Slashdot Mirror
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.
No folly is more costly than the folly of intolerant idealism. - Winston Churchill
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?
http://spamdecoy.net - free throwaway anonymous email - avoid spam!
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.