Red Hat Enterprise 6.2

[Tony Baechler]

Ah well, that's about what I figured the situation was.  Thanks for 
clarifying.  I know I tried compiling Speakup into a RHEL kernel and gave 
up, but that was before it could be compiled as modules.  However, my 
comments still apply in that Red Hat is required by law to provide an 
alternative accomodation.  I'm not so sure that a suit is necessary, but 
maybe it is.  I am no longer up on current NFB happenings, but it seems that 
they aren't really serious about Linux accessibility anyway since their 
servers are running Windows.  The ACB has actively supported Linux since 
2000 and would probably be the best choice of an advocacy organization. 
Here are a few sites of possible interest:

http://lflegal.com/

The law firm above specializes in structured negotiations, meaning that they 
try very hard to work with companies before suing, but they will sue if 
necessary.

http://www.acb.org/

This should be obvious.  The American Council of the Blind specializes in 
advocacy and it's worth calling their offices.

http://www.bits-acb.org/

BITS is an affiliate of ACB and stands for Blind Information Technology 
Specialists.  They were mainly interested in Windows when I was a member, 
but it might be worth asking them to get involved.

As for myself, since Debian does take accessibility seriously and I don't 
need to use Red Hat, I stay away from it and don't plan to support it in the 
near future.  It would be nice if Red Hat would change their position, but I 
think there is more than apathy here.  I know of several people who've 
reached the same conclusion as I have, secifically that they've made it 
clear that they are not interested in accessibility.  Fortunately, unlike 
Windows, there are lots of distros to choose from, but it's too bad that so 
many companies choose RHEL.

On 3/29/2013 4:58 AM, Amanda Rush wrote:
> 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