Open Letter: How the FOSS Community May Help Disabled Users

[Kam Leo]

On 4/27/06, M. Fioretti <mfioretti at mclink.it> wrote:
> On Thu, Apr 27, 2006 21:28:30 PM -0800, Kam Leo (kam.leo at gmail.com) wrote:
>
> > Mr. Fioretti should take his advocacy to the Gnome, KDE, and UI developers.
> >
> > Red Hat and Novell already have to comply with the Americans with
> > Disabilities Act.
> >
> > Does anyone know if the EU has an equivalent law that applies to Mandriva?
>
> Thanks for your comments. However:
>
> 1) first of all, it doesn't matter where a company is based, only
>    where it wants to sell its products. If Mandriva wants to sell in
>    USA, or Red Hat in EU (to public administrations) they have to make
>    sure they comply with the local rules. On top of that, blind USA
>    users are just equal, in this context, to blind users from EU, Fiji
>    Islands or anywhere else, so the solution must be the same.So,
>    eventually it *is* a worldwide issue, it doesn't make much sense to
>    look at it on a country by country basis.
>
> 2) I agree that it is an UI (= KDE, Gnome...) and file formats
>    question, but:
>
>    a) corporations are already working at that level, see groklaw link
>    in my open letter.
>
>    b) my proposals are more addressed to single LUGS and/or individual
>    FOSS advocates.  FOSS can become as accessible as you want, but if
>    the first reaction a disabled user gets when he asks for support or
>    complains are like Mike's one, or the many similar others the
>    article has got... there's no amount of UI work that will make the
>    mass of disabled users switch to FOSS, or not oppose its adoption
>    in the public sector.
>
> Ciao,
>         Marco Fioretti
>
> --
> Marco Fioretti                    mfioretti, at the server mclink.it
> Fedora Core 3 for low memory      http://www.rule-project.org/
>
> Furious activity is no substitute for understanding. --  H.H. Williams
>

Where are you getting your poor opinion about LUGs? My LUG and its
sponsor has never turned away anyone.