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Open Source Accessibility
tbray writes "The strongest push-back against Massachusetts' effort to institute open, non-proprietary document formats has come from the accessibility community, who claim that Open-Source desktop software lags behind Windows; and thus that a transition to Open Document will amount to discrimination against the blind and those with other disabilities. This is serious stuff. Peter Korn, who's an Accessibility Architect at Sun, has written a massive piece that provides a general introduction to the subject, a discussion of how Open Source is doing on the the accessibility front (things could be worse, but they could be a lot better), and finally, a detailed look at the (interesting) history and (uncertain) future of these issues in Massachusetts. Anyone in Open Source who thinks they can ignore accessibility issues is probably wrong. Getting any younger? Eyes as good as they used to be? This is everybody's issue."
I'm not an expert (as a matter of fact, I'm not even qualified to be called ignorant on the subject), but what can we do to make things better? Surely this is not an insurmountable problem and given the rather substantial savings for government institutions (ignoring the lobbying payola), you would think the people with the purse strings would have an interest in this answer as well.
Light grey text on a white background with salmon-colored links. That's just great on the ol' eyes!
What is the common good? Who does the common good include?
and for the remainder of people, OpenOffice.org will work just as well under Windows for the folks that need the Accesibility tools, until Linux catches up (not long)
(It's never too late to join the Renaissance)
I can see it coming =) Seriously, I dont think that accessibility is the biggest obstacle, or the primary target. Inconsistancies in the GUI make it difficult for people to get used to Linux, even if they have no sight or hearing handicaps.
http://www.automatiq.se
In the Massachusetts case it doesn't just have to be OSS in use. Surely some office software vendor will provide support for OpenDocument AND accessibility.
;)
I mean there is more than one office software vendor isn't there?
Yes, yes. I am new here
Clearly, the lowest common denominator would be anyone less fortunate than you are. And the common good would be to marginalize those people as much as possible. Just as long as you're above the cutoff line for lowest common denominator, there shouldn't be any problems, should there?
Oh wait, were you making a joke? Sometimes my Republican-dar isn't sensitive enough.
steampunk web design
Where as in a big profit motivated company may not want to spend time and money to go beyond covering the majority.
MicroSofts' somewhat more accessible Office suite is free to implement the Open Document standard just like any and all other applications.
You see, that's the beauty of it; any (specialized for a certain disability) application can implement the standard at no cost or risk besides the development itself.
Personally, I'm waiting for a bunch of BSD-like licensed libraries that implement translation of Open Document from and to other common formats like HTML, plain text, LaTeX, PDF, etc so anybody can suffice with just a few lines of code to support the Open Document format.
Slashdot social media options: AIM, ICQ, Yahoo, Jabber and Mobile Text. Why no MySpace?
Actually, you'd think the libs would fight the "evil corporation" that is Microsoft and force them to support OpenDocument.
Supplies!
TFA actually has considerable praise for open source's accessibility in itself:
Another important question is the extent to which the Open Document file format itself supports or fails to support accessibility. This comes up for things like storing the alternate text tag for an image, or noting the relationships of labels with the objects they label in on-line forms. While a thorough examination of the file format specifically for these issues still needs to be done, much of ODF is based on standard web technologies like SMIL for audio and multimedia, and SVG for vector graphics, which have and continue to be vetted by the World Wide Web Accessibility Initiative processes. We also know that two of the existing applications that currently read/write ODF can export Tagged PDF files in support of PDF accessibility, and Adobe has already conducted some tests to verify that accessibility across that translation is preserved (and thus must exist in the original ODF file). Finally, at this very moment the OASIS Technical Committee that created ODF is looking into forming a specific subcommittee to examine ODF for just these accessibility issues and address any shortcomings found.
This is in stark contrast to proprietary file formats like those used by Microsoft Office. Those formats are totally opaque, with no peer review of accessibility issues possible. Thus we cannot objectively tell how well the Microsoft Office file format supports accessibility, or say whether it does a better or worse job than ODF.
Real Daleks don't climb stairs - they level the building.
Supporting people with accessibility is in the common good. Plain
fact is that if you have poor sight then you either use windows
or ignore the desktop (which you can do with emacspeak for instance).
This is a poor state of affairs.
Ironically, slashdot has a "type what you can see in the box" check for anonymous posting which is TOTALLY UNACCESSIBLE. Get it fixed guys.
Phil
At least for another 30 years or so...
These are highly specialized things. The reason there's not a lot of free software in this area is that there's just not a lot of demand for it at all, in either the Windows world, or the free one.
I don't really see a problem, though. It seems reasonable to make an exception with open formats for those who need aid. We let seeing-eye dogs in where pets aren't allowed.
And as far as the public face goes - dissemination of info to the public, that is - that should really be in 508 compliant HTML, shouldn't it? Which means no Word, PDF, openoffice, etc. anyway.
Mod me down and I will become more powerful than you can possibly imagine!
Some were incensed at the American's with Disabilties Act (ADA) when it was passed, wondering why they had to go through all this trouble to accomodate a tiny fraction of the population. But the disabled population is not that small and it grows larger every year due to various factors most people don't think about or recognize.
Before getting back into computing, I spent 8 years in social services, working with the autistic and developmentally disabled. You don't realize what challenges there are to everyday living until you see how hard it is for anyone with any type of disability to do the simple tasks we "normals" take for granted.
Ultimately MA is going to have to decide whether it can afford to turn its back on a small slice of its populace or continue the process of inclusion. I'm hoping for the latter, since within the disabled spectrum, there are plenty of people still capable of working and being productive members of society.
Even if I lost the use of my legs, I could still program...
GetOuttaMySpace - The Anti-Social Network
What really needs to be done is for the accessibility lobby to put pressure on Microsoft to support Opendoc.
Microsoft is using them. The one thing Microsoft can't have is an open format supported for Office documents. Office is the real monopoly, windows loses a lot of its lockin if it weren't for Office.
Microsoft will fight this tooth and nail. What Mass. should do if the Opendoc inititave fails, is mandate that their provider of office software publically provide specifications for their file formats. If Microsoft refuses that, I think they should return to court on antitrust violations.
I'm sick of Microsoft always getting away with playing dirty. And it is playing dirty to use people who have accessibility issues using a comptuer to maintain your monopoly.
but the fact that not all people can afford to spend over $100 on proprietary software for a proprietary format that is _FORCED_ by a government... that is a little bit more of an issue to me when it could be accesible for free using an OpenSource solution...
Since a lot of that accessibility stuff simply plugs into Word this is just another argument for forcing Micro$oft to adopt ODF...
I've got a friend who has wet macular degeneration: he's slowly going blind, has been for years. He uses a 21-inch monitor, and every time he gets a new machine, I have to install his magnification software (sorry, the name escapes me). It costs several hundred dollars, and he's bought copies for NT 4, Win2K and XP through the years. He cussed for a solid ten minutes when I showed him KMagnifier, as it does everything his Windows magnifier does, and then some.
No folly is more costly than the folly of intolerant idealism. - Winston Churchill
Getting any younger?
Yes, I am.
Ydco co
It appear from the article that without multiple vendor support MS Office products would have the same accessability problems as Open Office. It would seem that getting the vendors on board who do text-to-speech screen readers and those who write comprehension software for those with cognitive imparement would go a long way to solving the problems that are percieved. For the most part though the article does say that Open Office does meet the needs of a great many with minor dissabilities. At what point does one decide that a program should be avoided?
"Whatever is good for RapidEye is the common good". Or so I would surmise.
If liberals are bleeding hearts pandering to the lowest common denominators, conservatives are greedy savages who only pander to themselves.
