Add an accessibility list to lists.drupal.org

Moving to the infrastructure component since there's not anything drupal.org webmasters can do.

I'm not opposed if this will help streamline things, but is there a reason not to make this a group on g.d.o? We've found working teams such as the documentation team moving *away* from mailing lists and into groups, because they've found the participation rate is much better, especially from non-technical users.

The reason might very well be that g.d.o isn't accessible. :P

Oops.

Yeah, the mailing lists are pretty much the example of how *not* to communicate effectively or efficiently. If we can make groups.drupal.org more accessible, I'd welcome ideas or changes needed.

I think we have a solution, of sorts, for captcha on http://groups.drupal.org/node/55683#comment-157978 which is also highlighted on the about page.

from previous collaborations on open source work, i've found that email, a collaboratively editable web space, teleconferences, and the occasional face-to-face meeting are all crucial components -- for detailed work and comments, email is often a more comfortable choice for me, a blind user, than is filling in feedback via web based forms, although i usually compose both in a plain text editor before pasting them into the applicable app

so, i vote for an accessibility list for detailed work and continued use of G.D.O. in order to:

A) provide a sense of urgency to addressing the accessibility problems which have already been documented, leading to a more accessible G.D.O.

B) provide increased awareness of accessibility issues, problems, and solutions through G.D.O.

C) keep accessibility front-and-center in Drupal development

+1 One with a digest & searchable web archive would be nice! But I'm assuming that comes by default.

@Everett, it's interesting to me that the Documentation Team just shut down its mailing list and created a group to become more effective, and it seems to have worked well for them. New folks had a hard time finding the mailing list. (I didn't even know it existed until it was shut down.) The group, on the other hand, has profited from the participation of quite a few experienced volunteers who similarly did not know about the list and so had not been able to connect.

I participate in discussions mediated by mailing lists and in discussions that occur through groups. Either works well for me, but I wonder if we would be able to keep the list and group in synch with each other. Or would they split into two distinct online communities? It would be a shame to lose the energy we have in the group simply by opening another avenue of communication.

On the other hand, would it hurt to try — to give a list a 6-month trial period and see what happens? (The opinion of whoever would have to take care of the administrative burden obviously weighs heavily in that decision.)

Until and unless I hear a specific reason to move away from g.d.o I'm moderately opposed to this idea though I certainly don't want to block anyone else's work. Usually things either need someone to really drive them forward or to be strongly opposed in order to reach a final state. I think this issue has some people who are moderately opposed and several who are in favor but have not articulated a specific benefit of a mailing list compared to g.d.o.

To provide an alternate perspective: what is the cost of creating a mailing list to test it out? If it doesn't seem to be working after 6 months we could re-evaluate the idea and close the maling list, right?

I support creating a test mailing list.

Well, on this specific issue there are still a bunch of things that are blocking people with some disabilities to participate using g.d.o..

CAPTCHA is the big one, but there are also a flood of other accessibility issues which could be applied to D6 to allow it to be more accessible.

Mailing lists are going to be more accessible for everyone until a lot of work as been done to improve g.d.o..

In #10 Everett says captcha isn't an issue. I guess there are different opinions on this point.

Selfishly, I would love to know what the (other) accessibility issues are with g.d.o - perhaps you could file some issues so we can know what they are and work on them?

One other thought is that for a while now I've been working toward deploying mailcomment on groups.drupal.org which would help make g.d.o into more of a mailing-list-like environment.

@greggles Thanks! I read @everett's comment on CAPTCHA's differently, but that's not all that important.

It's great to hear that you're interested in an accessibility review of GDO. It's not at all selfish I don't think. I could pass along some functions that we've been using to incorporate some of the accessibility improvements we've used in D6 as well.

We've been thinking a lot about accessibility statements for d.o, g.d.o & d7/d8. Trying to draft up something for the community.

Interesting idea with mailcomment. I haven't played with that module recently.

Tagging

is this still desired?

I'm not sure this is still needed.