Re: [board-discuss] Board of Directors Meeting 2020-10-23

[Florian Effenberger]

Hi Quentin,

Quentin Christensen wrote:
Was there any discussion about accessibility and if so, did anything 
come out of it?


there was no separate discussion about accessibility. It is one of the 
topics the board has in their ranking, to determine the 
importance/priority of the topic - but we didn't discuss it in detail.


Florian

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Re: [board-discuss] Board of Directors Meeting 2020-10-23

[Quentin Christensen]

Thanks Florian,

Given the increasing use of open source software such as Libre Office in
government and corporate use, it is disappointing it isn't more of a
priority.  Not being accessible does explicitly exclude LIbre Office from
most government use for instance.  I understand the difficulties with not
having any paid developers you can direct to do particular work, but it
does make the product specifically impossible to use for large segments of
potential users.

I wonder how other FLOSS projects handle this?

Kind regards

Quentin.

On Wed, Oct 28, 2020 at 5:59 PM Florian Effenberger <
flo...@documentfoundation.org> wrote:

> Hi Quentin,
>
> Quentin Christensen wrote:
> > Was there any discussion about accessibility and if so, did anything
> > come out of it?
>
> there was no separate discussion about accessibility. It is one of the
> topics the board has in their ranking, to determine the
> importance/priority of the topic - but we didn't discuss it in detail.
>
> Florian
>


-- 
Quentin Christensen
Training and Support Manager

Web: www.nvaccess.org
Training: https://www.nvaccess.org/shop/
Certification: https://certification.nvaccess.org/
User group: https://nvda.groups.io/g/nvda
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/NVAccess
Twitter: @NVAccess 

Re: [board-discuss] Board of Directors Meeting 2020-10-23

[Florian Effenberger]

Hi Quentin,

Quentin Christensen wrote:

Given the increasing use of open source software such as Libre Office in 
government and corporate use, it is disappointing it isn't more of a 
priority.  Not being accessible does explicitly exclude LIbre Office 


at the moment, the board is evaluating the priorities, so nothing is 
decided yet. :-) The list shows the various topics on the table, out of 
which the decision for the final priorities will be made. The goal is to 
have that done within the next two weeks.


Florian

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Re: [board-discuss] Board of Directors Meeting 2020-10-23

[Heiko Tietze]

On 28.10.20 08:29, Quentin Christensen wrote:
> Not being accessible does explicitly exclude LIbre Office...

Accessibility is and was always in our focus [1,2]. For example, TDF tendered
the accessibility checker [3], and every build tests now changes to the UI
against a11y basics [4].

What exactly are you missing? We have 190 tickets with the keyword in our
bugtracker [5], but not all are crucial. You are very welcome to keep an eye on
these issues and discuss it with the design team [6] and the developers.

[1] https://www.libreoffice.org/get-help/accessibility/
[2] https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Accessibility/Accessibility-dev
[3]
https://blog.documentfoundation.org/blog/2018/05/07/welcome-gla11y-the-user-interface-accessibility-checker/
[4] https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Development/Accessibility
[5]
https://bugs.documentfoundation.org/buglist.cgi?keywords=accessibility&resolution=---
[6] https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Design




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Re: [board-discuss] Board of Directors Meeting 2020-10-23

[Simon Phipps]

Hi Quentin,

Over the last 20 years I have spent quite a bit of energy on the matter of
accessibility in openoffice.org so let's consider your request in that
light.

*Background*

Accessibility is undeniably important, and LibreOffice already includes the
results of large amounts of work by a variety of people to make it
accessible to people with a variety of different needs. This work has been
done by different people with different affiliations over the years. It has
required skills, equipment and experience that are all specialised. It
would not be correct to assert that LibreOffice has neglected the needs of
those requiring specific accessibility accommodations. However, the need is
huge and there are always more needs that could be addressed, especially
maintaining the work that has already been done.

LibreOffice is not written or maintained by TDF, despite all the materials
that might give you that impression. It is written by diverse individuals
with diverse motivations, many of them associated with employment. Almost
all of the significant additions to LibreOffice are made by developers
working for companies with a commercial interest in LibreOffice-derived
service, support and products. TDF's Board cannot give any of them
instructions to address any particular development need. The most they can
do is make a budget allocation to have work done, and when that happens it
needs to be openly tendered. Those tenders remain a controversial topic for
the Board as you will see from the minutes.

*Your Request*

To the matter of NVAccess. To have the accessibility capabilities your
organisation maintains integrated into LibreOffice is not within the direct
power of TDF's Board. They could however approve a detailed, costed work
proposal and then open a tender to have it satisfied by developers with the
appropriate skills. From looking at https://www.nvaccess.org/ it seems the
people most likely to be able to create that proposal are actually staff
and volunteers for the charity you represent.