Whoah, hold on! Protecting the rights of the disabled is not, as you say, sinking to the lowest common denominator. This is serious stuff, and they're right: this is an area where the open source software is deficient.
This isn't just grasping for straws, here. I used to work for the gov, and accessability is, and always has been, a big issue. All our web pages had to be ADA compliant, etc...
Of course it would be a total shame to see this make Mass. switch, but if OSS developers want adoption by government institutions, they'd better make accessability a consideration, otherwise this will always be a roadblock, and one that government institutions can't help but acknowledge.
[...] the accessibility community, who claim that Open-Source desktop software lags behind Windows; and thus that a transition to Open Document will amount to discrimination against the blind and those with other disabilities.
How on earth can an open-source document format be a discrimination against the blind and/or handicapped?
If it's a documented standard -- and it will be -- an open-source document format can actually be converted into other documented formats (ASCII text, ISO-8859-X text, CSV, RTF, HTML, etc, even sound waves through a vocal synthetizer) that are actually easier to use for blind users!!
Compare and contrast this with the plight of handicapped people who are now using proprietary document formats, created by proprietary applications under proprietary operating systems... and who find out, the hard way, that their applications do not work anymore with their Braille readers under the newest version of the operating system. Or that they have to go through countless hoops to convert the proprietary document into another proprietary format, that they have no way to check for accuracy and/or problems. Or that can be endlessly confused by the changes that each version of ____________ [insert application name here] intoduces in its already confusing GUI.
I worked for about a year and a half for a non-profit that was dedicated to improving the access of blind people to computer technology. Those were the days of DOS and BBS, a time many blind people remember as a true 'golden age', since most information was textual, and there was very little that could not be done with a simple Braille terminal emulator and/or speech synthetizer.
Windows changed all that, for the worst. I knew people who used to be good programmers despite their handicaps who found themselves out of a job. Others that found themselves increasingly locked-out of the Internet revolution because the www was increasingly becoming graphical.
And now, people attack Open Document on the basis that it creates discrimination against blind people? Come on, that is the most ridiculous argument I have heard in a long while. If anything, a truly universal, XML-based document format would be perfect for these users!
In the worst possible case, I will volunteer to write converters to make sure these new documents can be exported into proprietary apps. And I am not joking: this was actually one of the things I did at the non-profit I mentioned above.
The right to offend is far more important than the right not to be offended. (Rowan Atkinson)
Can we assume you're using it?
No folly is more costly than the folly of intolerant idealism. - Winston Churchill
A blind friend of mine uses JAWS on his computer. He says he can't use Firefox because of JAWS' inability to work well with anything but IE.
I'm sorry, this is absolutely riddiculous. The last time I checked being blind / deaf / disabled didn't stop you from programming. Providing you have the mental aptitude you can do pretty much anything with a computer - look at Stephen Hawking - he writes books on physics that's got to be harder than programming!
If the various 'disabled' communities don't like the support that their 'given' with an open source project then they need to get programming the support themselves or raising funds so they can fund coffee addled nerds to do it for them.
In fact, if this is the only thing thats stopping Open Office being supported by local governments then I'll be supprised if its not in the next release.
Scared of flying, pointy things snce 1979!
Open Source.
/. articles whining about problems and having names in them.
I write open source because I like to do. I don't care if the stuff I write sucks plain ass or takes away the jobs of millions.
I don't care about hyper-hysteric
You want to know why?
Because I don't have to care about stupid whining.
That's the reason why open source might take a little longer but still it is written by happy programmers.
I'm not going paid for writing open source stuff. So stop your stupid 08/15-user whinge and use Windows instead. I lose neither money nor nerves if you do so.
Now's the chance for open source advocates to show the power of open source. If enough volunteers step forward to resolve the accessibility issues in OpenOffice so that Massachusetts can go forward with their Open Document initiative then it will be a huge feather in the open source cap.
What about accessability of those who can't afford to spend $500 on an office suite, and $200 on an operating system. I'm aware of the real meaning of accessiblity, but lets take a look at the real problems. By sticking with a closed format, you're making the document way less "accessible" then if it is in some open format. Open formats also allow anyone who wants to to make a more accessible application. With a closed format, it will only be as accessible as microsoft wants to make it.
Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.
I'd say they're right. Maybe they are arguing for the wrong reasons, but with the ADA, they've got a valid argument.
Having worked in accessibility for years I'd say that open source is the friend of accessibility. A document that can be easily read in any standards-compliant browser or application, or easily converted into accessible form (eg. speech), is most welcome.
The main problem is documents which can only be opened in the particular application that generated them. Microsoft documents are an example of this; although as they're so popular, pretty much all accessibility companion-style programs sit on top of Word and change the style of delivery (style, size, clarity, to speech, etc) appropriately.
So if everyone used open source, standards-compliant documents, there would be no need for the majority of accessibility programs. I think moving to open source document formats removes much of the accessibility problem at the source, rather than working round it, which is what most solutions do at the minute.
I won't even bother with those too cowardly to post with their own names...
As to Joking/Republican-dar - you need to get BOTH calibrated; 'cause I'm neither! =-)
"Murderer? Well, that's a harsh word. I prefer to think of myself as a Mortality Technician."
I'm on a team that manages a very large website for a state government agency. We are, as of recently, facing new statewide standards for IT accessibility. What we are finding out is that developing accessible applications and content actually goes hand-in-hand with other development best practices. For example, it's far easier to develop a site template that uses CSS for all aspects of presentation than it is to maintain alternative text-only content for screen readers (which is a requirement of the accessibility standards).
At least on the web side, if you already follow good development practices, maintain W3C compliance, etc., then adding accessibility to the mix isn't that much of a stretch. We've got some legacy applications left over that are going to be hell to bring into compliance because these practices weren't followed - the HTML's all mixed in with the logic.
We've got a lot of work ahead, but we don't consider it a hardship - our site will be easier to maintain in the long run, because accessibility standards just happen to encourage a highly maintainable site design.
perl -e 'foreach(values %SIG){$_="IGNORE";}while(){}'
What does one necessarily have to do with the other? Microsoft can put in the fileformat in their software just like OpenSource apps.
There are dozens of people working on screen readers for various linux GUIs. Just do a google search for "linux screen reader". But none of them are as full-featured as JAWS, and certainly none of them are taught to blind students in school so it is unlikely that they are much use to the general blind community at the moment.
All it would take is for some reputable Windows screen reader maker, like Freedom Scientific or GWMicro to come out with a version for KDE or something. Certainly those folks have the skills and knowledge of the blind community to do it right and be quickly adopted by blind users. Why doesn't some Linux group cozy up to one of those two companies, get the product developed, and put this issue behind them?
Sheesh!
What will they come up with next? That Open Source software is too expensive? Not customizable enough? Putting too much power into the monopolists hands?
Or maybe, staircase manufacturers should lobby goverments to forbid ramps and elevators. Indeed, on a ramp, the elderly may slip, and an elevator is unusable by a retard. They harm accessibility, bring back the stairs!
ODF does not exclude windows. Microsoft is free to implement ODF like everyone else. Moving to ODF will be difficult for everyone, not just the disabled, the argument is that in the long run it will be better for everyone, including the disabled.
I don't thinks that you can roll out ODF in a day and things will just run smoothly. There will have to be a transition period where documents are available and accepted in multiple formats.
Wanted: Clever sig, top $ paid, all offers considered.
As a government entity, when Massachusetts purchases software, it has to be done through a competitive bid process. The state is simply saying that "needs to use and support the Open Document file format" should be added to the requirements list for those bids. Adding another clause about "needs to adequately support impaired users" is equally easy.
