Red Hat Enterprise 6.2

[Amanda Rush]

Hi all,

Red Hat will not allow you to compile Speakup into the RHEL kernel. Also,
if you're certifying for RHEL6.2 or any of the other RHEL versions, you're
expected to specifically use that distro. Also, they will not allow you to
bring in your own system and SSH into one of their boxes to do the
certification. As of this point, there is a VM you have to use that is
provided by Red Hat that you have to use to complete the cert, as well as
one for going through the curriculum, and speakup is definitely not part
of it. I tried getting speakup to compile on both of these, and was
unsuccessful. And in order to complete the curriculum for the cert, there
are scripts that have to run on your VM so that Red Hat's servers can
grade your labs. You could try accessing the grading pages via SSH, but
you're going to have to use Elinks to do it, and Elinks doesn't play well
with their grading page.

I'd like to say Red Hat is just apathetic to accessibility concerns, or
that they just don't know any better, but given that they pretty much are
actively discouraging anyone who needs to use adaptive technology by
taking all these steps, I'm not so sure. I think the quickest solution
will be to talk to your employer and see if you can maybe demonstrate that
you can complete the tasks on the certification, and see if that would
suffice for your not having the cert. I wish you the best of luck. And
yes, if we could get one of the advocacy orgs on board and sue Red Hat,
that would be great. But it would be nice if they didn't settle, because
if it doesn't go to court, there's no legal precedence when this comes up
with another organization, (<cough>Cisco</cough>) and then the wheel has
to be reinvented all over again.

Amanda



-----Original Message-----
From: Speakup [mailto:speakup-bounces at linux-speakup.org] On Behalf Of Tony
Baechler
Sent: Friday, March 29, 2013 5:36 AM
To: Speakup is a screen review system for Linux.
Subject: Re: Red Hat Enterprise 6.2

Jason, Red Hat has made it very clear that they have no interest in
accessibility, so I highly doubt that just contacting them would do any
good.  I say this from looking at their sites and finding nothing at all
about accessibility.  They don't even ship Speakup with RHEL as far as I'm
aware, but since it's in staging, maybe they do now.  As I recall, 6.2 is
rather old and uses a custom kernel with a large set of patches, so I
don't think you'll get Speakup to compile.  You could try compiling as
modules and see if it works, but I wouldn't hold my breath.  I think the
same applies to CentOS as well.  I'm not sure about Fedora.

I don't know if Australia has any kind of accessibility laws, but I know
the US and UK do.  Probably someone in the US would have to ask Red Hat to
make an accessible solution available which they would probably refuse to
do.  It would then have to go to lawyers to settle.  It might not end up
in a suit, but it very well might.  Most likely, an advocacy organization
like the ACB or NFB would have to push Red Hat and it could take years.
Obviously, that won't help with the immediate problem.  By law, they are
required to provide an accessibility solution for you.  Since you're in
Australia, I really don't know if any of this would apply to you or not.
I would suggest asking if you can do the certification with ssh to the
RHEL box.  There are ssh clients for Linux and Windows, so one way or the
other, you could have speech.  If they let you bring your own laptop, you
could install Debian, Arch or Ubuntu on it which would give you Speakup.
If not, you could see if they would let you ssh from Windows with NVDA or
a different Windows screen reader.  As I said, they're required to provide
an alternative solution in the US, so you might even be able to make them
let you borrow a machine.

I don't know anything about your work, but a better approach might be to
talk to your employer.  Yes, I realize that Red Hat gives the
certification, but your employer might be able to somehow work with Red
Hat and/or let you borrow a machine, especially since the point in getting
it is for work.  In the US, employers with more than I think 10 employees
are required to make accomodations as necessary for accessibility.  An
example would be buying someone a screen reader so they can do their job.

In conclusion, I would suggest studying the Americans with Disabilities
Act, or ADA.  I really don't know if it will help you, but at least you'll
know what's required by US companies.  The ACB has several ADA seminars
from the various conventions online.  I'm sure the NFB does as well.  I
would suggest the following two sites:

http://www.acb.org/
http://www.acbradio.org/

I know there is an organization in Australia as well which might be able
to help.  Please let us know what happens as I would be very interested to
see what Red Hat says.

On 3/28/2013 10:16 PM, Jason White wrote:
> Sean Murphy<speakup at linux-speakup.org>  wrote:
>>
>> I am going to prep for the Red Hat Admin certifications. I need to
>> know if what screen reader is available on the console? Speakup you
have to compile into the Kernel. So I am not sure if this can be done or
not. Any suggestions on how to get this console to work?
>
> I don't know, but have you contacted Red Hat about it? It's their
> certification, after all, hence in their business interests to ensure
> it's accessible to you. there might also be legal implications
> depending on the laws in force in your country.
>
> I am sure that others on this list will have advice to offer, but I
> think raising the issue with Red Hat would be a very good idea not
> only for you but for the benefit of others with access needs.
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