[avtar]

> I don't currently have time to pursue it further myself.

I work for a non-profit where we tackle accessibility issues related to the web, documents, and tech in general. We have a few Vagrant boxes that we use for development and testing, one of them is a Fedora box (GNOME 3 though) that comes with Orca configured [1] so that it doesn't prompt you for setup options. Chrome and Firefox are installed as well. If you have Vagrant and VirtualBox installed you can make use of it like so:

    vagrant init inclusivedesign/fedora24 && vagrant up

The box is ~2 GB. This is the repository for the box in question:

* https://github.com/idi-ops/packer-fedora

* https://atlas.hashicorp.com/inclusivedesign/boxes/fedora24

We track Fedora releases and update boxes fairly regularly so there should be a Fedora 25 one with Orca once there's an official release upstream.

I hope it can be of use to anyone here. If you have any questions we hang out in #fluid-work on Freenode.

[1] https://github.com/gpii-ops/ansible-gpii-framework/blob/mast...

[jareds]

Do you think Fedora is a usable option as a totally blind person? I'm a totally blind software developer and looked at Linux several years ago. It didn't "just work" and since I already have Jaws for my job which requires Windows I never bothered trying to use the Linux GUI for an extended length of time. I'll have to look at this.

[ndarilek]

I'm blind and prefer Fedora because it tracks GNOME more closely, and GNOME seems to reliably get accessibility right whereas Ubuntu/Unity doesn't.

So admittedly my development workflow isn't super high-tech. I do lots of JavaScript, some Rust, and a few others. All my languages have reliable command line tooling, which of course works well under Linux.

Some blind folks advised me to try Windows because it was supposed to make me more productive. I tried it for about a year and a half. I've used Linux since Slackware96, and whenever something failed under Windows I was stuck googling error codes and tracking down system logs. I can launch a Linux system upgrade from the command line. If it fails, it fails for an obvious/searchable reason, and prints its failure cause in the terminal. I don't have to track down logs in non-standard locations, google odd hex codes, etc.

Under Windows, the best I could find for accessible JS/Rust dev was Notepad++. That's just an enhanced text editor. At that rate I might as well use Gedit/Vim under Linux for development, which I do and it works well.

If you're developing heavily in Windows specific tech, then Linux wouldn't be a good fit. But as a technical user I'm quite happy with Linux generally, and Fedora specifically. About the only accessible Windows things I miss are audio games and Netflix, and my VM satisfies most of those. There are corner cases where Orca/Firefox act up, but under Windows there were lots of cases where I fought the OS, so there's just no perfect solution. I'd take a stronger foundation over slightly less accessibility any day.

[camlorn38]

Windows 10 just works and now we have WSL (i.e. bash i.e. run all your favorite CLI tooling). In general, Microsoft has gotten a lot better about Windows just working. Perhaps Linux has too, but you still had to make sure you had fully Linux-compatible hardware and then do extra steps to get Wi-fi, last time I played with it.

Also, the web browsing experience on Windows is so much better, and the audio stack doesn't fall down at the drop of a hat because you edited a config file wrong (hope you have someone sighted who knows how to unedit it for you). I'm not sure I'd call Linux a stronger foundation; this was not at all my experience with it. OS X is, but then desktop Voiceover sucks to the point where you can't really program with it (basic things like terminal do odd things, nevermind the 10 or so keystrokes needed to navigate from code to the project explorer in Xcode. And we have to mention the speech latency). Then they just killed the function keys, which is an additional problem knocking OS X off the list.

But I think the biggest thing about Windows for me is that it's got synths which are capable of being intelligible upwards of 800 words a minute. Linux didn't even let you get at these settings via Orca last I tried it, and you can't set the inflection either, so it never emphasized punctuation. When your interface is linear and top-to-bottom, the biggest bottleneck in the general case is how fast you can go with the synth, and any platform which significantly cuts this down is therefore not a winner in my book.

But whether or not you agree with my points, I consider it pretty clear-cut that only a blind programmer even has the option of trying Linux in the first place, and certainly not a new one at that. You need too much knowledge to have even a halfway decent experience. In terms of making things accessible and having them matter, you've got to hit Windows first.

[blinddev]

I didn't know that Fedora's accessibility was better than Ubuntu's. I had pretty much stopped using Linux on the desktop because Orca in Ubuntu just left me wanting more. But I'll definitely give Fedora a try now. Thanks.

[jareds]

Do you know if Eclipse works for Java programming with Orca? That's what I use for my job so could not use Linux as my primary OS if it does not work.

[avtar]

This isn't going to answer your question but the reasons why we support this Fedora VM image is because our projects make use of it in CI environments and also because one of our team members worked on the GNOME screen magnifier. I saw your question regarding whether Eclipse paired with Orca is a viable, accessible option on Fedora for Java development -- I don't use Eclipse but I can ask around and get back to you. I would suggest that if possible you could try Eclipse in the Fedora environment I mentioned with a project you're familiar with; I can help with at least installing and configuring it but ultimately customizing something like Eclipse is a personal and soul searching experience :P

BTW, we provide a Windows 10 Vagrant box [1] as well. I just didn't mention it because it doesn't come with NVDA or the evaluation version of JAWS yet. That will happen soon though.

[1] https://github.com/idi-ops/packer-windows

[richardbrevig]

> I work for a non-profit where we tackle accessibility issues related to the web, documents, and tech in general.

What's the non-profit? Expose UX [1] is preparing an episode focused on accessibility for Global Accessibility Awareness Day: startups will get judged by UX judges based on the accessibility of their products. Would love to connect with your org.

[1] http://ExposeUX.com

[avtar]

It's the Inclusive Design Research Centre at OCAD University. My email is in my profile, feel free to reach out :)

http://inclusivedesign.ca/research/ocadu/

[blinddev]

This is really cool, thanks for sharing. Will try it out.

[steveax]

Very nice resource, thanks for putting this together and sharing it.