What it Takes for Open Source Communities to Work: Participation
In the spirit of openness, Rich Burridge (with my full support) has decided to move a conversation he and I were having into the open.
The conversation had started out innocently enough around the redesign of an Orca feature, but it eventually led to a bit of a rant on my part. What was I ranting about (this time) you ask? Lack of user participation.
You see, once in a blue moon you come across something that seems too good to be true, but actually isn’t: There really are free operating systems (Linux and Open Solaris), there really is a free office suite (OpenOffice.org), and there really is a free screen reader (Orca) which shows the potential of rivaling its $1000 commercial equivalents.
But it doesn’t end there; on the contrary: At the risk of repeating myself, the Orca team is actively soliciting user input and basing their design upon the feedback they receive. There have been times (I’m starting to lose track of how many) where I’ve filled an RFE suggesting that “such-and-such feature would be helpful for the end user” and the response has been “okay”—often it’s not “okay, thanks for the suggestion, we’ll take it under advisement”, but “okay, we’ve implemented it, please give it a try and see if it meets your needs.” If it can be easily and reasonably done, Will, Rich, and Mike do it; if it cannot, they start looking for what it will take to pull it off the needed functionality. In other words, there is a free operating system, a free office suite, and a free screen reader whose design we can contribute to so that it best suits our needs. All we have to do is participate.
Yet people are not participating. That is what I was ranting to Rich about.
Of course, I am exaggerating a bit (as friends, colleagues, and regular readers of All About Access know all too well that I am wont to do)—but only a bit. Some people are participating. Some people are sharing their needs and wants with the Orca team. Most, however, are not. Why is that?
Rich had some thoughts on that matter:
Why this is all strange to the blind users who are now trying out Orca is that they are so used to paying a large sum of money to a commercial organization and dealing with the way that support is handled in such a company, that they don’t realize that alternatives exist.
Used to “dealing with the way that support is handled in such a (commercial) company”: check. “Don’t realize that alternatives exist”: check. “Used to paying a large sum of money”: I don’t think so. The average blind user doesn’t pay a large sum of money for their screen reader. The average blind user is provided with their screen reader through their local school district, vocational rehabilitation agency, employer, charitable organization, etc. It’s like medical care: Some of us pay large sums of money because we do not have health insurance; some of us pay large sums of money because we need a screen reader but for one reason or another can not obtain funding. But in both cases, that is not the majority of the respective populations. Far from it. Most of us are provided with what we need—or we do without.
So why am I nitpicking on this one point when Rich’s observations are, on the whole, spot on? Because I think the medical model of rehabilitation services is largely to blame for the limited participation of persons with disabilities in open source communities.
If everyone really were used to paying large sums of money for their screen reader, I think they’d be beating down the proverbial door to check out, and contribute to the development of, Orca. And that would be good for everyone who cares about affordable assistive technology for computer users who are blind. Does that mean I think we should immediately dump the model we currently use for providing assistive technology services? No, not any more than I think we should immediately dump the model we currently use for providing health care services. In either case, such a drastic measure would put far too many folks in a position more unsatisfactory than the status quo.
So what then do we do? To be honest, I’m not sure.
All I can think of doing is what I’m already doing, namely making people aware of the free, open source alternatives to the commercial products they currently use—or would use if they could afford to do so—and encouraging them to participate.
I also hope that as more and more members of the Independent Living community become aware of free, open source solutions for computer users with disabilities, we’ll see a significant increase in participation. After all, the FOSS movement has a lot in common with the IL movement.
I’m certainly open to other suggestions.
October 28th, 2006 at 4:08 am
I can only speak for myself here. Years ago I jumped at any opportunity to try something new. I was hungry for access to information, and I felt driven to learn to use whatever was out there that would work with my Radioshack 286 PC and Echo GP. (Ah, what a voice that thing had, Ugh), but it worked, and that was all that mattered.
Now I have JAWS, and it is truly wonderful. I no longer feel that pioneer spirit, that drive to experiment.
By the time I check my e-mail, do some online shopping, check my account for possible overdrafts, do a few Google searches, tweak my personal website a bit, check out my favorite blogs, listen to a podcast or two, and spell-check a document I’ve been working on, I just don’t have much drive left.
Maybe it’s time for me to get out my old junk computer and Dectalk Express and start from scratch with ORCA. It’s one of those things I’ve been meaning to do for a long time, but I just haven’t gotten around to it.
October 31st, 2006 at 11:17 am
In addition to what Jerry said, I think part of the reason more assistive technology users are not participating is that they do not know about Orca. To stem that lack of knowledge, all we can do is spread the word. I’ve done that on my
AccessAbility
blog.
For those who do know about Orca, I’d venture that most do not feel tech savvy enough to try running a program they are not familiar with. They feel comfortable in the domain in which they have been trained, be it JAWS, Window Eyes, or whatever, they are trained on this and it works for them. I don’t think there is an incentive for them to try something new which is unknown and very foreign.