> I don't think that kind of scolding - which is what it comes off as - is productive for solving the problem of "X is not accessible", because it presumes the problem is unfixable.
Of course the problem is fixable. But in the meantime, until it's fixed, a disabled person could fail to get a particular job, or even lose a job they already have, due to an inaccessible application. It's important to remember that the stakes are really that high. If we want to prevent that from happening, I think it's worthwhile to try to persuade application developers to not use inaccessible GUI toolkits, particularly for new projects. We can do that at the same time that we work on making more GUIs accessible.
> I think it's worthwhile to try to persuade application developers to not use inaccessible GUI toolkits, particularly for new projects. We can do that at the same time that we work on making more GUIs accessible.
Can we? People don't typically work on tools they don't intend to use. Where are the people doing the fixing going to come from if the conventional wisdom is "even if you use this for a side project, you're harming disabled people?"
Another way of framing your suggestion here is that toolkits with the resources to make themselves accessible without community help will always dominate toolkits that don't have those resources. That stifles progress for anyone.
> But in the meantime, until it's fixed, a disabled person could fail to get a particular job, or even lose a job they already have, due to an inaccessible application.
This kind of stake-raising honestly feels toxic to me, sometimes. You can make the same argument about almost anything. Eventually, you're going to get tuned out, because the knee-jerk reaction expressed to any new project is "well, you didn't do thing X I wanted, so I refuse to care even if the project has merit."
What's wrong with saying "hey, this is cool, but be aware if you wanna use wxWidgets for production app, know it's inaccessible and so you'll have more work to do to make your app accessible, which I assume you want to do, because it's the right (and often profitable!) thing to do"?
Why do we have to escalate it to "If you make side projects with wxWidgets, you're encouraging people to use them for production apps and therefore causing disabled people to lose their jobs"? It's purposefully taking everything in the most negative way possible.
Put another way, how is your argument distinct from the following: "Working on Audacity, a project for audio, privileges hearing people over Deaf people, and therefore could deprive Deaf people of programming jobs would go to text-based projects if there were fewer commercial audio engineering products helping people to replace text resources (blogs, etc.) with audio (podcasts, etc.). Therefore, Audacity is harmful and one should not work on it."
Of course the problem is fixable. But in the meantime, until it's fixed, a disabled person could fail to get a particular job, or even lose a job they already have, due to an inaccessible application. It's important to remember that the stakes are really that high. If we want to prevent that from happening, I think it's worthwhile to try to persuade application developers to not use inaccessible GUI toolkits, particularly for new projects. We can do that at the same time that we work on making more GUIs accessible.