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MA To Adopt Short-Term Plug-in Strategy for ODF
feminazi writes "Massachusetts is committed to saving documents in Open Document Format. Massachusetts is also committed to using applications that are accessible. Therefore, the Jan. 1, 2007, deadline for the executive branch to begin using applicationsv that default to ODF is being postponed until the applications can be proven to be accessible. 'Instead, the state will on a near-term basis adopt a plug-in strategy to fulfill its policy calling for executive-branch agencies to make use of ODF ... ITD will be following through with testing of the ODF plug-ins in preparation for a phased rollout, expected to begin later this year.'"
To the best of my knowledge, OO.o works well with all accessibility aids that work across all programs in the operating system. It is true that there are a few applications which only work with Microsoft Office (and, particularly, only work with Word), but it is my impression that those tools are in the minority. However, where are the holes? Why can't the disabled use some of these other applications (just as other workers are being asked to use StarOffice or OO.o instead of MS Office)?
This article begs other questions too:
Who will be making the decision (presumably the accessibility lab of ITD)? By what criteria will they make it? Is there a deadline for the decision? Can the ODF plugin for Office be configured to save ODF by default?
The article stated that the delay was based in part on the fact that the major open source solutions for odf like OpenOffice do not yet support magnifiers and screen readers needed by people with disabilities. I wonder how long it will take for those functions to become a part of the open source office suites out there? Just a question. I am really hoping Mass will roll out open source office software and prove that it is indeed as robust and useful as Microsoft office. Like that isn't the general attitude around here.
My humor is probably your flamebait
Well hopefully this will cause the OO.org people to add support for such devices very quickly. That would be a net gain for the suite and also show MA that community supported software can work and tailor to their needs.
On another note... this should read "Microsoft Office Granted Temporary Injunction in MA"
There are 10 types of people in the world. Those who understand binary and those who do not.
While the concept of accessibility is incredibly important, JAWS, the most used screen reader is totally tied to Microsoft products. Did Microsoft come back through the back door with accessibility to derail the Open Format initiative?
On the other hand, maybe this will give some impetus for Open Office to get into bed with the accessibility people.
... they're saying that they won't necessarily be adopting OpenOffice.org software for their users with disabilities, instead allowing them to use plugins with MS Office.
That seems like good news - Microsoft needs to produce such plugins in order to keep doing business with the state; users get a choice in the software they use; and nobody's locked in to a proprietary document format.
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Why not let people who don't need accessibility use the cheap 'inaccessible' applications, and let the 5% who need accessibility use the "MS Office with a plugin" option?
You know, I really hate it when people use postal abbreviations on anything other than addresses. Reading the headline for this, I had no clue what MA was until I read the digest below. That's not a huge chore or anything, but the fact remains that it would have been much clearer from the beginning if they had just abbreviaed it Mass., which is the normally accepted abbreviation. I'm willing to be flexible on stuff like this, but these postal abbreviations were never meant to be used in the context of a paragraph or even sentence of text. Imagine if it was PA... Pennsylvania? Port Authority? Palestinian Authority? Mass. is obvious. Pa. is correct for AP style and others, and Penn. is almost unmistakable in context. Am I being too pedantic?
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It is clear pro-Microsoft move. I just don't buy accessibility argument for few reasons, mentioned bellow:
1) It is clear, that if MA would start to addopt OpenOffice/StarOffice, without doubt there would be plentful of small programming companies who would like to provide plugins/additional apps with OpenOffice.org support. Addoption is slow thingy in any case, so while pilot would be done, access apps would be already aviable. It is just matter of signal what MA sends to software companies;
2) And it is bullocks that Sun itself can't provide accessiblity features/addons to SunOffice. Sun has been big pioneer in this and I think it is clearly "if it doesn't work with Microsoft tools, it doesn't work at all" attitude we see here;
Of course, just my 2 cents
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I think the Operating System should take care of representing the data whether it be reading a text field or error messages out loud or being able to have an overlay with bigger text. In Mac OS X you can take any text out of any application and let it be read.
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Make a bigger switch and go all the way to Linux. XGL has a zoom-in function built in, so you don't need it in the program.
Only North Rhode Islanders need accessible applications that do ODF without plugins.