Actually, the most popular screen reader on the market, JAWS by Freedom Scientific, only works consistantly with IE and nothing else. That is because Freedom Scientific has a very cozy relationship with MS and codes their screen reader to work specifically with IE. If the OpenDocument people want the same level of screen reader support that MS gets from Freedom Scientific and GWMicro, they are going to have to develop the same tight relationship with these mainstream assistive technology companies that MS now enjoys.
My grandfather started having eye problems around 90 so I bought him a used 21 inch ergo 1600 monitor. Set it to 800x600 and now he is a happy camper.
I wouldn't recommend that - there are some places where you really don't want papercuts.
Besides, if you can't see the computer screen, where you can adjust the contrast, brightness, and font size, and perhaps even get a screen reader to read the text to you, just how are you going to see text on paper ?
Forget magic. Any technology distinguishable from divine power is insufficiently advanced.
So here's what you want. You want highly-skilled developers to volunteer months of their time to write this free of charge. Then you'll turn around and charge MA $100/hr to implement OOo. Sounds wonderful. I'll get right on that. I love how all the Open Source junkies want developers to donate so they can charge big bucks to deploy the Open Source software.
Everybody loves FOSS. How come there isn't an FOSC(Free Open Source Consulting) withing the OS movement? And don't talk about how you installed Red Hat for your grandma either. I'm talking about taking 3 months out of your personal time to help deploy a Linux solution for a mid-sized business and not charge them a dime. That's what the OSS developers do every day.
Whenever an accessibility issue comes up, I have to remind everyone how it feels to operate a computer in accessibility mode. Turn on all the accessibility stuff you know about, then turn the monitor off and see how you do. We have blind people in our office that use computers with the monitor off -- until you've seen that in person, you can't understand how accessible computers /technology must be.
stuff |
If I can't open the document in the future because a future version of Microsoft Word fails to recognize my word document made with Word 2000, how will the accessibility features help anything? The motivation behind open document format is to preserve the ability to open these documents in the future.
And if accessibility is such a big issue, couldn't concerned users have both Open Office and Word installed, then have Open Office save the file as a word document, so said disabled person can use Word to view it.
When Microsoft Office did not offer such accessibility features? Where was the pissing and moaning then?
Let's not forget that People's Republik of Taxachussetts (Sorry, I live in Mass, I get disgusted by the rampant tax-and-spend mentality that has reigned here for years) is doing this to cut back on spending as well as to make documents accessible for as long as technology exists without dealing with vendor lock - and yet, for those folks who have handicaps which prevent their working with the current version of OOo/Star Office, they are going to make reasonable accomodations by giving those users Microsoft Office (they've been up-front about this from the very beginning) and others will convert documents as-needed for those employees.
This whole "Accessibility issue" is merely a strawman Microsoft is trying to raise, because they are intent on not supporting OpenDoc because if they were forced to support the OpenDoc spec, then vendor lock is a thing of the past and the office suite market will once again be competitive. Who knows? Maybe IBM will bring back Lotus Smartsuite (AMI Pro was great in its prime) and maybe Corel will fix WordPerfect and make it into a viable product again, because if competition is introduced, there will be incentive for others to put R&D into their office suites, and then products can be chosen by both technical merit and cost, and not due to vendor lock due to purchase decisions made 10+ years ago.
The Commonwealth of Massachusetts already has plans for reasonable accomodations. The law doesn't require that EVERYTHING be accessible, but that accomodations be made for those who need the accessibility, and by offering Microsoft Office to those dealing with physical handicaps, they have fulfilled that legal AND ethical requirement.
The Christian Right is Neither (Christian nor right). See: Matthew 23, Matthew 25, Ezekiel 16:48-50
(sarcasam (making fun of parent post not REAL opinion))
No shit!!! I hate how those handicapped freaks get all the good parking spots. And how come my tax dollars have to pay for some stupid ramp up the courthouse steps for a few old farts in wheelchairs???? Those bleeding heart libs are ruining everything!!!! Why don't we just take those handicapped leeches on society out back, put a bullet in the head and move on for the common good?!?!? I swear, when I pull up the the liquor store just down the road from my trailer and see that handicapped van parked right in front so I have to walk an extra 20 feet, I get sooooo mad I could spit!!!!
"reality has a well-known liberal bias" - Steven Colbert
You're mixing apples and oranges here.
In Mass, we're talking about government. Government has a responsibility to represent, support and answer to everyone. It's the very reason for government's existence. Reasonable efforts need to be made to support those with disabilities. I'd suspect that we would disagree on what constitutes "reasonable effort" but we do agree that disabled people have a right to access government services.
Slashdot, on the other hand, is not a government service. In a rational society, it would have no legal obligation to support disabled individuals in any way. I'm not saying that it shouldn't provide support, only that it should not face legal repercussions if it does not do so. Of course, we don't live in a rational society. We live in one where a restaurant owner can be fined or shut down because the toilet is a quarter of an inch too close to the wall. We live in this society. This is the kind of crap that leads to "bleeding heart liberal" comments like the one above.
"The legitimate powers of government extend only to such acts as are injurious to others." Thomas Jefferson.
Yeah!! And while we're at it, why bother with those Islamic browsers like FF and Opera? Marginal stuff! Anybody not using IE deserves what they get... (foams at mouth, waves Taser gun around, goes red, sees red - everywhere...)
There, I said it. Mod me down. I really don't care.
It is just a matter of time before people everywhere (even people with disabilities) start using Open Source software as a legitimate alternative to Office (for example.) But, like everything else new to the market, it will have to make a name for itself first.
OpenOffice 2.0 is a great start. Integrated voice-recognition, closed-captioning and text readers will come with time. For now, just get the product out there, get as many people as possible using it as their first choice in software. I believe it will follow in the footsteps of Google's success and become as ubiquitous as Office is today. New innovations and features will come with time.
Read more here:
http://www.openoffice.org/dev_docs/features/2.0/
He who knows best knows how little he knows. - Thomas Jefferson
Look, the standard is open as opposed to closed like Microsoft. Openness gives options, not takes them away.
If they need a reader filter for it they can write one. It's not like there are no programmer interfaces for the blind. If anything, OpenSource makes it easier to implement options for special a needs person. In my opinion they should stop begging for someone to do the job for them and get to work learning how to do it for themselves.
You can open a door to knowledge, but most people are lazy apathetic self created tech morons, who will try to claw your eye's out while you guide them through the door.
No, there really isn't liberalism here in Massachussets - just typical politics. That is, whoever has the largest lobbying budget and pulls the most puppet strings will get their way. This is true at the local level, at the state level, and of course at the Federal level.
No, this is not flamebait, it's just the simple truth regarding politics in general. When was the last time any elected official acted in the best benefit of the common good rather than pander to lobbiests? See DMCA for example, and the broadcast flag, and current efforts to change P2P trading to a felony so that 14-yr-old children can be permanently marked as non-voting felons before they're even of voting age despite record companies' posting great profits in the face of P2P networks.
The Christian Right is Neither (Christian nor right). See: Matthew 23, Matthew 25, Ezekiel 16:48-50
I saw a worse site once. It had that, only more obuscured, or an audio file that read something off. Worked well, exept that the link to the audio version was in 3 point font :-(
Can't really RTFA :-)
Anyone with any visual impairments (like myself) can use ZoomText, or another comparable programm on windows, like they did with MS Office. No big difference, and not openoficce's job to fix.
As for the blind.... I'm sure one could hack together a screen reader for ODT, at least? It's a bloody xml file, after all. Provided the screen reader/braille reader already works with windows, it should be trivial.
