MATE chosen by default instead of gnome for blind people [Was: Debian Installer Stretch Alpha 6 release]

[Jude DaShiell]

On Mon, 23 May 2016, MENGUAL Jean-Philippe wrote:

> Date: Sun, 22 May 2016 18:00:59
> From: MENGUAL Jean-Philippe <mengualjeanphi at free.fr>
> To: Mario Lang <mlang at debian.org>, debian-accessibility at lists.debian.org,
>     pkg-gnome-maintainers at lists.alioth.debian.org
> Subject: Re: MATE chosen by default instead of gnome for blind people [Was:
>     Debian Installer Stretch Alpha 6 release]
> Resent-Date: Mon, 23 May 2016 03:57:54 +0000 (UTC)
> Resent-From: debian-accessibility at lists.debian.org
> 
> Hi,
>
> I precise I'm ready to think with GNOME of way to help for face-to-face
> tests, regression tests, writing docs. But it implies a willing, a true
> choice, and time. So ... to be discussed.
>
> Regards,
>
>
> Le 22/05/2016 22:33, Samuel Thibault a ?crit :
>> Mario Lang, on Sun 22 May 2016 21:56:00 +0200, wrote:
>>> What I am trying to say is, if a desktop wants to provide Accessibility
>>> that is actually useful to users, they will have to invest more time
>>> into it then they currently are willing to do.
>>
>> Well, perhaps it's not a question of time, but of methodology.
>>
>>>  * Do some real usability testing with blind users.
>>>    Unsupervised solo experiments do often lead to very vague and emotional results.
>>
>> Yes, I'd say that's why the lack of precise feedback for gnome: users
>> are simply lost in the new interface, and can't provide anything useful.
>>
>> I'm wondering: do gnome maintainers actually make real face-to-face
>> testing with blind users?  As Jean-Philippe Mengual said, there is a lot
>> of work done on the technical side, perhaps it's just lacking actual
>> testing with real users?  I'd say it's perhaps unfair to suggest that
>> gnome maintainers need to spend more time than they already do (I don't
>> know if we know how much they do), and that the issue is rather that
>> there is no face-to-face feedback?
>>
>> Also, is there a guide for blind people new to gnome3, teaching how the
>> interface is working?  If there is one, we need to point to it from
>> the debian accessibility wiki.  If there is none, then that's possibly
>> simply what Jean-Philippe and Mario are lacking?  One issue when
>> introducing a completely different way to interact with the desktop,
>> as gnome3 did, is that it introduces new concepts.  These concepts
>> are typically designed for sighted people first (I'm not saying that
>> gnome3 did it this way, I don't know, I only guess that's probably how
>> it happened), and are thus made to be intuitive for sighted people.
>> Maintainers then forget that they are probably not intuitive for
>> non-sighed people, and the new concepts thus *have* to be explained to
>> them.  And I'd say you can not write a guide explaining the new concepts
>> without actually discussing face-to-face with a really blind user who
>> never *saw* the new interface, so that he pinpoints the things which
>> need to be explicited because they are not obvious when you can't see
>> (and that you can not un-understand once you have understood them, and
>> thus would forget to mention them). That "freshman" step is required, I
>> believe.
>>
>> Samuel
>>
One possible venu for initial connections to be made might be what Linux 
User's Groups exist.  I have no idea how many of these have ever had a 
blind person attend meetings or how many have had or now have blind 
long-term members but it may be worth a little research.

>> > >

--