Accessibility Statement
Thank you for making Blender. My students and I love it.
Colorado and several other states in the US have passed laws that require software to meet certain accessibility requirements to be approved for use in schools. Is it possible for Blender to release an accessibility statement regarding its accessibility features? I would love to continue to use it with my students, but we will be blocked from using it without such a statement. I think these laws are becoming more common and this would benefit many more users than just me.
Thank you for your time and consideration.
3 Comments
Do you have an example of such statements?
Blender is very accessible in some ways (e.g. dynamic UI scaling and theme/contrast customization for users with low vision), but very much not accessible in other ways (the UI can't be read outloud, poor keyboard navigation, etc).
I am a bit confused about what the requirement actually is here. Writing a bit of explanatory text about Blender's accessibility is one thing. Meeting a legal accessibility standard is another.
And good accessibility isn't something people improvise, it requires people who know what they are doing, a budget, and a long term plan... Most softwares barely seem to even think about, if they can even afford. I cannot speak for the BF, but Blender being extremely visual and interaction heavy, accessibility sounds like a particular challenge.
Regardless of whichever that it, Blender is a FOSS project. There is no big corporation behind it with a full-time accessibility team or lawyers to track every law in the world to make sure the product can be sold to the widest market.
What Blender does have is a small full-time development team and a large community of people who can contribute in different ways, including you! ;)
If Colorado has specific requirements, why not share the exact details of that (or even a link to official documentation) and explain how they apply to Blender. That kind of groundwork is genuinely helpful and may lead people to pick it up from there.
Is there a better description of what this entails? Does Blender Foundation then need to create systems in Blender to accommodate blind or hearing-impaired users in a particular way, or is there some other disability that needs to be addressed for accommodation? Honestly don't understand how this would work because the search results indicates it is a continuous improvement that is required, alongside normal development.