What bothers me more personally is how IE systematically ignores the 'larger font sizé' option on a lot of webistes. I figure this is because of some use of css, but I didn't put too much effort in finding out what exactly causes the problem.
Well, the talking kind, right ?
The Microsoft camp seems to be rather oportunistic in when they choose to extol the virtue of handicap-accessiblity
Think global, act loco
Open Format != Open Source
-mix
Well, we're not that far off the vision part. Not sure how you're going to fit the batteries inside your head to power the laser beams though.1 2/0840243&tid=126&tid=14
http://science.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/11/
What it actually says is:
"...a transition to Open Document will force Microsoft to make changes to their business practices that will amount to discrimination against their blind lust for money and therefore they are lobbying hard to buy the voices of
the blind and those with other disabilities."
My blog
Whoah, hold on! Protecting the rights of the disabled is not, as you say, sinking to the lowest common denominator.
Might it be better to say that protecting the rights of the disabled need not be sinking to the lowest common denominator?
Most if not all accessibility standards can be implemented in ways which do not detract from the ability of those who don't require them work to the best of their abiliy. It would be difficult to argue, for example, that cutting a small ramp into a curb and sidewalk for those who can't step up onto it detracts from the ability of those who don't need the ramp to use the sidewalk or the road.
However, most of those standards can also be implemented in ways which do detract from the the experience fo. Going back to the curb example, if the ramp were to be built out from the curb rather than being cut into it, those using the road would face a small but very real obstacles at the points where the ramps were built. This would be more of an issue for wheeled vehicles than pedestrians, but it would affect a group negatively, and the point of accessibility is to not do that.
If Office were to support OpenDocument, then there would be no problem here: those who require the greater accessibility of Office could use it, while those who preferred OpenOffice.Org and didn't need Office for accessibility could use OOO. Last I checked, the law only mandates a file format, not what app is used to work with the files. As long as an app supports the standardized format, nothing else matters. It could be open-source or closed-source, made by Microsoft or Apple or some loose band of programmers, and it could support whatever other file formats the creators desired. As long as support for this particular format is somewhere on the list of features, nothing else matters, and that is as it should be.
Standards are protocols, not applications. Massachusetts understood this when they passed their OpenDocument law. It's not about screwing Microsoft over, though that may happen if MS continues to stubbornly refuse to support real standards. It's about making documents accessible and interoperable.
This latest attack is an attempt to confuse people by pretending that the issue is what software is being used rather than the file format. If M$ Office has better accessibility - great! By all means use it - provided it can read/write a public format. Their complaint is largely irrelevant to the actual issues.
Isn't Open Office on windoze too? The last time I checked, moving to the open doc format didn't mention anything about requiring all users to switch OS's...
What's being missed here is the difference in man hours between "It works" and "It's accessible". It's the difference between a CLI script and an MVC GUI - what would you rather spend your free time on? Of course if you're getting paid...
Well I'm afraid that much as I love my Ubuntu desktop I still find that, compared to my Windows machine, it's a royal pain to get a lot of things done due to the inconsistent keyboard support.
So I for one would welcome any improvement in accessibility as that's got to inprove the keyboard support.
On the good side the keyboard support is a hell of a lot better than it used to be but too many apps seem to include full keyboard support for mousable actions as an afterthought.
you mean it WAS true in VS 2003. VS 2005 fixes all of it, uses flow layout. It also writes standards compliant code.
+ it was not hard to switch settings to make it 508 compliant. Of course i do wish there was a way to use no client side scripting, but that wont happen.
First, it shoudl be noted that there is no reason why screen readers like Jaws should have any more problem with open source software than with commercial software. Of course, it should also be mentioned that different platforms have different capabilities regarding accessibility. Linux is admittedly not the best right now, but neither is Windows (try using it without Jaws). Probably the best is Mac OS X -- it has built-in screen reading that works fine with open source software. What this tells me is that people looking for accessibility should contact their operating system vendor as accessibility can definitely be built into the system (and yes, Linux does have to put some effort into this department). There are many places already using open formats successfully and apparently without sacrificing accessibility. Saugus, Mass. switched to open formats years ago (well before the rest of Massachusetts) and has had no obvious problems.
Adding ODF support to MS Office was listed in the article as one of the preferable solutions to this issue; indeed, that Microsoft is not doing that and instead wielding the disabled community as a weapon against OpenDocument is one of the points that's clearly made.
Second, OpenOffice's accessibility functionality is not second-tier to MS Office's. Rather, all the useful accessibility functionality is coded not into MS Office but into the 3rd-party solutions which interoperate with it. Sure, the end effect is the same -- but it's considerably harder to blame the suite.
... and also someone who loves open source, I have come to the same conclusion myself -- that Open Source has a way to go before it can stand shoulder to shoulder with its proprietary counterparts. The fact is, open source is already at a disadvantage when it comes to accessibility -- because so many of the accessibility features out there are being pushed by the vendor (making them effectively proprietary).
Consider Flash. It is, as some of you may be surprised to know, accessible -- but only when used with a Microsoft toolchain. That's right; for users with special needs to use Flash, it has to be being rendered through Macromedia's plugin (obviously), in MSIE, to one of a very limited group of screen readers only available for Windows (JAWS, WindowEyes, one or two others) and all on, you might have guessed by now, Windows platforms only. Even the Macintosh -- which is natively considerably more accessible than Windows (or any other OS, essentially) doesn't support accessible flash.
We've all heard the rumours of Microsoft releasing its "Flash Killer" application; maybe it will be natively more accessible than Flash, but then where will that leave open source and operating systems besides Windows? Does anyone think Microsoft cares about the greater good enough to want to make the spec -- much less the product -- available for any other operating system?
Now consider Adobe Acrobat. Version 7 is chock full of accessibility features that revolve around the new tagged document structure. How many apps currently generate tagged documents? Not many. Again, Adobe has partnered with Microsoft so that just about every Office product will generate tagged PDF. There are one or two other desktop publishing packages that do it. OpenOffice managed to squeak tagged PDF 2.0 into their product (and good on them for doing it) but the support is minimalistic; it is an attempt at addressing the problem but is shy of the mark as far as users with special needs go.
Never mind that OpenDocument is anyway readable on free operating systems; users with disabilities generally wouldn't touch Linux with a ten-foot pole because the screen reader software available for it is also somewhat lacking where it counts; consider JAWS by Freedom Scientific, where they employ dozens of employees to do nothing more all day long than write key mappings and shortcut-features to applications. Guess which browser is better supported in JAWS -- MSIE, or Firefox? Guess how good the custom support for OpenOffice.org is in JAWS? You would be correct to guess it is non-existent. These people have invested thousands (and in many cases, over the USD $10,000 mark) in technologies to allow them to use computers to do their jobs or just live; it's unfair enough to have something continue to be inaccessible to them, but considerably worse (and understandably frustrating) to have something be accessible then have it taken away for the benefit of others.
The only potential saving grace in the browser market is the release of Opera for free; since it has better innate accessibility features than either Firefox or MSIE (which has virtually none) there may be some mass migration to these systems. HTML is inherently one of the most accessible forms of markup available today because of its strong, structural meaning and the fact that it is one of the very few languages that are completely open, appropriate for most uses, and heavily wide-spread.
Several opens-source projects have already made accessibility an important part of their web projects; for example, Plone and especially Atutor are star examples of how you can build a great application and still have it accessible to users with disabilities by design.
I would like to congratulate all authors and participants on those projects and others who work at making open source software accessible to everyone, not just the enabled majority. I would like to encourage everyone else to do some re
Sigh...why won't the accessibility community see the bigger picture on this??
