alt.hn

5/31/2026 at 10:10:04 AM

My Accessibility Stack and the Future on Wayland

https://nocoffei.com/?p=451

by birdculture

5/31/2026 at 10:44:38 AM

Linux has this myth of being "community software", and if it really, truly is, then it should have better accessibility than Microsoft Windows.

As far as I can tell from following various people on Mastodon, reading blogs like this etc, is that it really falls short.

And it hurts to see more cool and interesting accessibility technologies become unusable and unsupported because people are chasing "shiny" and "modern".

by MrVandemar

5/31/2026 at 12:22:26 PM

> Linux has this myth of being "community software", and if it really, truly is, then it should have better accessibility than Microsoft Windows.

Good accessibility support is long, hard, and boring work, so without someone putting money behind it, it tends to be omitted. And as far as I'm aware, there's unfortunately nobody funding accessibility on Linux to the extend that Microsoft and Apple are for their respective OSes.

by gucci-on-fleek

5/31/2026 at 11:38:59 AM

More security = less accessibility

You're not allowed to do anything on Linux unless Gnome people like it.

For reasons like these, operating systems like Windows XP or 7 are still necessary for many accessibility related needs.

by functionmouse

5/31/2026 at 3:57:24 PM

> More security = less accessibility

That this tends to be true does not make it a law of nature. I think it’s a false dichotomy born of security people focusing on the outer extremes of threat modeling and preparing for worst case scenarios, and rarely if ever considering the most common cases and tradeoffs “real” security asks of users. See “Why Johnny Can’t Encrypt,” and the rest of the usable security literature.

by kileel

5/31/2026 at 5:31:42 PM

> Linux has this myth of being "community software",

It actually was, 20 years ago. Then the Linux Foundation appeared, then the freedesktop.org and all was history.

by hulitu