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OpenDocument Plans Questioned by Disabled
ComputerWorld is reporting that John Winske, president of the Disability Policy Consortium, is raising some questions about the accessibility of the OpenDocument format. From the article: "Winske, who has muscular dystrophy, said he instantly remembered how Microsoft had to be "prodded and dragged, kicking and screaming" to make its software accessible during the transition from DOS to Windows. None of the prominent desktop applications that can create and save documents in OpenDocument currently work well with screen readers, magnifiers and other assistive technologies -- at least at a level comparable to that of products from Microsoft, whose 40-person Accessibility Technology Group is now widely praised by disabilities advocates."
I sympathize, but that's not a reason to not adopt open standards, that's a reason to develop better software. Microsoft is going to try to paint it the other way though, and I worry the press will but into that interpretation overall.
1. Wouldn't Microsoft likely implement ODF and then all their amazing accessibility stuff would be right there and ready to go? I always thought of MS as the "make ours able to open their stuff, keep changing our stuff so they can't open it, and make ours the default" crowd.
2. If they don't, I'm all for disabled rights, but there is no damn way that I should be required to pay a company to read public documents so that a blind person can have equal access WHEN THE SOURCE OF THE PROBLEM IS THE COMPANY'S REFUSAL TO IMPLEMENT AN OPEN STANDARD!!! Talk about rewarding the wrong behaviour.
As was mentioned in a recent /. article, they can always use word and (soon) be able to export their documents to ODF format.
The article in question.
However, I don't think that's the crux of the problem. People with disabilites are more concerned that ODF incorporate handling for text readers and such from the outset and not have to be bludgeoned into doing it later. It does no good exporting Word docs to ODF format later if ODF is still incapable of working with the assistive technology required. And let's face it: if ODF whole-heartedly embraces this, it puts them one up on Microsoft, which had to be dragged kicking and screaming into the discussion, then dragged its feet in actually developing the functionality.
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> We need someone with "x" years experience, sorry;
StarOffice is older than dirt. It has "x" years experience, plus some.
> it's unfortunate the example set by Microsoft is what sets the stage and expectation for anyone else. OSS is not Microsoft. And, I hope OSS and ODF is given the time
Second, please stop conflating ODF and "OSS". This whole issue has become so much more problematic because it keeps getting hijacked by the OpenOffice advocates. OpenOffice has these problems with or without ODF.
And finally, why shouldn't OpenOffice be held to the same 'expectations' as Microsoft Office? Isn't OpenOffice trying to be a direct replacement? It's not anyone's responsiblity to accomodate an inferior software product -- espeically if they're disabled and can't even use that inferior product to begin with. Once again, it's a fundemental failure to realize that Microsoft is on top because they give users what they want rather than pleading with people to overlook their faults.
Whenever I hear the word 'Innovation', I reach for my pistol.
/. has always been a bit self centered re: open source but you have to have at least a tad of empathy for those of us who CAN'T write code. A recently diagnosed major medical issue left me with a right hand which no longer works, vision which is deteriorating rapidly, and an over-whelming need to research the poor medical advice which led to the mis-diagnosos that could have saved me 4 years of un-necessary pain
and treatment which complicated the issue.
I have bad-mouthed XP since it's inception but have, Now, come to appreciate MS's handicap accessibility options which are allowing me to utilize GOOGLE to do the research necessary to find REAL answers. Even going so far as to have MS read the page to me when I simply can't do it myself
"Never try to teach a pig to sing. It simply wastes your time and truely annoys the pig"
That view is frustratingly short-sighted. Microsoft Office is a tool developed for people with no disabilities; accessibility will never be a primary consideration. Using Microsoft Office with a screen reader or a magnifier is at best a crutch.
Much better interaction styles are possible for the disabled. In the past, they haven't been commercially viable because Microsoft Office formats have dominated the market With open document formats, there would finally be new companies entering the market with high quality tools specifically for people with disability.