It does: http://blogs.msdn.com/oldnewthing/archive/2006/08/ 16/702526.aspx
So it seems that Microsoft's strategy of announcing new features as soon as a competitor comes along in order to encourage people to wait rather than buying a compatitor has changed with the times. Now they will just do a half-assed implimentation that relies on the community to maintain it in order to placate government rules and maintain market share rather than let a competitor in the door.
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wtf would you need a "screen magnifier" for a word processor anyway? For a browser you can change the text size, and for any word processor there's ZOOM menu option which you can set to 200% or 300%. What am I missing here?
As for screen readers (Text-to-Speech), that should be part of the operating system. Though I imagine it would be far easier for a blind person to be using a simple text editor. I don't imagine they'd be using the formatting options all that much.
Magnifier. Comes in accessability group. The only realy hurdle is text to speach. JAWS is the most prevalent program, and it only works with MS software. I guess we just have to petition the manufacturer of JAWS for a plugin. They should be able to do it best and quickest (just like MS did with the plugin
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Oh, come off it. "Begging the question" is an idiom anyway, which doesn't follow the literal interpretation of the words themselves. The OPs comment uses it as an idiom which actually pretty closely matches the literal meaning of the individual words.
Evolution of language should perhaps be slowed in some cases, but this is rediculous. Correcting people for such a minor (and perhaps more popular than the original usage) infraction of idiomatic usage just makes you look like an ass.
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Since I saw the same question posted in amny places let me go ahead and explain it once in one place. FYI I have been teaching the blind and people with multiple disabilities how to use computers for competitive employment for nearly 10 years.
There is no operating system that actually has speech and large print capabilities built into the core. Accessibility has always been a "bolt on" solution. In many cases, large print software and screen reading software has altered and even mangled video drivers in order to try to figure out what was being put on the screen to work with it. However, in the last few years there has been a move to incorporate the ability for third party software such as screen readers and large print software to be able to access the data in otehr apps more easily so that the text can be read by the screen readers. Unfortunately, it is still possible (and common) to run into applications that use odd ways of writing to the video cards that the large print software is unable to intercept. Therefore you will get issues such as in Microsoft Word where if you insert Word Art it is invisible when you are using large print software but visible when you disable the software.
And of course, we all hate Microsoft for being a monopoly so the adaptive technology industry is rather happy (I'm sure) that MS doesn't incorporate a useful large print and screen reader software built into the OS. Now, there is large print and speech applications built into Windows. However, they are no better than many two-bit freeware packages and are not practical for long term use if you're going to be as efficient as a sighted person at work.
Mac OS has large print and speech applications as well. However, the large print software doesn't track the typing cursor. They have had this flaw for years and seem too lazy to fix it. This makes the software nearly useless for word processing. Their screen reader leaves plenty of room for improvement as well. Unfortunately, since the move to Mac OS X there are no longer 3rd party vendors for large print and speech for the Mac (there used to be).
Hopefully that clears a few things up. Now, as for Open Office, I have been using it for a low vision user who need minimal magnification with large print software and it seems to be OK although there are some odd random artifacts that clear up. Not a great solution but it will do for that particular situation. However, screen readers and Open Office are still not where they need to be. In OO.o's dfense, they are aware of this and, I believe, working on it. Here's hoping we'll see some movement soon.
Michael Wigle
Computer Access Specialist
Cincinnati Association for the Blind and Visually Impaired
Microsoft Word's XML schema is very straight forward so to save users a lot of grief, why not just use that format? Non-Microsoft office software should not have any problem reading and writing it. You might want to change the namespace for trademark purity and if you have some obscure embedded OLE control, it will of course be ignored (but not stripped). Has this solution been proposed?
This suggests a lot of differences from the original plan.
The original deadline was ODF at the start of 2007. The general plan was to get a suitable plugin for existing MS Office deployments to keep using the same MS licenses, but save all documents as ODF. This plugin would also be available to recipients of the documents, so that they could read documents in the new format. The original plan did not include using a different office suite, open-source or otherwise, as part of this directive (although the directive would obviously facilitate later transitions).
It looks to me like MA has outwitted MS here; MS's FUD about this directive has convinced everybody that MA is ditching MS Office, to the point where MA can make a concession where they switch to OpenOffice later than the deadline, when their original position was not to switch at all.
