A great writeup on the experience of blind users navigating GNU/Linux and the many pitfalls that prevent them from being able to use their machine.

Linux “just works”—if you can see.

If you’re blind? You boot into a live image and get nothing. No speech. No braille. No login prompt feedback. Maybe Orca starts, maybe not. Maybe you know the shortcut (Alt+Super+S?) but does that even work in this session type? Is it Wayland? Is it X11? Is the screen reader bound to a key combo that doesn’t exist on your keyboard?

You open the installer?

“Next. Button. Button. Button. Button.” That’s all Orca says.

Ubuntu MATE 12.04 had a working, labeled, navigable installer. Ubuntu MATE 24.04? It’s garbage.

No headings. No structure. No sense of where you are. Just unlabeled buttons and blank space.

This isn’t a bug. This is neglect.

I think a great takeaway from this is that a11y finds itself at the end of the pipeline, as the last thing that needs to be done.