I woke up to a comment so smug, so perfectly soaked in gatekeeping and faux-righteous posturing, it earned its own blog post.
You want freedom? You want GNU/Linux to mean something?
Then maybe start by not telling disabled users to go fuck themselves with a smile.
This commenter thought they were defending "software freedom." What they were really doing was kicking people out of the room. Dismissing accessibility. Mocking effort. Pretending that cruelty is some kind of rite of passage. They quoted Stallman like it was scripture, ignored real-world experience like it was noise, and wrapped it all in condescension dressed as virtue.
I’ve spent over a decade in this ecosystem. Writing patches. Rebuilding broken stacks. Helping blind users boot systems upstream doesn’t even test. I didn’t "just install Arch and whine about the terminal." I lived in it. I survived it. I held it together when maintainers disappeared and no one else gave a damn.
But apparently, because I didn’t call it GNU/Linux™ and because I dared to talk about how this OS chews people up and spits them out, I’m lazy. I’m weak. I should "get a dog."
So I wrote a response. Line by line. No mercy. No euphemisms.
This isn’t just about one comment. This is about every time someone’s been told they don’t belong because they couldn’t learn fast enough, code well enough, or survive long enough. It’s about everyone who was pushed out while the gatekeepers patted themselves on the back for "preserving the spirit of free software."
You want a free system? Start by making it livable. Because freedom that demands you crawl bleeding through a broken bootloader isn’t freedom. It’s abandonment dressed in ideology.
And if this kind of gatekeeping is your idea of community?
You can keep it.
https://fireborn.mataroa.blog/blog/you-dont-own-the-word-freedom-a-full-burn-response-to-the-gnulinux-comment-that-tried-to-gatekeep-me-off-my-own-machine/
#Linux#GNU #FOSS#Accessibility#BlindTech#FreeSoftware#Gatekeeping#DisabilityInTech#OpenSource#Orca #ScreenReaders#ArchLinux#BurnItDown #blogpost

I Want to Love Linux. It Doesn’t Love Me Back: Post 4 – Wayland Is Growing Up. And Now We Don’t Have a Choice

https://fireborn.mataroa.blog/blog/i-want-to-love-linux-it-doesnt-love-me-back-post-4-wayland-is-growing-up-and-now-we-dont-have-a-choice/

Great up-to-date post on the state of Linux and Wayland accessibility.

Also read:

https://fireborn.mataroa.blog/blog/you-dont-own-the-word-freedom-a-full-burn-response-to-the-gnulinux-comment-that-tried-to-gatekeep-me-off-my-own-machine/

And:

https://ar.al/2024/06/23/fedora-has-been-shipping-with-a-broken-screen-reader-for-nine-years-but-the-real-problem-is-me/

#Linux #accessibility #a11y

And quite honestly I feel there's a lot of victims to this kind of mentality that aren't necessarily disabled end users, take @danirabbit and others who do a huge amount of work to make #linux #accessibility be better than the wonky house of cards it's been for decades. They've essentially inherited the user frustration, righteous anger and powerlessness that systematic neglect has created while ALSO having to defend the fact to actually include hoomans that aren't "the norm" when deciding if a button should be a button or a superFancyNewRustUICompositeWidgetLookHowCoolMyInheritanceSKillzAreTemplateFoundationUIClassAlsoFuckYouKeyboardUsersButton. Peeps who want a simple OS for, say, an old computer that's losing Windows access a shot, seriously go give @elementary a look and provide feedback, these folks actually WANT to fix stuff

This is one of the reasons why IC_Null exists. Why I stream at all even though I know many of the products and services I call out do not give a single f*ck.
While #accessibility anything-at-all has a huge preaching-to-the-choir problem inside and outside of companies, this is the other extreme. Accessibility issues are just challenges to overcome, and this is a bit of a hot take, is NOT entirely inaccurate; a lot of accessibility issues can be mittigated by user knowledge, and a lot of folks don't know how to best use the assistive tech they have access to. HOWEVER, there comes a point where the user is absolutely within their rights to decide a so-called challenge does not need to be as challenging as it is, see also: pick your battles.
To me, if a product meant to make me more productive instead slows me down because of a poorly coded UI, I don't see the point, freedom, GNU or not. Today, my choice is between an operating system that compromises my privacy and tosses upsells at me in every way it can, or a set of operating systems that, through "freedom fighters" like Gary No-like Users over here, I can never trust to stay accessible enough to get anything done from one day to the next. Welp ... phone home all you like computer, I need to eat.

Having used #Vimium for a few months now really makes me appreciate #web browsers not being just glorified VNC clients that only know how to push pixels with WebGPU and run WASM.
Whoever you are, #accessibility is for you too, #curbEffect FTW.