France is rolling out Visio, a homegrown secure videoconferencing platform, to all government employees by 2027.
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4/5
Microsoft has established precedent for open-source, cross-platform leadership that's directly relevant here. They successfully open-sourced and made fully cross-platform: VS Code which is now a leading code editor on Linux, .NET Core which runs on Linux and powers significant server infrastructure, PowerShell which is now Linux-native, and Windows Terminal which benefits all platforms.
These weren't token gestures—they represent major strategic investments that proved you can open-source core tools and still thrive commercially.
NVDA's Python foundation makes cross-platform porting technically feasible in ways that would be much harder for native C++ applications.
Python is inherently portable across operating systems. The main engineering effort would involve mapping Windows-specific accessibility APIs like UI Automation and IAccessible2 to their Linux equivalents like AT-SPI and macOS accessibility frameworks.
A phased approach starting with core screen reading functionality and gradually adding platform-specific features would be viable.
Concrete steps could include: directly funding Orca development with sustained financial support, sharing detailed accessibility API documentation with GNOME and KDE development teams, supporting NV Access in developing cross-platform NVDA capabilities, and publishing Microsoft's accessibility testing methodologies and best practices for the community.
5/5
The bottom line is straightforward: digital sovereignty initiatives that fail to meet accessibility requirements violate EU law and exclude disabled citizens from digital participation.
This is both a legal compliance issue and a fundamental human rights issue.
The technical expertise to solve this exists within the industry. The legal mandate requiring accessibility exists in French and EU law.
The question is whether industry leaders and open-source communities will prioritize implementation.
Thank you for raising this issue—accessibility must be absolutely central to digital sovereignty discussions from the beginning, not treated as an optional enhancement or addressed after the fact.
The French government's commitment to digital sovereignty will be measured in part by how well it serves all citizens, including those who rely on assistive technologies.
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3/5
This creates an urgent legal problem for digital sovereignty initiatives. French law through the RGAA (Référentiel Général d'Amélioration de l'Accessibilité) and the EU's European Accessibility Act (EAA) impose strict, enforceable digital accessibility requirements on public sector organizations and key service providers.
These aren't guidelines—they're legal mandates with real enforcement mechanisms and substantial penalties for non-compliance.
France's digital sovereignty migration, including the rollout of platforms like Visio and the broader La Suite numérique to hundreds of thousands of government employees, must meet these accessibility standards from day one.Any deployment that excludes or marginalizes blind users would violate French and EU law, expose organizations to legal liability, and fundamentally fail the ethical test.
Accessibility cannot be an afterthought or future enhancement—it's a legal requirement that must be built into the foundation of these systems.
@i47i @matrix I am blind myself, accessibility professional myself. And I'm very, very angry about all those folks saying "there's an alternative for EVERYTHING".
Sorry for the rude metaphor but a sighted, walking guy, can say "who cares about toilets, I can piss in the woods"
a person with disability can't.
I didn't want to make noise, I've been rude like this, because for us blind people, the free and open software accessibility compliance is a PRIMAL need. Like the toilet, like food, like air.
We're prisoner of American tech, until it works. And if we don't move now, it could be too late within a year. I have no skills to do anything concrete in programming, but I can pose the problem whenever someone lies saying "there's alternative for EVERYTHING. Saying this is lying, consciously. -
J jeppe@uddannelse.social shared this topic
