What do concern trolls and privileged people without visible or invisible disabilities who share or make content about accessibility on Linux being trash without contributing anything to projects have in common? They don’t actually really care about the group they’re defending; they just exploit these victims’ unfortunate situation to fuel hate against groups and projects actually trying to make the world a better place. I never thought I’d be this upset to a point I’d be writing an article about something this sensitive with a clickbait-y title. It’s simultaneously demotivating, unproductive, and infuriating. I’m here writing this post fully knowing that I could have been working on accessibility in GNOME, but really, I’m so tired of having my mood ruined because of privileged people spending at most 5 minutes to write erroneous posts and then pretending to be oblivious when confronted while it takes us 5 months of unpaid work to get a quarter of recognition, let alone acknowledgment, without accounting for the time “wasted” addressing these accusations. This is far from the first time, and it will certainly not be the last.
  • gandalf_der_12te@discuss.tchncs.deEnglish
    31·
    6 days ago

    I fully agree. The amount of people talking trash about FOSS software because it’s not perfect (whatever that might be) in their eyes while not lifting a single finger to actually improve anything is too damn high.

    • haroldstork@lemm.eeEnglish
      13·
      5 days ago

      Totally agree. I’m getting really sick of the GNOME, Wayland, <insert thing that wasn’t the same 10 years ago> hate. Especially when the loudest people have contributed next to nothing to improving the Linux desktop.

  • Quik@infosec.pubEnglish
    23·
    6 days ago

    The GNOME Foundation has been investing a lot of money to improve accessibility on Linux, for example funding Newton, a Wayland accessibility project and AccessKit integration into GNOME technologies. Around 250,000€ (1/4) of the STF budget was spent solely on accessibility.

    I didn’t know that it was this much, that’s so great! I think people with disabilities deserve to be able to use free software just as much as people without disabilities do (maybe even more since I may be better able to handle all the BS e.g. Microsoft might throw at me than let’s say a blind person) and this is important work in ensuring that.

    Although the article talks mainly about all of the negative stuff people are saying, I’m still positively surprised by the amount of work the community is already putting in and I think that the free software vision is one that aligns very well with, well, accessible software.

  • Vincent@feddit.nlEnglish
    5·
    5 days ago

    I think (hope?) I’ve praised their work elsewhere on other accounts, but no harm in doing it some more: @TheEvilSkeleton@treehouse.systems has been doing heroic work on accessibility (and also a quick shoutout to @nekohayo@mastodon.social for highlighting such work, and for their own contributions).

    Unfortunately the accessibility situation can make it hard for people with disabilities to contribute, but I’ll also note that it’s very hard for people without disabilities to understand, let alone fix, issues with accessibility. So extra props for that.

    I’ll be sharing this article in the future when I see people trash talking. Hopefully it’ll make them reconsider.