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Happy Open-Source Day!*
Open-Source brings so many benefits. NV Access is proud to be part of the community, from welcoming code contributions, to decreasing cost for users around the world. It's easy to see why "Open-Source First" is a popular policy for governments & companies everywhere.
(*At least in Florence, Italy - a quick search found several dates this year - Open Source not only brings innovation, but also choice!)
@NVAccess sorry but most opensource projects are mostly not accessible stuff so, only few programs are, as far as I know, so I don't care that much about foss, I care about functionality and how much it costs
@kev @patricus Open source is a design philosophy - inherently that is no more or less accessible than closed source - building a house from natural materials is no more or less wheelchair accessible than using concrete and steel, it's how they are used. One advantage of open source is that it's usually easier to contact someone to report issues (or even fix them yourself if you have the skills). There are also efforts to promote accessibility in open source: https://about.gitlab.com/blog/2021/04/07/how-the-open-source-community-can-build-more-accessible-products/
@patricus @kev have you got any published figures to back that up or are you just talking anecdotally from your own experience?
Not criticising either way, just curious. I did have a quick look and couldn't find any statistics either way on accessibility of open vs closed source. My point was that whether a program is open or closed source is not of itself related to whether it is accessible or not, but I would be interested to see any research which does exist
@NVAccess @kev I have some figures, though, I tested over 400 random junk, let's also include projects that are foss and I like and use them, in the mix.
around 250 of that random junk wasn't accessible at all with a screenreader while 100 of that stuff was just barely usable.
so we were left with 50 random or non random stuff that I got.
@patricus @NVAccess @kev In my experience it seems like open source devs are more likely to consider accessibility improvements. Software from large corporations or that isn't open source is not guaranteed to have devs that don't care, but generally open source software creaters tend to be more on the same level as their user base in some ways and a lot of them make a great effort to give their user base and community what they want and need.
@patricus @NVAccess @kev Open source or not, you're always going to have people that aren't interested in doing it, and there's really nothing we can do about it. I don't like it, but I accept that it's how the world works. What I said was that since open source software devs tend to be more user focused it's a higher chance things could happen.
@patricus @NVAccess Counterpoint: Lots of open-source projects are accessible. Lots of closed-source ones are not. open-source usually means you get a more direct line of communication with the developers and if you have the knowledge to fix it, you can do it yourself. Obviously use what works. Accessibility is the highest consideration out of necessity. But I've had way better luck making changes happen in the open-source world.