Red Hat Enterprise 6.2

[John G. Heim]

The International Association of Visually Impaired Technologists is 
currently working on creating a team to work with technology providers 
to make their products accessible.  I happen to be President of this 
organization. If anybody is interested in helping with this, email me 
off-list (jheim at math.wisc.edu).

Our web site is at www.iavit.org.




On 03/29/2013 10:03 AM, Tony Baechler wrote:
> 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
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