I accept that at the moment accessibility software (such as screen readers etc) on Linux (this is also to some degree and issue for the Apple platform) is definitely behind the Windows world simply because of the refusal of commercial accessibility software vendors to support any other platform other than Windows (and if anyone thinks this is because they are living 'hand to mouth', that is not the case, they price there software to cope with the smaller size of the marketplace).
Yes the Linux desktop still needs work when it comes to accessibility (the Open Source community are still working on this), but Windows is not a wonderful world of accessibility either, in some cases it is quite horrific what you have to do to get accessibility information but that's beside the point.
The file format is not at issue here, OpenDocument can be opened on both platforms and accessibility users can still use Windows to read out OpenDocument files, they don't need to use Linux until its ready.
When a file format is fully documented and open for everyone to see, then it follows that the document will be much easier to access and interpret for the purposes of accessibility (or any other interpretation purpose for that matter).
When a file format is undocumented, closed, and proprietary, then it follows that the work involved in accessing and interpreting that document for the purposes of accessibility is a hell of a lot worse than using an open document file format.
OpenDocument is a win for the accessiblity community, hopefully they will see this before they shoot themselves in the foot.
Jaws 7.0 will support Firefox 1.5
Not sure how you're going to fit the batteries inside your head to power the laser beams though. I'm sure there's plenty of space for batteries in his head.
This is just too obvious. Microsoft should fire the astroturf campaigner they hired to set it up. (see my older comment).
Blind people lack (good) eyes, not brains. They'd not seriously cry over a document format, which is a backend-issue, when their specific problem is with frontend presentation.
Heck M$ Word will almost certainly include OpenDocument import (it will, of course, lack OpenDocument export), so there's really no reason here.
Follow the money, people. Who stands to lose if MA goes ahead? M$, nobody else. Using disabled people is just going for the sympathy bonus. If this doesn't work, they'll probably dig up some arcane Word feature that can somehow be used to stop your kids from accessing your Word file with the porn URLs in it and cry "but the chiiiildren! Will nobody think of the chiiildren?".
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
As a Open Source developer what I need is a set of web sites that centralize the Open Source resources for accessibility. I have needed to write interfaces for the blind but I was unable to find many good Open Resources. We need someone to take the lead and start centralizing information on how to build a good accessibility interfaces.
No, the kind that allows you to write as large as you need, and to use a magnifying glass to read it.
> if you can't see the computer screen, where you can adjust the contrast, brightness, and font size, and perhaps even get a screen reader to read the text to you, just how are you going to see text on paper ?
A lightbulb and a magnifying glass have done quite nicely for at least a hundred years before the computer monitor was created.
Accessibility is relatively easy to fix, brought to the developer's attention, it could be in the next release (the Linux desktop has had accesibility tools, i.e. xmagnify, since BEFORE Windows. KDE and Gnome also have a strong showing.). Most likely the oversight was due to the natural assumption that accessibility is already taken care of at the operating system level. But of course, don't take it from somebody's who's actually programmed. Use this as ammo for as long as you draw breath that Linux users hate the handicapped, and that Stallman and Torvalds go around town knocking over wheelchairs so that their occupants spill into traffic.
"That's why they make these amazing things -- discovered recently, I believe -- called glasses, ..."
They can help with some conditions, and cataracts can usually be cleared by a simple operation. Glaucoma, Age-Related Macrodegeneration, and other _common_ eye problems of increasing age are more difficult. Reduced ability to note contrast can be a real disaster area when trying to read some web sites - especially on a LCD display where you cannot crank-up the contrast like you can on a CRT.
... for Massachusetts to pay Freedom Scientific to customize JAWS to work with Open Office. This would cost a very small fraction of their current statewide Office licensing fees. It could be justified as part of making their state document processing environment compliant with the ADA and section 508.
Once the major modification effort was done, it would have to be maintained and updated in parallel with Open Office. Freedom Scientific could afford to do that, paid for out of licensing and support fees from Open Office/JAWS users.
To a Lisp hacker, XML is S-expressions in drag.
I think the problem is that it's hard to be a developer when you have these disabilities, thus there are few developers with disabilities, thus there is little software to cater to people with disabilities. It seems that this is one of the areas where the "scratch an itch" motivation actually fails, and thus open source doesn't work well.
Having said that, various aids for *nix systems have existed for ages (emacspeak, for example, is over 10 years old), and the only one person I with a disability who I have seen using a computer was using a laptop with Linux and some braille device.
So I guess it's like games; there aren't and probably won't ever be as many, as high quality non-commercial games as there are commercial ones, but there are enough of them and high enough quality to make due with.
Please correct me if I got my facts wrong.
As I understand it, Massachusetts is planning an upgrade whether they adopt OpenDocument or not. A transition to Microsoft Office 12 will cost the Commonwealth about $50 million. This estimate includes operating system upgrades and associated hardware upgrades, since older Windows versions in use by some government offices do not run the latest version of Windows, and Office 12 will only run on XP or Vista.
The estimated cost of upgrading to OpenOffice.org so that the Commonwealth can standardize on OpenDocument is about $5 million. So we have a cost savings of about $45 million. I don't know about how other Slashdot readers feel about $45 million, but personally I think that's a lot of money. Even if you suppose that the estimate is off by some whopping amount like $20 million in unforseen costs (this is the home of The Big Dig, after all), that's still $25 million in savings.
So if accessability is a major issue for Massachusetts, why not hire programmers to customize the software to suit its needs? I would imagine that hiring a few hackers to contribute to OpenOffice.org would benefit the community, advance the software by making it more desirable to other users, and still save the Commonwealth money. It would also be a nice example to other state and national goverments - if they follow suit and contribute as well, Massachusetts reaps the rewards. Companies are now doing this, so why not governments?
Of course it would be a total shame to see this make Mass. switch, but if OSS developers want adoption by government institutions, they'd better make accessability a consideration, otherwise this will always be a roadblock, and one that government institutions can't help but acknowledge.
The sad thing is, using Windows+Word is only a very short term benefit to the disabled. Accessibility features of Windows and Word are both terrible when compared to Gnome or OS X and any given program. The only way Word wins is when a third party program specifically designed to hack it's way around Window's and Word's broken support for the disabled is introduced. Since Windows+Word has such huge market share (we won't go into why) such programs exist, but the Windows platform itself absolutely sucks in terms of support for the disabled. To see it entrenched even more despite MS's shabby treatment of the disabled and refusal to acknowledge the problems is very sad indeed.
On the other hand, I don't see why this should be a barrier to the switch (other than as a political speaking point) With the switch to the open standard disabled employees can either use an alternate OS with an alternate word processor (which in the case of many disabilities is a big improvement) or the state can let them continue to use word and then run their files through a conversion script. OpenOffice can easily open and rewrite 99% of Word files. Further, with the money saved in the long-term by the state on licensing they could pay for the development of better open source programs that hack around Window's half-assed disability features with respect to OpenOffice and other programs that support Open Document.
I think it was on blackboxvoting.org that described how Diebold used some blind/disabled voters to pressure the county elections officials to purchase Diebold machines or the handicaped representatives sued the county officials.
For me it looks the same in MA. MS has no arguments against an open document standard.
Instead they form/found/support an "independent" grassroot handicaped organisation to support voice objections against a format.
Remember it is only a format and not a software. People use software to access documents of a certain format.
If Microsoft wants it's Office 200X to be used by MA officals they have to support the OpenDocument Format (and lower the price).
