to use with free
> software they _want_ to use, this is effectively a discriminatory,
> exclusionary, and unegalitarian practice.  And it’s also anti-GNU
> because this makes it _really_ hard to suggest people that they give
> free software a try.
>
>> [...] and never condemns people for using proprietary software.
> Yeah, no.
>
>
> All in all, if GNU wants to be a fun little software guys group like
> 9front or OpenBSD, fine, but be honest about it.  If GNU and FSF wants
> to fight for everyone’s software freedom and will continue to ask
> donations for this cause, then this is not the way to do it.  It comes
> off as entitled and disconnected.

They should also fight for everyone's access to their software as well,
and denounce anyone that makes software which is unable to be easily
used by the blind and other disabled groups, even if it means denouncing
Gnome, KDE, LXQT, XFCE, and other large desktop environment creators
until they understand that accessibility *is* a human rights issue, not
something that they can just sweep under the rug until some time when
there's nothing much else to do, because there will always be something
else to do. GNU and FOSS doesn't work for everyone until it works for
the least of us. I'm very glad that FOSS is coming to understand
privilege, but then there is shown arrogance about the topic, that
because Linux is open that anyone can use it well, that open source
means greatness, always, no questions asked. I tell you, that open
source does not mean accessible for those with disabilities. In many
cases, it means nonstandard-compliance, leading to inaccessibility.
Because the program has to stand out somehow, right?


I'd love to get more people into Linux. I'd love to train my students on
using Linux. I'd love for distributions and desktop environments to be a
choice of what a user finds the most useful for them and what brings
them the most productivity, instead of "you have to go with Mate because
that's the only one that's usable." I'd love to bring Linux into my
workplace and give concrete, real-world examples of how Linux helps me
get my job done quickly and productively. I'd love to bring up Linux to
even a few of the 70% of blind people who are unemployed, giving them
great resources for learning how to code and groups that would welcome
them and bring them into a team that can help them code and get into a
well-paying organization, or even code programs for themselves and
others, or even just understand how their computer works enough to
provide tech support. Right now, though, I can't. And until this
attitude of FOSS being mightily open and welcoming, and that the right
way of doing things is known, and no opposition is taken seriously, and
open to all, changes to a more humble and dedicated attitude of
listening to actual people with disabilities, we won't get there.


> Today, there’s nothing that’s uniquely copyleft software, maybe except
> Emacs.  LLVM and clang is as good as GCC, coreutils is better than BSD
> userland or busybox but not by a huge margin, Zsh is by no means
> inferior to Bash, etc.  OSes like FreeBSD are almost fully viable on
> desktop, and most of what works on GNU/Linux works there.  If copyleft
> and free-as-in-speech-not-beer is to remain relevant in the future, this
> whole attitude needs to change.
>
>> Your statements are too general and I do not see how they relate.
> You do not _want_ to see, FTFY.  There’s a reason I changed the subject
> line.  But all in all, to satisfy your unprecedented love for specific
> things and your dislike of attempting to make that last little
> connection: your attack on repology.el comes from a privileged position
> and the condemnation of even linking to information regarding non-free
> software in the form of repology.org, going so far as to suggesting
> stealing these people’s work and creating a knock-off ‘frepology.org’
> comes from a privileged, exclusionary, and backwards position.  This
> whole thing represents a self-destructive anti-free-software stance that
> is detrimental to the quest for software freedom as a right for all
> humans, and only caters to the handful FOSS zealots (one of which is I)
> who have put years into learning this whole travesty of an online
> culture and surrounding issues.
>
> As someone who believes in software freedom as a general good for human
> society I think you and the likes of you are hurting this endeavour.
>
>

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