OK this is a stupid question, but why have Linux projects (apparently) fallen over themselves to comply with an age-recording statute in a single US state (albeit a large one), when those projects have been failing for decades to respect national and even international law regarding disability?
#accessibility #disability #linux #FreeSoftware #fascism #AgeVerification #infantilism
1. numbness
2. I never saw an accessibility mandate that makes it a crime to disregard, and that will result in strong prohibitions/blocks it like these age verifications laws make it. These are a much greater threat to not comply.
@prism @iaruffell I can give you two examples.
In Portugal, we have web accessibility mandates for government web sites, they are not followed on most cases, sometimes they even pretend to do follow to avoid loosing some of the financing, but there's no strong compliance checks, and no legal consequences are on the law for not following other than loosing some financing for the web site.
@prism @iaruffell this example is not about accessibility but open standards:
There's a mandate for the usage of open standards on state institutions (older than the EU Directive for the same purpose), there's no legal consequences on the law for not complying; therefore most institutions don't comply.
There is a larger issue, beyond tech, of when disability law is followed or enforced. That would be a long post!
as far as the OS is concerned, Apple, especially, and latterly Microsoft have sought to make their offerings accessible, precisely because they make money in corporate and institutional contexts subject to equality law. Apart from a push by GNOME a decade or so ago, there has been no collective buy-in among FLOSS developers.
Isabel Ruffell
Diogo Constantino
Drew Mochak