Red Hat Enterprise 6.2

Fri Mar 29 10:18:58 EDT 2013

I ttalked to someone here at the University of Wisconsin who manages Red 
Hat servers. The UW has a site license for Red Hat. I don't know 
anything about it because my department uses debian (lucky for me).

Anyway, he said the reason RH still doesn't give you speakup is that 
their current release still uses a 2.6.32 kernel and speakup wsn't 
included in the official kernel source until 2.6.37 -- which is correct, 
I believe.

In a way, I can understand where RH is coming from but, holy cow, they 
are making it impossible for blind people to get certification from 
them. That's outrageous!  I mean, I hate to use this cliche but this is 
an outrage. Personally, I don't give a flying fig about Red Hat because 
my department uses debian. But even so, I find this  unconcionable. 
Somebody ought to sue their ass.

On 03/29/2013 07:58 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
>
>
>
> -----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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