Odd, no one ever mentions the mercury CFLs contain. It's a small amount, but given how we Californians already recycle (which is not good) and that curbside recycling doesn't usually accept light bulbs of any kind, most of that mercury will ultimately end up in landfills. Any law that mandates a technology must make sure that technology is disposed of safely.
The issue of ODF equal access, or potential lack thereof, is another episode in a long history of unequal access for people with disabilities. John Winske is not being influenced by Microsoft FUD, but by his personal experience having to wait and eventually settle for less when it comes to equal access to anything in the community. Shops, busses, schools, voting machines -- all of these show the promise of equal access but never quite meet the promise, even years later. Come on, voting machines don't even come close to being accessible. Governments have adopted PDF is a standard, but haven't made good use of the existing access capabilities of the format, such as they are. Where is the equal access Internet, required under the ADA no less? Most browsers (if not all) have yet to recognize the full suite of accessibility protocols, such as they are. And just because software is Open Source, there's no guarantee that it will be accessible. Look at any Linux distro or Apple's feable access technology for the Mac.
I know John Winske well. He loves technology. If he had the skills to write his own access solutions, he would. There's a valuable market for it. JAWS is a very expensive piece of add-on, adaptive software. Instead, he along with the rest of the disabiliy community have to rely on the courts to secure whatever level of accessibility we can get. That could change if the mindset is to build in access from the start.
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Odd, no one ever mentions the mercury CFLs contain. It's a small amount, but given how we Californians already recycle (which is not good) and that curbside recycling doesn't usually accept light bulbs of any kind, most of that mercury will ultimately end up in landfills. Any law that mandates a technology must make sure that technology is disposed of safely.
The issue of ODF equal access, or potential lack thereof, is another episode in a long history of unequal access for people with disabilities. John Winske is not being influenced by Microsoft FUD, but by his personal experience having to wait and eventually settle for less when it comes to equal access to anything in the community. Shops, busses, schools, voting machines -- all of these show the promise of equal access but never quite meet the promise, even years later. Come on, voting machines don't even come close to being accessible. Governments have adopted PDF is a standard, but haven't made good use of the existing access capabilities of the format, such as they are. Where is the equal access Internet, required under the ADA no less? Most browsers (if not all) have yet to recognize the full suite of accessibility protocols, such as they are. And just because software is Open Source, there's no guarantee that it will be accessible. Look at any Linux distro or Apple's feable access technology for the Mac.
I know John Winske well. He loves technology. If he had the skills to write his own access solutions, he would. There's a valuable market for it. JAWS is a very expensive piece of add-on, adaptive software. Instead, he along with the rest of the disabiliy community have to rely on the courts to secure whatever level of accessibility we can get. That could change if the mindset is to build in access from the start.