Oracle Lays Off Accessibility Leader
The leader of the Gnome accessibility team, Will Walker, has until now worked for the Accessibility Program Office from Sun, which after the Oracle take-over melted into the relevant APO at Oracle.
As Walker writes on the Orca mailing list, from now on he will be working on the Gnome project's accessibility ambitions and on Orca in his spare time only, and depending on his new job, might have to give up the work completely. In an open letter to Oracle, Joanmarie Diggs, who works on the screen reader Orca from the Accessibility Program Office, has expressed her concern about the future of the Gnome A11y team.
"I truly hope this was an oversight on Oracle's part, and one that will be rectified very soon. Because if it is not, and if no other company steps forward to continue this work, the accessibility of the Gnome desktop will become the open source equivalent of an unfunded mandate, doomed ultimately to fail. Oracle's decision threatens to leave many individuals with disabilities around the world without access to a modern desktop environment. I find that tragic."
Tag Cloud
News
-
An Even Smaller Raspberry Pi
The Raspberry Pi Foundation has announced an even smaller version of the tiny computer that will fit into a DIMM slot.
-
Newly Discovered Android Vulnerability Causes Privilege Escalation
A new class of problems lets a malicious app pre-configure an invisible privilege update.
-
Facebook Rolls Out New PHP-like Programming Language
New Hack language adds static typing and other conveniences.
-
Fedora Announces Innovative Crytography Policy System
New crypto policy system will offer easier configuration and more uniform security.
-
Shuttleworth Calls for Declarative Firmware
Ubuntu founder denounces insecurity in proprietary, close-source software blobs.
-
New TLS Attack Takes the S out of HTTPS
Vulnerability affects many Linux web servers
-
Munich Adopts Kolab
The Bavarian capital shuns Microsoft, Google, and other alternatives to implement an open source groupware solution.
-
Canonical Announces Ubuntu Smartphones
Phone vendor partnerships bring Mark Shuttleworth's dream of Ubuntu on a phone a step closer to reality.
-
Piviti Seeks Funding
Donors will get to vote on new features for the free video editor.
-
Debian Tech Committee Votes for systemd
Debian project puts init out to pasture and says no to Ubuntu's Upstart.