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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."
Look, there's nobody to blame but the advocates who linked OpenDocument and OpenOffice in what looks like blatent Anybody-But-Microsoftism.
They tried to use the advantages of an open document format to make up for the feature deficiencies of a second-tier office suite. The problem is that there's certain deficiencies that can't be easily overlooked, and accessiblity just happens to be one that's coded into law.
In the worst possible case, I will volunteer to write converters to make sure these new documents can be exported into proprietary apps.
That's not the worst case -- that's the best case for everyone. If OpenDocument is going to be a success, it needs the broadest possible software support. If it's just a psuedo-proprietary attempt to FUD-Attack the open MS XML formats and get rid of MS Office, then OpenDocument is worthless.
The interesting part of this accessiblity issue is that it makes it very obvious what people's motives really are.
Whenever I hear the word 'Innovation', I reach for my pistol.