Let's not even dwell on the fact that the disabled have experienced first hand how frustrating it is to be at the mercy of Microsoft; do you really think that other groups aren't equally frustrated with Microsoft's predominance but lack the lobbying power to get Microsoft to hire a 40 person crew to address their needs? And what happens with the next paradigm shift? GUIs will have transparency, high resolution visualization, and other features, and it will take many years for accessibility tools to catch up--do you want to continue to be at the mercy of a single company to meet your needs in perpetuity?
Adoption of open document formats is a huge win for the disabled, without any downside. You can even continue to use Microsoft Word, since there will be plug-ins. But you may want to work with the OOo people to improve accessibility there. And you will see ODF apps aimed at people with disabilities soon after the format becomes reasonably widely adopted. Please, don't screw this one up, for your own sake and the sake of everybody else.
And the code that does this, and AsTeR, which is a package that speaks LaTeX (including complicated formulas) was done by T.V. Raman, who is blind himself, and has been using and developing open source code for quite some time.
There may be an emacs mode already done for OpenDoc format, perhaps someone who follows emacs more closely can say.
- "History shows again and again how nature points out the folly of men" -- Blue Oyster Cult, 'Godzilla'
Actually I knew a blind guy once who programmed just fine, using a Braille terminal and some sort of very basic text editor. Just like any other programmer using a text shell, except the output was through the braille terminal instead of a VDT. IIRC he had some sort of non-QWERTY keyboard also, but I never inquired as to how it worked.
He always maintained that screen-readers were a huge step down, and were being pushed onto sight-impaired people because they were a lot cheaper than full-size (40 or 80 column) Braille terminals.
When you think about it, basically any command-line application is much better suited to use by a sight-imparied person than a GUIed app, because it can be more easily transformed into a serial data stream (which can be read or felt linearly). So really, Linux ought to be the platform of choice for accessibility, since you can use it in so many more ways: if you don't want to use a GUI, no GUI for you. You don't ever have to use a graphical control panel to change a system setting, check email, even search the internet, etc.
(Unless of course people send you raster PDFs as email attachments, but not like a screenreader is really going to help you much with those, either.)
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Handling for text readers, magnifiers, etc. is ... not something you build into the file format itself.
Unless you want difficult words, foreign words, trademarks, homophonic words, etc. in the document to be properly pronounced when it is read aloud.
Seriously. There are better ways.
Pretend it was the other way around. Word processors had no GUI. They just talked to you, and you were supposed to talk to them. Then, being deaf and mute, you got some "assistive technology" that would do voice recognition on this so that it could display text for you. Your "assistive technology" crap provides a button bar, so you can click on a button to save a file. When you do so, the button press plays an audio file saying "computer menu file save" into the word processor.
Wouldn't that be stupid? Screen readers for the blind are just as bad.
The appropriate solution is a word processor made for the blind. It probably wouldn't have a GUI at all. It would probably reveal document structure more directly, as a tree to be navigated.
Thanks for providing me with an example of what I was talking about. Until the FOSS community in general gets over this "victimized" stance they like to take whenever Microsoft attempts to compete with them, they're going to be perpetually hamstrung by ineffectiveness, and perpetually "almost great."
The success of ODF as a standard & in government adoption, as well as the examples of linux in the server space, perl, python, apache, ant, tomcat, and so many other FOSS products (my apologies if I've overlooked your favorites), should be seen as proof that the technilcally superior products DO tend to win out in the marketplace over the long run. Instead of screaming "Monopoly! Unfair competitive advantage! Illegal use of monopolistic practices!", open source advocates should simply go about their business, and make a better product than Microsoft can. There's plenty of examples... figure out what they're doing right, and apply those best practices to your own projects.
And let's be honest... if Microsoft said, "our products just aren't going to support the 802.11a standard (an open wireless networking standard) because it's too costly," that announcement would be greeted with a big yawn by most people. The only difference is, ODF is a cause celebre in the FOSS community, because lots of members of that community see it as a way to promote their own anti-microsoft agenda. Soul search a little, and read some of the comments people make here on slashdot... you'll see it's really hard to argue that that's not the case.