Blind vs. mainstream distros

[Linux for blind general discussion]

Tony Baechler here.

On 5/1/2017 10:58 AM, Linux for blind general discussion wrote:
> I'm not arguing that specialized distros are necessarily better or even
> needed.  What I am saying is that if a distro is going to make releases
> with builtin accessibility, they better have someone on their release
> team who knows how it works and tests it on each release to make sure
> that it doesn't bitrot.

Yes, absolutely! This is the problem I had with Gentoo. It worked great in 
2007, but I couldn't tell if it even had any way to start speech when I 
checked a year or two ago. I didn't see anything to indicate that software 
speech is on the CD. That further illustrates my point that the nonprofit 
organization which needs to be formed, in addition to filing bugs against 
inaccessible packages and working with upstream developers, needs to get 
representatives on as many distros' accessibility and development teams as 
possible. Debian is in good shape, but Ubuntu could certainly use help. 
Don't get me started on Fedora again. There are, as others have said, lots 
of niche distros which have no accessibility. Kyle mentioned Mint for 
example, although Mint runs the Cinnamon desktop, so it's unsurprising that 
it wouldn't ship Orca. I read that they said they would ship Orca in the 
future, but again, who knows if they will, if anyone actually tests it and 
if it gets updated as new releases come out.