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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.
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.
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.
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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.
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Surely opensource is a plus in this area..
Those charities that push for and fund interoperability efforts could have a much more direct impact on opensource, instead of spending large amounts of money trying to convince vendors to implement accessibility features which may not directly meet their needs, they could actually hire coders to create these features exactly according to their specifications.
Instead of this, these groups seem to be spending all their time and money lobbying.. Why not produce open source accessibility software that not only suits your requirements exactly, but also benefits other people too?
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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.
OK, except Microsoft have addressed accessibility concerns in their software, and the OSS comunnity haven't, that's what people are complaining about. I can't believe that your post got modded 'insightful' when it's a complete load of crap, just shows how biased slashdotters are.
Actually if you use the KDE environment, you have most of the accessibility features that Windows has out of the box, and it works about as well.
However Microsoft Office XP and 2003 provide additional accessibility tools that Windows XP does not offer out of the box, and that is the issue - but where Massachusetts is already providing reasonable accomodations by continuing to offer Microsoft Office to those with physical disabilities, Microsoft is simply raising up a strawman so that they can avoid having to implement OpenDoc and maintain vendor lock in the office suite market. Microsoft (at large) is very, very afraid of open standards because it means that WordPerfect, Star Office, IBM/Lotus Smartsuite, and others may be able to compete on an even keel with Microsoft - and if that happens, where some of the other products are cross-platform, Windows dominance may begin to erode because the very thing locking customers into their marriage with Microsoft will be nonexistent.
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There are common misconceptions in the comments being made, here is the reality:
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.
There is nothing saying you can't pay opensource developers. IBM and other big companies do this for the linux kernel. I get paid for developing much smaller OS projects. Government and businesses just need to wake up and realize the potential cost savings they are overlooking.