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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."
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
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!
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
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!
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)
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.
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.
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?
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.
Need: Management ( check! )
Need: Programmer ( vacant )
If you think imaginary property and real property are the same, when does your house become public domain?
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.
...until you happen to have that crippling accident or contract that nasty disease. I really hope neither will happen to you, but there are enough people that yesterday thought exactly like you and that today curse the city because of all the damned stairs they can't pass with their wheelchair.
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
Luckily not every Open Source developer is such an egocentric ass like you are
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
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.
I would think that the politicians in Mass. ( and elsewhere) would perhaps be bright enough to hire some programmers to develop whatever features are required? Seems like a fairly simple and straightforward solution and everybody wins.
Oh, I forgot, the politicians (and apparently the disabled as well, now - just give the disabled a few peanuts, you know, "free" proprietary software, that should do it, etc.) are in the pockets of the big corporations and their strings are being pulled.
The Microsoft camp seems to be rather oportunistic in when they choose to extol the virtue of handicap-accessiblity
Think global, act loco
I think that defeats part of the argument for a gov't to switch to open source. You know, the cost saving benefit. Mass would have to hire a bunch of good programmers, end up paying them a ridiculous price to do work that in spirit should be done for free out of someone's own good will. Then MS comes around and says "see OSS doesn't work. Because when you want something done quick, you gotta pay someone to do the job...well we have been doing the job for a while, so pay us and we will do it quick." yadda yadda yadda
I mod down so you can mod up. Your welcome.
Open Format != Open Source
-mix
In fact, the politicians in Massachusetts are bright enough NOT to hire some programmers to develop whatever features are required. Governments are NOT IT shops and they don't usually have the expertise in either programming or managing programming projects to be able to do this in any way cost effectively. And it's not something they should try to get into - it's completely orthogonal to the business of governance. As such, it has nothing to do with being 'in the pockets' of anybody and all to do with 'that's not what we know how to do.'
... 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
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.
"...you would think the people with the purse strings would have an interest in this answer as well."
You and many others are falling victim to Microsoft's red herrings. Open Source has absolutely nothing to do with OpenDocument. Here are some answers (yet again):
1) OpenDocument is a format specification, not a program.
2) Any program, Open Source or proprietary, can implement OpenDocument filters. That is all that is necessary to support OpenDocument.
3) Microsoft is fighting OpenDocument by changing the subject. This is being done to maintain Microsoft's monopoly stranglehold on one of its two profitable rackets.
4) If people think Microsoft Office has better accessibility than OO.o/StarOffice, then they can continue using Microsoft Office. All Microsoft, and any other proprietary company, has to do is write an I/O filter to work with the OpenDocument format.
We need to keep our focus, and not allow ourselves to get diverted into senseless debates about irrelevancies.
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 developer who is developing OSS project XYZ "free of charge" is likely doing it for a purpose important to him/herself. Whether it's for their own use or for some other purpose they deem appropriate motivation, it's something for them. Selfish? Maybe, but not in the typical sense. While they're likely creating it for a purpose that is 'selfish' on some level, point is that they don't then keep it for ONLY that purpose. They then let others have it for their own purposes as well.
What precisely is in it for the person donating their time to implement it for a *business*? Maybe it would be different if you had mentioned doing it for a charity or non-profit, but you didn't. Because you know as well as I do, that you'd have received myriad responses from folks who HAD done that. Doing free work for a *business* (directly, rather than as an indirect consquence of doing something for yourself) is nothing short of stupidity.
Mind you, I can fathom cases where it might be advantageous for a particular person to implement a particular package(s) for a particular business or three. But that then would answer the 'what is in it for them' question. Additionally, these are going to be the exception rather than the rule.
+5 Insightful, really!
This was never about saving money, but about having a truly open format that isn't controlled by a single company. The only reason they're planning to switch to OpenOffice is because MS absolutely refuses to support the OpenDoc format; I bet that the costs associated with switching would cancel out the savings, anyway.
This is what open-source is all about: use the software for free, and if you want enhancements, you add them yourself, or hire someone to do it for you. And we're not talking about "ridiculous prices" here - just the salaries of a few developers. The Massachussetts government probably spends more than that just on office supplies.
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?
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.
They have an IT component that *ought* to be competent in programming or managing programming or procuring applications.
True, Government, itself, is not an IT shop, but they do have an IT shop associated with them. Not many organizations
are IT shops. Most have one associated with them, as part of the organization, but are enabling, not core,
in just the same situation as Government.
True, Governments are not IT shops. But lets look at part of that statement again. "..don't usually have the expertise in either programming or managing programming projects...". That seems to me to be claiming that there is no IT associated with Goverment.
Which is not true.
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