Now, it's possible that the new CIO is unaware that the old CIO had made the current plan originally, and actually thinks that he was supposed to get new software in place, and thinks he's missing that milestone. But, most likely, he's just making it sound that way so the disablity groups can feel victorious, when their concerns were already handled in the general goal of continuing to use existing working software deployments.
Meh -- it's not abnormal for a few people in an organization to have special software that IT needs to support. E.g. developers have lots of software that salespersons don't have, and vice-versa.
Presumably, there aren't scores of (nearly-)blind people working for the MA government, so the proportion of those with MS-Office + plugin should be really low. The trick is that you should have a doctor-verified vision disability to warrant the most expensive product - not just a don't-wanna-learn disability.
If the plugin saves to ODF by default, why don't they switch immediately? The resolution was on using that file format and using a suite which would produce it by default--NOT to switch the state to OO.o.
Ah well, my karma is currently excellent.
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I just now tested zooming on Mac OS X. It does track the cursor TextEdit if you have set the Universal Access settings to (a) continuously follow the pointer, (b) zoom follows the keyboard focus, and (c) whether Mouse Keys are On or Off.
Wigle, you are a moron to say that Apple is "too lazy" to fix this when a Mac OS X user can easily determine that you don't know what you're talking about. If you could have just gone without the "too lazy" part, I would have felt you were just wrong, not a total gasbag.
Maybe you have found some crappy non-Quartz-compliant word processor that won't function. Maybe that crappy thing is actually Word. I guess if you're working for Word, Job Number One is to keep people on Windows. In that case, it's not Apple who is lazy.
Heh... clearly spoken by someone who doesn't do accessible UIs.
A hierarchy of menus and areas is a good way to make accessible UIs. Visually, people need things to be broken up sections with around 8 options per level in the tree (or else people won't read them). There are many GUI design techniques that directly map to being good interfaces for the blind.
Having a completely different interface is a nice idea, but by building in accessibility to the widgets which GUIs are made out of is a much easier technique. Widgets (multi-choice) can often be mapped to accessible widgets. Infact blind people have a simpler interface, with checkbox lists and dropdownlists being the same (choosing one amongst many).
This also means that the blind interface isn't two versions behind the GUI.
I would be elated if I could reproduce your results. Perhaps you can help me. I'm running Mac OS 10.4.7 and already have the settings you mentioned set. In the Universal access settings "Zoom follows keyboard focus" is checked and "continuously with pointer" is checked. Mouse keys are turned off. If you turn on magnification (Function + Apple + 8) and then pump up the magnification (Function + Apple + =) so you only see a small portion of the screen at a time then try typing in a document it does not follow where you type. Or at least not on my Mac. I've tried in a few applications including Appleworks 6.2.4 and Mail 2.1, and others. In all cases as I type the text goes off the screen to the right instead of the viewing window following my typing cursor. This causes me to have to move the mouse to see what I'm typing.
However, I admit I'm not extremely well-versed with Macs and don't know what a Quartz-compliant application is. If you cold list a Quartz-compliant word processor, e-mail, and web browser program that I could test I"ll see if I can get it in my lab. Despite your rude reply I do appreciate the detail you provided on which settings you use to get this to work. If I can reproduce your claim then I have several clients who will be very grateful.
Michael
When was the word 'accessability' hijacked by the physically disabled community? The whole move to ODF is all about accessability - providing free access to public documents to all citizens, now and in the future. We should be fighting for accessability for everyone, not just a few. Using poorly implemented plugins which don't produce quality ODF is a transparent charade by lazy people who can't abide the thought of giving up their precious Microsoft addiction, and makes a joke of 'accessability'.
As another poster has already pointed out, this burden should not be placed on the app vendors anyway. The windowing system should handle magnification issues and the like, or we'll end up with a lot of redundant implementations that all work differently.
I'm all for giving disabled folks a fair shake. And they're getting it. But don't forget about the vast majority of the rest of us, either. It's simple: continue moving forward with a quality ODF deployment, while continuing to put pressure on the windowing system folks to improve their accessability features. You know, this is F/OSS, so maybe all the whiners should stop whining and start contributing. They can have any damn thing they please.