Here it is...Ubuntu Phone

[Robert Cole]

Hello, Nolan.

When I first switched to Linux, I did so because I fell in love with 
Ubuntu. Ubuntu is what I used (exclusively) until the accessibility 
issues began to kick in. I am very appreciative of the hard work which 
the Accessibility team puts into Ubuntu, and I understand that they are 
very limited because fo various reasons. My frustration si most 
certainly not with them, but with teh company whose operating system I 
fell in love with back in 2006. I still remember the excitement I felt 
when I saw the Ubuntu philosophy "for human beings".

But then, as time moved on, I had to move on as well. I really enjoyed 
using Unity, and I absolutely loved all that Ubuntu had to offer. If it 
was always as accessible as it once was, I would definitely go back. I 
don't want to sound strange in saying this, but I am kind of "homesick" 
for my first Linux operating system. While I am enjoying my experience 
with Fedora, I really miss what I had come to know in Ubuntu.

I am not sure how I can help. I had posted a comment on Mark 
Shuttleworth's blog sometime in 2012, but it seemed to go unnoticed.

I forwarded this message to the AccessibleFreedom Support mailing list; 
I hope that this is alright.

In this world's eyes, I am basically a nobody, but if I can somehow lend 
my voice in support of what you are standing for, I will certainly do 
so. I am not online as much as I used to be, but as I am able I will 
help you in making this call for accessibility known.

Kind regards.

On 01/02/2013 03:50 PM, Nolan Darilek wrote:
> I would like to organize some sort of advocacy effort to get Canonical 
> to take accessibility more seriously. I understand the limitations of 
> the current accessibility team, but if we look back at the state of 
> computing two years ago vs. today, any reasonable person would agree 
> that telling a certain subset of the population that they can only be 
> assured accessible software on that schedule while others get upgrades 
> every six months is unreasonable. I don't want Ubuntu to be another 
> Android, an accessibility situation with which I am quite familiar.
>
> I tried posting a comment here:
>
> http://www.markshuttleworth.com/archives/1221/comment-page-1#comment-400356 
>
>
> because a post that claims that Canonical doesn't want to leave users 
> behind in 2013 seems at odds with a company whose next release I will 
> have guaranteed access to won't be out until 2014. Unfortunately, my 
> comment got caught up in Akismet and appears to have vanished. Perhaps 
> others who feel the same should ask Mark not to leave accessibility 
> behind while Canonical charges ahead in so many other areas.
>
> Ubuntu Phone uses QML 5. I get that QT isn't as accessible, but it's 
> being adopted by a bunch of companies in the mobile space, so you'd 
> think that they'd have all contributed toward making it accessible. 
> Perhaps it's time for Canonical to set a good example in this space 
> and contribute more toward accessibility than it currently does.
>
> I'm going to start actively commenting on Canonical and other blogs, 
> advocating for the expansion of the accessibility team. Thoughts on 
> what else we can do? I'd love to do this stuff myself, but I'm already 
> writing an Android screen reader and working on Android accessibility 
> projects, and end users can't always be called upon to take up the 
> slack that paying companies leave behind.
>