Grundgesetz * 23. Mai 1949 - 30. November 2007 - http://www.vorratsdatenspeicherung.de/
Dear blind and other challenged people: Please give OSS some time to do their homework. Results will be [b]way[/b] better in the long run compared to e.g. Microsoft.
On se Internetz nobody noes your German.
There are basically 2 problems :
- No or poor support from vendors to anything except MS Office
- Packaged speech recognition on platforms other than Windows
Had you take the time to read TFA (but being a shill, you could not), you would have learned the following things :
- Open Source is pretty efficient in providing accessibility API
- MS and MS Windows are the more deficient systems concerning accessibility API
- Support for accessibility from vendors is specific to MS Office in Windows
- Support for accessibility from vendors is very poor or inexistant for anything else
- OSS desktops actually offer some tools more powerful than what is available from ISV on Windows
Open Source desktops provide accessibility APIs, Jave provide accessibility API, but MS Windows do not provide any useful accessibility API. It's specifically explained in the article that JAWS made significant investment to provide accessibility tailored for MS Office, as Windows has no API for such things, for example. So it's not that open source software is deficient, but that ISV do not support anything beside MS Office. Mandating ODF would mean the present provider of accessibility tools will have an incentive to provide the support other Office suites need.
if OSS developers want adoption by government institutions, they'd better make accessability a consideration
Except that, as always, they already do and you are clueless (and you won't even read the article to be less clueless). Accessibility was one big consideration behind Gnome 2, and recently in KDE 3. It's very efficient, and for example, there are at least two (optional) libraries and apps (for example gok, at-spi) specifically for that in Gnome, and it's supported by most of the Gnome core apps (people often complain about the amount of libraries in Gnome, perhaps they will start to understand why this is the case).
The problem here is actually in Windows which has no API for that, and manufacturers that do not use Java or OSS APIs for their tools, not the dedication of OSS in accessibility, or the state of it.
Of course, the state of the API and tools dedicated to accessibility can be improved, as some bugs remain, and the features can be improved too, but the support is there and alive.
Biggest work is from manufacturers. I think JAWS (or others) can adapt their product to these API if they want to have a part of the pie.
"The Internet lives to innovate for another day," - U.S. Assistant Secretary of Commerce Michael Gallagher
Does this guy work for Microsoft? I absolutly hate this term, it is so meaningless. What ever happened to good old development of new products while improving existing ones?
Such an approach actually has tangible objectives and is far better than 'innovation' which seems to acheive little apart from increased commercialization as R&D funds are diverted to "how can we take more money off our customers" issues rather than actual product development.
I think such a statement from the U.S. Assistant Secretary of Commerce shows what the US government (and its corporate sponsors) have in store for the internet, unfortuantly.
Guess sometimes having too many tabs open is a bad thing.
Please mod down the parent (which I wrote) as it was meant for another article.
...is to make everybody blind, deaf and paralyzed.
Anybody who can see, hear or move should be charged with a hate crime.
We must be alert to the danger that public policy could become captive to a scientific-technological elite. - Eisenhower
You thought my name meant what? How very dare you!
Screen Magnification is part of Microsoft Windows, not of Microsoft office. Same goes for text-to-speech and sticky keys.
It seems that the guy compared Windows with Linux, not MS Office vs. OpenOffice.
AC said, "If liberals are bleeding hearts pandering to the lowest common denominators, conservatives are greedy savages who only pander to themselves."
By your very definition of conservatives as greedy savages, they would, in fact pander to the reality TV watching, stupid masses! Where there is interest, there is a market. Building a better mousetrap won't necessarily bring the world to your door. Case in point, Microsoft. They have never made a better mousetrap, but they have great distribution channels and a great legal department.
You're not up-to-date with your Firefox comments. Firefox 1.5 is usable with recent screen readers from Freedom Scientific (JAWS) and GW Micro (Window-Eyes). Opera does not even expose MSAA on the Windows version. It's not usable with a screen reader. The built in voice support is not suitable for blind users. Firefox 1.5 accessibility features are on par with IE's. It more than makes up for any flaws by being the first browsre to introduce accessibility for DHTML/JS/AJAX applications. This will allow companies that need to deploy section 508 compliant web applications to use the web instead of marrying any particular platform API set. See http://www.mozilla.org/access/dhtml
I prefer open system software (which open source tends more often to be, though that's not automatically the case) because it gives me better accessibility.
Because no GUI is as accessible as a stream of text in a command line window, which I can manipulate and manage any way I want. The "accessibility" controls in Windows are a poor crutch next to that.
It's 2025. After years of research, we finally found a cheap eco-friendly alternitive to gasoline. Everybody is for it, but one massive-monopoly-car-producing company doesn't want to change their engines to work with it. This car company also is the only manufaturer with handicap support.
I say we ditch the new gas... It's not like this great monopoly can change their engines when they like!
Another thing, why isn't anyone considering people who can't afford the microsoft way... Aren't they way more than the disabled?
No, I'm not mixing apples and oranges.
Government does not have a responsiblity to support those with
disability. Society has this responsibility. Any organisation which
which seeks to sell a service to society should be prepare to sell
it to everyone.
Slashdot's continual use of obscured image to "check to see if you
are a human" is very poor practice, and their entertainly "assuming
you are a human" comments would be offensive if the blind people
seeing it had not heard it a thousand times before.
I complained about this to slashdot several years ago. It's easy
to fix with an auditory alternative. They haven't done so.
Equal opportunities should be everyone's responsibility.
Phil
Q. How many disabled people's rights activists does it take to change a light bulb?
A. It's not the light bulb that needs to be changed, it's the rest of society's attitude towards the filamentally-disadvantaged that needs to be changed!
People on here seem to think that by adding the word "open source" to something it will automagically be able to singlehandedly cure cancer, solve world hunger, and make Julian fries.
Well, chances are that the supercomputer that crunches the numbers to give the data that the scientists will use to cure cancer will run on Linux.
But you got me beat on the world hunger and the Julian fries... Unless we make self replicating sentient robots that run on linux that feed starving people by making Julian fries.
"I am the king of the Romans, and am superior to rules of grammar!"
-Sigismund, Holy Roman Emperor (1368-1437)
"MA can take the money they would have spent on microsoft licensing and instead spend it on the developing required features in openoffice/etc. Even better, they would look for support in other state and federal governments also willing to contribute. For the amount of money the entire U.S. (government, businesses, citizens) spends on office products, there is no feature that would be left out."
So in other words:
1) MA has to live with a half-assed solution until they pay to fix it (There goes the TCO).
2) The bazaar model wasn't suppose to have these problems, so now it requires an influx of cathedral developers paid by the government to fix it's shortcommings.
You may not like the money paid to MS, but at least it buys you a solution that works out of the box, and doesn't require a further influx of capital to make work.
Second, it is SuSE linux in my experience, not Windows that automatically looks for devices for the disabled upon installation.
------ The only greater hazard to your liberty than n politicians is n+1 politicians.
...to enlist the aid of these handicapped people in designing and testing out new open source accessibility software. This would both improve the software and foster good will.
All it takes is the right rolodex, some phone calls and maybe some donations, and you can get disabled people to show up and rail about an issue. Maybe their concerns are genuine - and maybe not. What matters is that they make for good press coverage and no one wants to fight them.
"It was a summer's tale: Just a boy, his Linux, and a head full of dreams..."
Peter Korn's piece is interesting. But . . . he's talking about OpenOffice.org. Massachussets' proposal was to use the Open Document Format as a menas of insuring access to public documents and data in a fashion that was not dependent upon the goodwill of some single company or companies. It is fairly easy to see how, given the broad history of computer use and data formats in the US, that one could confuse and argument by a responsible government agency for a "standard" with advocacy for a certain piece of software, but. . .
