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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."
Is this not the point of having an open format? Anyone anywhere is free to write an app or plugin - heck, build a set-top box even - that can easily handle the needs of the disabled or anyone else to use the format. As with most if not all features of anything open-source, if the need is there the solution is within reach.
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Technically, he could just as easily be Mattwar Den.
Yes, the article is (properly) critquing the applications that currently support ODF, but it is still (improperly) casting that as a shortcoming of ODF itself. It's like saying that "gif images" are somehow flawed because of limitations in Microsoft Photo Editor or Photoshop.
The whole point to having a well documented, open FORMAT, is that any APPLICATION (proprietary, open, free, expensive, shoddy, polished, whatever) can implement that format and interoperate with all other applications that do so, and be guaranteed to be able to continue to interoperate for as long as they want.
Yes, MS Office is still in many ways a superior product to "alternative" office software, but it's (currently) superior accessibility features have no (zero!) relation to the fitness of the ODF format, postscript, PDF, plain text, or any other format. What _does_ have an effect is that MS likes to make it's formats labyrinthine and preferably legally encumbered, which means that if you save all your data in an MS format, you tend to be limited to using MS applications (for as long as they let you) to access that data. With a well specified international STANDARD FORMAT like ODF now is, consumers (disabled or not) get to choose whatever applications they want.
The point to people pointing at the MS Office plugin is really that adding support for a new format is not difficult to do. If we want the features of MS Office it's an argument that MS needs to add native support for _all_ current international office document standards to Office, not that somehow those standards are defective because MS refuses to use them. Note that Office still doesn't have native PDF (another international standard in common use) support either.
That's not the point. One of the main benefits of ODF is supposed to be the prevention of vendor lock-ins due to the use of proprietary formats. It's designed as an open alternative to Word documents, and many (including government agencies) plan to migrate to ODF. This is supposed to save people a lot of money and make public documents more accessible.
Saying "oh, disabled people can just stick to Word" leaves the disabled community in practically the same situation as before, except that now there's a higher chance that they'll encounter machines with some word-processor other than MS Word installed on it.
The disabled community just want to be able to receive the same benefits from ODF as the rest of society. I mean, why should they be locked in to a single vendor? How can schools/public institutions switch over to free software by adopting ODF if non-MS packages don't have accessibility options for the disabled?
This isn't about whether disabled people can still use ODF--it's whether the ODF movement is really about the values and ideals that its proponents expound. ODF advocates claim there are benefits to the adoption of an open format, but they seem to ignore a significant segment of our society with special needs; that is what the DPC is afraid of. And comments like yours simply confirm their fears.
ODF (Open Document Format) is not an application. It is merely an open specification for how to represent the contents of an Office-type document.
People with disabilites are concerned that the applications which currently support ODF do not support text readers and such to the same level that the Microsoft Office suite supports those devices. With assistive technology, they can access electronically-stored documents in MS Office proprietary format better than they can (currently) access electronically-stored documents in ODF format (without using the plug-in).
But wait; there's a flaw to that argument Microsoft doesn't want anyone to notice.
When it comes to accessing electronically-stored documents, we are all handicapped. None of us can access any sort of electronically-stored document without the use of the assistive technology commonly known as a computer/operating system/office application stack. But if the document is stored in MS Office proprietary format, it becomes unavailable to those individuals who are handicapped by not having paid Microsoft a license to access the document, and there ain't no way around it.
Nobody want's to be disabled. But we all are, to some extent. Where disabilities can be reasonably addressed, they should, and I don't think anyone has any problem doing this where it's reasonable to do so. But to handicap the entire population in a half-assed attempt to make access more 'equal' for everyone is patently absurd.
Kudos to those disabled individuals who succeeded in convincing Microsoft to 'do the right thing' by making documents stored by their office suite accessible to people requiring less-common assistive technology, like text readers and such. Maybe they can help the rest of us (or the rest of us can help them) to convince Microsoft to once again 'do the right thing' and make documents stored by their office suite accessible to the rest of us. All they need to do is either open their file formats or support ODF.
In the meantime, those of us 'less disabled' disabled individuals will focus on building applications which allow electronically-stored documents to be accessed by everyone.
The thing about things we don't know is we often don't know we don't know them.
No, by your thinking EVERY application needs to add this feature. Why just those that use ODF? I'd accept that if libraries already use MS office they should probably not switch to OpenOffice until these features are added. The plugin at least allows them to switch to ODF until then, which helps a lot of people, just not all of the people (yet).
Software is always funded by end users. You don't have to write it yourself, just pay for it. If a group of people want to expedite certain features getting into some software, they can always pay the developers to get things moving. Large numbers of people have freed themselves from expensive proprietary software - by writing Free software. They've been nice enough to make that work available to others for free, and now some folks can find nothing better to do than bitch about it.
That said, people tend to focus on things that are important to themselves. I don't tend to think about issues for the disabled because I am fortunate not to be disabled. OTOH, I'm sure disabled people spend a lot of time noticing how the world is not built with them in mind. As a result, they have to complain loudly to get things done to accomodate them. I get that. If I were you, I'd complain if the library switched to software that locked me out. Hey, I avoid web sites that use flash (I bet you do too). But please don't complain if they offer documents that you can still read with MS, and I can read with free software.