Why we want gui [Was: speakup is nice]

[James Homuth]

If I'm sitting in front of a machine, I generally prefer a GUI. Not so much
because of any visual ability, per say. But rather, because doing certain
things via a GUI is often times faster. Plus, there's times when I just
plain don't feel like entering half a dozen different commands just to
accomplish changing a setting or two. I know it's not a real example, but
I'll use it anyway. If I want to increase the volume on a friend's computer
because I can barely hear it, I shouldn't have to remember that I can't just
do "echo 4 > /proc/volume" like I can on my system, for example.
-----Original Message-----
From: speakup-bounces at braille.uwo.ca [mailto:speakup-bounces at braille.uwo.ca]
On Behalf Of Janina Sajka
Sent: January 19, 2009 11:30 AM
To: Speakup is a screen review system for Linux.
Subject: Why we want gui [Was: speakup is nice]

Terry D. Cudney writes:
>    Why do we want access to the gui? Only because the majority of the
computer users in the world are sighted and they like to point-and-click. If
we had a java/javascript-enabled browser that worked in the cli with
speakup, I don't think we'd be looking at orca or other gui access schemes
at all. 
> 

Actually, what we want is object access. To the sighted this is delivered
graphically. To us it's delivered as textual data provided by those same
objects when applications are built with toolkits that support
accessibility.

It would be possible, theoretically speaking, to construct object oriented
applications whose controls were exclusively textual. But this is not going
to happen. Ncurses will never become gtk2.

As an example of what I'm talking about, I suspect you'll find the Gnome
Volume Manager more accessible with Orca than alsamixer with Speakup.
Please note I said alsamixer, and not amixer.

Of course, you're correct to say that sighted people prefer gui. And why
shouldn't they? Why should they be limited to 8 colors and mono-spaced
fonts, as in WordPerfect 5.1, when they (and we) can have all that plus
16 million colors for them, to say nothing of all kinds of embedded media
objects in Open Office? That would be as silly as expecting us, mostly with
great hearing, to agree to go on with dampened sonic input.

If you've got it, flaunt it, I say. Just remember to do unto others as you'd
have them do unto you. Accessibility isn't about asking others to do with
less, after all.

Janina
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