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InteLeaks – Part XV: Intel is Blind to Blind and Colour-Blind People

Video download link (see this series' index for more)



Summary: Intel does not seem to grasp very basic concepts associated with accessibility; nevertheless, Intel shamelessly tries painting itself as "woke" and a "justice warrior" (policing speech while overlooking much-needed practical work)

MANY people are not familiar with colour blindness; some never met any colour-blind people (or don't know that they did). Some of us are fortunate to have worked both with blind people and colour-blind people. It shapes one's views (no pun intended) on the subject. Does Intel have a vision? Other than In(tel)Visionâ„¢? Seems not.

"Intel, with its arrogance and its sheer (notoriously so) Hubris, is actually a lot more blind than people whom we call "blind", who are compassionate and caring."The above video, which took 5 hours to upload (our broadband issues are unfortunately back), deals with concerns about Intel's lack of understanding of blind people. This complete lack of understanding, which relates to Intel's inability to recruit suitable people, is causing harm to the company's reputation. It's widely known that accessibility aspects are exceedingly important; while Intel viciously lobbies to eliminate supposedly 'racist' words (many aren't, unless viewed from a racist's eye or mind) it has a serious oversight and insiders have been kind enough to point this out politely (only to be reprimanded and severely punished for it). We have plenty of high-profile examples of Intel doing this inside Linux, especially the kernel (these examples were covered here in past years).

"And it's not like Intel lacks money to actually give a damn about accessibility, it's just that it doesn't care."As someone who spent many years donating to blind people's charities every month, this aspect of Intel's incompetence actually annoy me vastly more than all those supposedly 'offensive' words that Intel employees work to remove (as if that will practically accomplish much, if anything at all) while mostly ignoring people like my blind colleagues and friends (since school days). Intel, with its arrogance and its sheer (notoriously so) Hubris, is actually a lot more blind than people whom we call "blind", who are compassionate and caring. In the face of great hardships and ordeals, too. Intel is attacking charities (for profit). And it's not like Intel lacks money to actually give a damn about accessibility, it's just that it doesn't care.

As a former Intel employee put it to us (earlier today), "what I do think is harmful is to put more importance into sticking with certain proprietary tools over accommodating your actual employees and customers [...] I worked at several companies that were so tied into the Wintel paradigm that they just couldn't see a better way of doing things if it hit them in the face and dealing with these proprietary tools as a free software person can and does take its toll on you..."

GNU/Linux command line tools are actually renowned for accessibility aspects (very standardised and text-based, good for screen readers). That's what the GNU/Linux folks at Intel had put in place before people from above decided to tear everything apart.

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