May I thus suggest that your energy would be better spent trying to create
that costed and detailed proposal for the Board to approve? If you need
help with the format or structure needed, it is likely a member of the
Engineering Steering Committee (which is actually the council of core
developers) would assist you, or failing that I am sure Florian would
direct you to resources if you asked him. I am no longer a Board member,
but I would expect your proposal to be received positively. This approach
will lead to an outcome; asking the Board to discuss accessibility in
general terms will not :-)

I hope that helps.

Best regards,

Simon


On Wed, Oct 28, 2020 at 7:30 AM Quentin Christensen 
wrote:

> Thanks Florian,
>
> Given the increasing use of open source software such as Libre Office in
> government and corporate use, it is disappointing it isn't more of a
> priority.  Not being accessible does explicitly exclude LIbre Office from
> most government use for instance.  I understand the difficulties with not
> having any paid developers you can direct to do particular work, but it
> does make the product specifically impossible to use for large segments of
> potential users.
>
> I wonder how other FLOSS projects handle this?
>
> Kind regards
>
> Quentin.
>
> On Wed, Oct 28, 2020 at 5:59 PM Florian Effenberger <
> flo...@documentfoundation.org> wrote:
>
>> Hi Quentin,
>>
>> Quentin Christensen wrote:
>> > Was there any discussion about accessibility and if so, did anything
>> > come out of it?
>>
>> there was no separate discussion about accessibility. It is one of the
>> topics the board has in their ranking, to determine the
>> importance/priority of the topic - but we didn't discuss it in detail.
>>
>> Florian
>>
>
>
> --
> Quentin Christensen
> Training and Support Manager
>
> Web: www.nvaccess.org
> Training: https://www.nvaccess.org/shop/
> Certification: https://certification.nvaccess.org/
> User group: https://nvda.groups.io/g/nvda
> Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/NVAccess
> Twitter: @NVAccess 
>


-- 
*Simon Phipps*
*Office:* +1 (415) 683-7660 *or* +44 (238) 098 7027

Re: [board-discuss] Board of Directors Meeting 2020-10-23

[Telesto]

Op 28-10-2020 om 08:29 schreef Quentin Christensen:

Thanks Florian,

Given the increasing use of open source software such as Libre Office in
government and corporate use, it is disappointing it isn't more of a
priority.  Not being accessible does explicitly exclude LIbre Office from
most government use for instance.

Yes

   I understand the difficulties with not
having any paid developers you can direct to do particular work, but it
does make the product specifically impossible to use for large segments of
potential users.


There are multiple factors at work I assume
- They group of users of accessibility (no-offense) is relatively small.
With less of incentives (getting different at the point being a 
pre-requirement for governments/NGO)


- Most/All Developers themselves don't use accessibility (I speculate)

- There are not many people at QA/UX who have knowledge about (or use) 
accessibility tools structurally (I assume)
And if they do they might have the actual handicap (so paying less 
attention to the stuff being a problem)


- There or not many reports of accessibility bugs (I think)

- LibreOffice being in principle being developed by Selling Developer 
Time (instead of final 'product' with certain functionality)
And there is no centralized organization paying. So this tends to put on 
hold.


I'm personally and advocate for more bug fixing (or in general quality 
control). Nobody is inclined to pay for solving bugs.
Everybody expects someone else will do. Or work around it. Hurting the 
general user experience.
In my vision there needs to be an upfront investment (financed by 
eco-partners) with a (substantial) higher product price,
to make returns on investment. This would also make it possible to embed 
some kind of solidarity. The revenue - payed by all users - can be used to
serve a niche (accessibility). Instead of a niche having to pay to full 
price; which doesn't make sense for the broad audience.


Same hold true for bug fixing. About bug XYZ a user ABC might not care 
but D does. So not likely to get solved.
Or D has to pay. However, nobody actually knows if there is only 'D' or 
a bug is simply under reported. People try LibreOffice,

notice it fails on their needs, and move on.

However they approach is for developers more easy to manage. Investing 
in advance has a risk of failure,
if you don't estimate the desires from users properly. So you make no 
return at all.
And you gets of debates/arguments about priority's. What should we do 
next.. And everybody will come up with something.
Having different accents/visions. Say there is a budget for fixing 100 
paper cut bugs and lets say we have 3000 of those.
File Export has multiple flaws. A single paper cut bug fix, still leaves 
a broken feature. So pretty pointless. To make worth the effort 5 needs 
to fixed.
But who uses File Export. Why File Export and not 5 accessibility bugs. 
But there 100 accessibility bugs; which should have priority






I wonder how other FLOSS projects handle this?