That simply is not what the disucssion and recommendations were about. They were about insuring long term (decades, centuries, not months) accessibility to DATA. Microsoft could quite easily support ODF, probably more cheaply than repeatedly altering the format in which their software stores OUR documents. But Microsoft, and presumably Sun as well, are concerned with cash-flow, markets. If YOUR data is not in a proprietary format, then you can't be coerced into using proprietary software to access YOUR data. You can't be coerced into software "upgrades" to fix broken programming and thus insuring the company cashflow simply to access YOUR data.
The ability to access public data is as important to handicapped citizens as it is to the rest of us, whose handicaps are less self-evident. It would wise for the advocates of "accessibility" to keeps this in mind, and to view not only access but handicaps in a less one-dimensional manner.
------ The only greater hazard to your liberty than n politicians is n+1 politicians.
I've posted to threads several times with links to Skinnable Open Source applications, and found that the most common response to mentioning skins is people dismissing them as eye candy and a waste of programming to include in an inteface. I've had numerous slashdot users complain that skins are worse than useless, because a non-standard interface hinder's widepread corporate or government adoption of new programs.
Guess what - a skinnable interface is one that can easily be adapted to overcome a given visual handycap, and a non-skinable interface is one that will be effectivly unusable for some people with normal or better intelligence - period.
Instead of dissmissing skinnability, how about working on any of three things:
1. Skin deliberately to address at least some common visual disabilities.
2. Code an app that shows how persons with common visual impairments see things (i.e. click button 1 to see what this web-page or interface would look like to a person with red-green color blindness... click button 2 to see what it looks like to someone with blue color blindness, click button 3 to see how this looks to the average 50 year old, etc.).
3. publicize how OS is addressing these needs, if only to offset some of this "Open Source sounds like Communism" FUD you're so concerned about.
Who is John Cabal?
Government does not have a responsiblity to support those with
disability. Society has this responsibility. Any organisation which
which seeks to sell a service to society should be prepare to sell
it to everyone.
Government does have this responsibility. It's the obverse of the coin with which it purchases special privileges and authorities. These authorites are nothing more than the collective right to exercise self defense that we all have. Because it draws its authority from the consent of the governed, its obligated to represent all people equally.
There's no such exchange of authority and responsibility with a private individual or organization. I want to sell something. You want to buy something. If we come to an agreement, a transaction occurs. If not, it doesn't. No third party is involved, and no third party has any right or authority to interfere in or dictate how the transaction occurs. That's in a just, rational society, of course. As I pointed out, we don't live in one.
Slashdot's continual use of obscured image to "check to see if you
are a human" is very poor practice, and their entertainly "assuming
you are a human" comments would be offensive if the blind people
seeing it had not heard it a thousand times before.
Then don't read Slashdot. If enough people agree with you, their page hits will dry up, their ad revenue will evaporate and Slashdot will go the way of millions of other web sites before it. Alternately, contine to read Slashdot and continue to complain about how it does business. You have every right to do so, and if you're loud enough or if enough people join you, the editors may decide to change the say the site operates. But neither you nor anyone else, including the government, has any right to force Slashdot to change the way it operates. Slashdot may have a social responsibility to meet the needs of the disabled, but in a rational society it certainly has no legal responsibility to do so.
"The legitimate powers of government extend only to such acts as are injurious to others." Thomas Jefferson.
Ridiculous. Even if OOo were the only application to support Open Document Format, those with accessibilities could still view those documents in MS Word.
It would be trivial to write, for example, a Windows app that associated itself with OOo file formats (including OpenDocument). When used to open a OOo document, the app would use a background OOo instance to convert the document into an MSO format, then launch the correct MSOffice app to open the converted document. A more sophisicated version could use OOo libraries without launching the GUI application itself.
Computing has a long history of "a2b" converters. "odf2doc" is undoubtedly feasbile. There is no substance to the claim that open-format documents endangers their dependency on Microsoft, even if Microsoft tries to make it harder to migrate.
Much of the point of the blog was that open source accessability on open source (gnome in his example) works really well. His point is that Microsoft has terrible accessability API's. The only reason that decent software exists for the disabled is that hacks were created for Word. Custom scripts were created to suit word perfectly. Gnome on the other hand has a properly set up API. So as whole, open source has better accessability software. But for the specific case of Word on Windows that OpenOffice on Windows is behind. It would be equal if Microsoft and Various software makes would properly support the java accesability API, but they don't.
If an officer ever threatens to taze you, say you have a pacemaker.
that's like saying you'd think the republicans would be fiscally conservative. -lol-
demicans... republicrats...
exact same end, different methodology.
think about it.
nice blog entry - it really shows what microsoft is made of.
I am confident that this will be a non issue very soon.
Now mater what happens some people are going to be pissed, those with disabilitys (who in some cases are getting financal aid to buy accesability software) are ticked because the accessability software that is out there is almost all for MS-Windows, but there are likely just as many, probably more non-disabled people, who can't afford MS-Windows or MS-Office so they are left out too.
This would not be an issue is MS would stop being a bunch of arogant SOBs and support the open format. Its stuff like this that make me really hate MS.
If I may, a couple points:
Accessible DHTML of course isn't news -- it's all about how you design it -- but I agree that Firefox's new implementation (thanks to the thousands of lines of code donated to Mozilla by IBM, who -- not surprisingly -- seem to understand and explain web accessibility better than most) is very exciting and will hopefully raise the bar and give users with special needs a reason to switch from MSIE to something better. That said, building a better browser is only part of the problem with accessibility; the content itself has to be designed accessible as well.
As far as Section 508 is concerned, for example, you can't just code DHTML however you'd like and expect the browser to do the work to make it accessible for you; even if it is perfectly accessible in Firefox (but not in, say, MSIE) users should have the right to choose whatever software they like. In the end, the ramifications for accessibility here are potentially every bit as bad as Flash and MSIE -- "You want accessible Flash? Use MSIE. You want accessible DHTML? Use Firefox."
Thank you for the link, though. I am interested to read more about it after having heard the announcement some months ago about IBM donating accessibility code to Mozilla. I'll certainly be doing more reading up on the subject and looking forward to the results. Now if only IBM/Sun could do the same thing for OOo.
I am not surprised to learn that the majority of the blind community is opposed to open-source desktops, but I am not willing to jump on the bandwagon to say that Microsoft is the way to go. I am blind and an open-source code-monkey... I like having the ability to dig down into code and make it accessible! Instead of relying on an entity such as Microsoft to shovel out what they believe to be a suitable interface for further Assistive Technology software to be developed. The problem lies in the fact that there are only a handful of Assistive Technology dev-heads in the open-source community, and they are the minority and underdogs in the Assistive Tech world. They receive minimal funds (if any) and are expected to compete with AT software that has been designed around standardized systems. I'm rambling...
Your "gravity" is no match for my non-existant spoon!
By the way, what version of Javascript does VS 2005 support. I also read that Microsoft is going to be pushing AJAX developement. Will that be part of VS 2005, if not when will this be integrated with the mothership, aka Visual Studio?
Think global, act loco
I'm not saying that OSS is better than MS when it comes to accessibility, but its funny that MS's refusal to support OpenDocument can turn into "Open Source hates people with disabilities". MS was all egger to support multiple file types when they were vying for market share, but now that they have it the number of supported file types that Office can handle has greatly dwindled.
"for some stupid ramp up the courthouse steps for a few old farts in wheelchairs???? "
One day that will be you. You don't stay young forever as you know. And what will your words be then?
