This is perhaps more of a political question - but I am interested to know thoughts on rephrasing "make a contribution to society" to "participate within society".
The phrase "contribute to society" is also used in the first sentence of the product vision.

The difference being an expectation of contributing / performing work, which might not be suitable to all users.
Lowering barriers for employment and education is great - but I've also heard user stories about NVDA aiding participation in society in other ways, e.g. social platforms.

Maybe this can be a separate added sentence rather than rephrasing this one, mentioning that NVDA aims to enable users to participate in society, outside education and employment.

I strongly agree with @seanbudd. Participation is related to something much more active than productive contribution, which may not be possible for everyone due to expectations and considerations about what productivity is. Contribution sounds like to give something to a given social structire, and participation seems more precise meaning action,not just accepting and helping.

Some good points here.
As context, ever since the beginning Jamie and I have always said "contribute to society" as we believe that everyone has a right to contribute to society, though some may require some extra tools to do so.
Also note that the statement says "allow", I.e. we are allowing people to contribute if they wish, not forcing or expecting them to.
"Participate" may be a more acceptable word. What are your thoughts @jcsteh ? I think both have their own valid need. "participate in and or contribute to society" is what I would want, but perhaps "participate" covers both enough.

This is an interesting question. I've always used the word "contribute" because I strongly believe that everyone has a right but also a responsibility to contribute to society in some way. Historically, even where people with disabilities might not have been excluded from participating in certain aspects of society, there were more often excluded from contributing because they didn't have the right tools or because they weren't given the right opportunities. I believe this also created a situation where this norm became so firmly established that even where opportunities and tools became available, some people with disabilities didn't contribute (and perhaps didn't even feel they should have to) even though they could have. Given the right tools and opportunities, I don't think anyone should be excluded from this responsibility or the rights that come with it. Reflecting on this, I do realise this stance comes to some extent from a position of privilege. Just because I have opportunities doesn't mean that everyone does.

Also, it's worth noting that contributing to society doesn't necessarily mean traditional contribution. You don't have to work a paid job and pay taxes to contribute. Perhaps you volunteer where it's needed most, etc.

All of that said, I think it's reasonable to say "participate in and contribute to society". I don't think I'd want to drop contribute to - I still think this is important for all the reasons outlined above - but adding "participate" makes it clear that we think both are important. As @michaelDCurran noted, "enables" also makes it clear that we want to enable these things, but that we can't force or require our users to do them.

I think that under-represented people like deaf and blind should be mentioned too.

I agree we must consider deaf-blind users always. I welcome any ideas on how that could be worded.
I would suggest though that The vision statement should continue to target just one group. So far it is "blind and vision impaired people", which of course is a superset containing "deaf-blind". So Deaf-blind people are certainly not excluded here.

• Should we make the group more explicit and say "blind, vision impaired, and deaf-blind"? Sounds very clunky and confusing to me.
• Can we extend "language, location and economic status" to include "abilities" or "other sensory abilities"?
• Should we add a third sentence talking explicitly about ensuring that blind and vision impaired people of all abilities are included?
• What about motor and cognitive abilities?
  The vision statement can certainly be a perfect world we strive towards, but it also should be attainable, and not so large that we could never manage it.
  How ever we improve this statement, we will also need to ensure it is backed up by the guiding principles. E.g. if we do acknowledge motor abilities, then we should add voice input to the multimodal goal. Which although is the right thing to do, we also commit the project to ensuring that voice input is actually available.
  Thoughts anyone?

• Should we make the group more explicit and say "blind, vision impaired, and deaf-blind"? Sounds Sounds very clunky and confusing to me.

I agree: this is confusing and redundant.

Can we extend "language, location and economic status" to include "abilities" or "other sensory abilities"?

I think we can extend "language, location and economic status", but I prefer sensory characteristics instead of abilities, since characteristic sounds more qualitative instead of something measurable in terms of numerical values. Anyway I'm not a native English speaker.

What about motor and cognitive abilities?

I thought about this too, and even mental or psichological states, not necessarily, but also mental illness. In Spain usually it's distinguished between cognitive and psichosocial (previously named mental) disabilities. I understand that NVDA itself may not contain specific code for mental abilities, but the code ofconduct aims to decrease stress, so I think that maybe mentioned in this principles.

I have tried to address your points in my last commit. However, I have chosen to keep with the word 'abilities', as I believe that is still the most suitable word in English.
I removed language, location and economic status from the first sentence, and moved it to its own third sentence, extending it to include sensory, physical, cognitive, and mental abilities. I also added a specific example to the multimodal section of the guiding principles, which specifically mentions deaf-blind users being able to use NVDA with Braille alone.

For me is good. Thanks.