Me too. It sounds like it's functioning there? Any examples?


Kind regards

Quentin.

On Wed, Oct 28, 2020 at 5:59 PM Florian Effenberger <
flo...@documentfoundation.org> wrote:


Hi Quentin,

Quentin Christensen wrote:

Was there any discussion about accessibility and if so, did anything
come out of it?

there was no separate discussion about accessibility. It is one of the
topics the board has in their ranking, to determine the
importance/priority of the topic - but we didn't discuss it in detail.

Florian


Regards,
Telesto


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Re: [board-discuss] Board of Directors Meeting 2020-10-23

[Quentin Christensen]

Hi everyone,

Thank you very much for all the constructive comments.  Firstly, I should
apologise if I came across as being attacking yesterday.  It's really just
frustration that previously it's been very hard to get to talk to anyone
about accessibility issues in LibreOffice.

I must admit I will have to go back and have a look at the current state of
issues with LibreOffice 7 and NVDA 2020.3.  I started to compile
information a few years ago and ensure all issues I knew about were filed,
but as it was a bit of a black hole at the time, and NV Access developers
didn't have the resources to work on LibreOffice as well as NVDA, it got
set aside from our end.  I will talk with the team about putting forward a
proposal to the board, thank you Simon for that suggestion!

And of course, issues do need to be prioritised - and as with any area,
just because something may be an accessibility issue, doesn't mean it is
critical, and some have workarounds which can be used in the meantime.  But
many accessibility issues do mean a feature, or even entire product is
completely unusable to a particular group of people.  They may then not
report that but instead find an alternative product.  If you can use a
product, but one feature is a bit buggy, you are more likely to report that
issue, than if the whole product is unusable (to you), particularly if you
aren't familiar with Bugzilla, a screenreader user is much more likely to
be apprehensive that even trying to report the issue is going to be too
hard.  (I know we have NVDA users who use Bugzilla, but for those not
familiar with it, that would certainly be a consideration a screenreader
user thinks of that a sighted user wouldn't necessarily worry about).

Telesto's comment that developers aren't familiar with accessibility tools
is entirely accurate, and I think demonstrative of a core problem in
training of software developers - completely outside the scope of this
conversation and what any of us has control over - but if an architect
designed a big public building without a wheelchair accessible entrance,
they would quickly find themselves out of work.  Why?  Are there so many
people in wheelchairs?  No - but actually mothers with prams, people with
suitcases, an athletic 20 year old who hurt their leg playing football last
week, and numerous others, all benefit from that wheelchair accessible
entrance.  The same is true for "accessibility" features in software.
Everyone I have heard of who has purchased a computer in recent years with
a half decent video card has taken advantage of accessibility features -
video card manufacturers want you to use their video card at the maximum
resolution - yet that makes everything tiny, so everyone either uses the
"Make everything bigger" feature (in Windows) to set the value higher than
100%, or increase font size, or make the mouse a bit bigger.  Of course,
one of the main reasons that public buildings HAVE to have a wheelchair
accessible entrance, is because legislation in most jurisdictions require
it.  That is starting to happen with software, but slowly.

Thank you for the positive dialog - and again, I am looking forward to
engaging positively on how we can work together.

Quentin

On Wed, Oct 28, 2020 at 9:20 PM Simon Phipps  wrote:

> Hi Quentin,
>
> Over the last 20 years I have spent quite a bit of energy on the matter of
> accessibility in openoffice.org so let's consider your request in that
> light.
>
> *Background*
>
> Accessibility is undeniably important, and LibreOffice already includes
> the results of large amounts of work by a variety of people to make it
> accessible to people with a variety of different needs. This work has been
> done by different people with different affiliations over the years. It has
> required skills, equipment and experience that are all specialised. It
> would not be correct to assert that LibreOffice has neglected the needs of
> those requiring specific accessibility accommodations. However, the need is
> huge and there are always more needs that could be addressed, especially
> maintaining the work that has already been done.
>
> LibreOffice is not written or maintained by TDF, despite all the materials
> that might give you that impression. It is written by diverse individuals
> with diverse motivations, many of them associated with employment. Almost
> all of the significant additions to LibreOffice are made by developers
> working for companies with a commercial interest in LibreOffice-derived
> service, support and products. TDF's Board cannot give any of them
> instructions to address any particular development need. The most they can
> do is make a budget allocation to have work done, and when that happens it
> needs to be openly tendered. Those tenders remain a controversial topic for
> the Board as you will see from the minutes.
>
> *Your Request*
>
> To the matter of NVAccess. To have the accessibility capabilities your
> organisation maintains integrated into LibreOffi