1. Perhaps 'hypocritical' would suit you better. But ironic is less hostile, and 'Poignantly contrary to what was expected' seems like a reasonable description of a group that champions handicap accessibility in a Office product but accepts tools that make handicap accessible web applications quite difficult to produce.
2. The attacks on OpenOffice are not coming from Slashdot. Go to Groklaw and look at the transcripts of the ongoing battles between the 'pro-Microsoft' camp and the 'open standards' camp.
3. Yes, of course. But if Microsoft was committed to handicap accessablity, rather than access to government markets, they would have given us tools to support 508 before Visual Studio 2005. The ADA has been around longer than the web, so this isn't exactly a new requirement for applications.
4. It is the nature of Microsoft technology to suck you into a morass of tools that seem to be intentionally designed for lock-in. One of the nominal advantages of office 12 is the use of XML. It isn't hard to use ASP or ASP.Net to generate XML. So you could use ASP to generate ODF or Office 12 documents. But, we probably can't do this easily if Office 12 has the same sort of 'binary key' data as the current Office 2005 XML formats. But if you get the next set of really cool Microsoft developer tools, it will proabably quite easy to develop Office documents on the fly. This was not my original point, but Microsoft seems to avoid standards just so you have to get the latest tools in order to benefit from the 'promise of the web'. If they would just implement the standards in the first place, it would be easier for everyone to benefit from web standards.
5. My point is that the parent post discussed 508 compliance, and it seems to me that Microsoft is in a funny position of advocating handicap acessiblity while not supporting (at least until VisualStudio 2005) Section 508. This seems hypocritical. (See 1)
Think global, act loco
Please see first line of parent post. I think you may have missed something ;-)
There is a simple fact that is completely ignored here: Microsoft can make their program read/write Open Document.. This means it is impossible for Open Document to be less accessable than Microsoft Office, since you can use Microsoft Office! In fact if Microsoft just stopped acting like babies and added the ability to input/output Open Document, I expect the MAJORITY of such documents will be created with Microsoft Office!
Microsoft will lie and kick and scream and moan, and will spew FUD and do everything they can, to stop Open Document, because it means there can be competitors. The fact that one of the possible competitors is an open-source program with poor support for handicapped users is irrelevant, why don't they prove that they can do better.
Also SHAME on Microsoft for taking advantage of the handicapped to spew their lies. You guys are REALLY low and it is sickening.
Nowhere in the MA proposal does it suggest anyone has to use Open Source software. The Open Doc license allows any software vendor to produce a compliant product whether open or not, free or not. The reason this proposal will likely be shot down by the MS legislature is that the fight is billed (by parties who want it to be billed as such) as an Open Source versed established vendors who do not support Open Document. (To the uneducated, 'lunatic fringe' vs 'respectable companies')
This 'fight' needs to be framed correctly to the appropriate decision makers so that they can make effective decisions. If the MA IT department believes that OpenDoc is the way to go, then they should be educating the state senators and reps that OpenDoc is about true digital accessibility and that by making it a requirement (to be phased in a reasonable amount of time), more users will have access to the data for a longer (indefinite?) period of time. If MA and/or other major organizations institute OpenDoc, Microsoft and other vendors will add support. It will then, and only then, make good business sense to do so.
Open Doc has next to nothing, if anything, to do with disabilities or with the political/price format of the software from which it is read and written. It is about agreeing to a storage format we can all 'unstore'. It is up to the software reading the document to provide the disabled with access. A digital document is mearly the data to be presented maybe with hints on how. Exactly how it is presented is largely up to the reader.
Most (not all to be fair) of what I see is how Open Doc equates to Open Source. While there are parallels, they are not the same nor are they inexorably tied. When discussing Open Doc, fight the Open Doc fight. Leave the Open Source fight for another discussion. Allow each idea to flourish in its own right.
Then, and most likely only then, Open Doc will be given a shot by those who could shoot it down (no pun intended).
Never meddle in the affairs of dragons,
for you are crunchy and good with catsup.
"and a sun accessibility expert? come on, this is the company that brought us JAVA, an accessibility nightmare in its own right."
And Microsoft Press brought us the books: "Code Complete" and "Writing Solid Code". So what's your point?
...60 bucks a pop for spyware removal every other month. XP Home should be called XP HOSED. Most non admin or non programmer types I know who use windows have to either pay big bucks constantly or dragoon some family geek into "fixing their computer", precisely from running windows on it. Their computer doesn't "break", what they run on their computer IS BROKEN, just neither Doofus Dell nor the local "friendly" whitebox shop nor MS nor their ISP will tell them that, because broken windows is a hundred billion a year unnnecessary but highly lucrative busywork CASH COW. And THAT is why it's still on the desktop all over and still shipped as the default install. They make LOTS MORE MONEY by it being broken. Whether it's a 100 buck pay to buy broken for the homeowner or 300 pay to buy broken or higher for "business", people have been brainwashed into accepting BROKEN as "normal". Every few years they are forced to upgrade hardeware so they can then start the laterh rinse repeat with the 'almost works" software that comes with it, that now not only requires the new hardware, but also requires even more complex and expensive "fixing".
"When you start performing long term planning, instead of focusing only on short term needs, you will see the benefit."
Nvidia, ATI, and Broadcom are glad you're looking at your short term needs.
I think it's good to note that GNOME is accessibility aware. Sun has spent a lot of time working on GNOME's accessibility infrastructure (e.g. gnopernicus, gtk's atk toolkit) and making sure that disabled people can work. Since GNOME rebranded as the JDS desktop has to work for disabled people you can bet Sun has spent a lot of time making the GNOME team sensitive to accessibility.
Turns out that having a toolkit that lets you pretty much tweak the entire gtk toolkit via atk has some interesting application as well. Check out:
http://people.redhat.com/zcerza/dogtail/faq.html
and see how a cool tool like dogtail can check for UI regressions.
This shows that GNOME does understand the importance of accessibility and is set for it from the ground up.
sri
They should also go after tv manufacturers for this 'discrimination'.
In all reality, it's better to use openoffice (or whatever) than MS office for ONE reason - a poor person who manages to scrounge an old computer together can run openoffice without having to buy anything. The same person, if they continue to use ms's document formats, would have to either a) put up with sub-par ms support or b) buy a copy of office (at at least 150 dollars a copy).
Besides, it can't be that hard to get the shit they need in the next version of openoffice.
Show this to your friends and family that don't know what a real hacker is
I ran an accessibility products company for 10+ years. People are always whining about the lack of accessibility in computer products. Simple reason folks: There simply isn't worthwhile money in it.
I know most of the major players in the industry personally. 95% of the companies in the AT industry aren't making appreciable money, I've been to all the big shows over the years and there's just a couple of guys I can think of that could afford to drive Porsches.
If there is going to be world-class accessibility, it is going to come out of the deep pockets of large players who can afford to throw money at the problem.
Now I work for Electronic Arts. I got a raise and shorter hours.
FORMAT != APPLICATION // C coders //
FORMAT APPLICATION // VB coders //
NOT ( FORMAT = APPLICATION ) // Other coder //
'nuf said
--wap3
http://sourceforge.net/projects/kmag
...to mention only a few.
http://sourceforge.net/projects/magnifier
http://www.incontrast.org/
Open the file in OpenOffice. Save in proprietary format, such as MS-Word. Open with your favorite proprietary tool.
You might also want to compose letters to Journalists, Congressman, etc. telling them that you see through M$ attempts to use your disability for their own monetary gain.
Guns don't kill people; Physics kills people! - John Lithgow as Dick Solomon on Third Rock From The Sun