Disabled community loses out on helping free software
Communication is sorely lacking in the disabled community not only to each other, but to virtually anyone in the able bodied community. This ends up creating products and services that are virtually impossible for the disabled to use. The sad thing is that with only a few changes virtually all products can be made so that the disabled could more easily use them. But the disabled community does a very poor job of communicating with companies, entering into groups that test products, or write letters or call companies to make things better. This is especially bad with the free and open source communities that write a multitude of software packages for free. These go from operating systems like Linux to programs like Firefox and Gimp. These programs and operating systems allow people to do amazing things on their computers with no money or licensing fees. The disabled community is probably the most in need of this software because these people are living on little more than Social Security Disability payments and typically don’t have a lot of disposable income for games or productivity software like Microsoft Office. An awesome program, Open Office, gives you the virtually the same capabilities as Microsoft Office without any of the cost and runs on computers that are older. But the disabled community does not work with groups that write these programs so most do not have functions to make it easier for the blind or those with hand control problems to use the program.
This is a monumental problem that the disabled community needs to address. The different communities do not talk to each other, and in some cases work against each other to get the same things accomplished. We can no longer think that only one disability exists and as such we can ignore everyone else and not even try to help them. To help ourselves it is easy to hook up with a open source program and help them. All of these programs are looking for help and guidance and would love to have disabled people on their team to make things better and easier to use. But we have to do the work, it doesn’t happen by itself. Sitting in front of the television is not a good way to run your life and getting back to work and helping others at the same time is an excellent thing to do.
I have watched many wheelchair bound people just sit and do nothing in front of a television 18 hours a day. There is no reason that they cannot write a blog, letters, or make phone calls to their elected officials or others to make things better for the whole community. I guess that it depends on your own personal drive but there has to be something else in life than what toi watch on the travel channel. By volunteering for something as simple as a free and open source software package you are using your brain again and interacting with people all over the world. They appreciate the work you are doing and you get to help other disabled people that need access to these programs but they cannot until functionality and documentation exists to use them. Don’t let yourself drop down to nothing as you just watch television. You have skills that are in need and you should figure out the best way to use them. Open Source products are just one place that you can help a lot of people by doing what you know best.
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