Daniel wrote: > Could someone help me respond to this?
a) Who do want a copy of my woefully incomplete outline of a11y & OOo? b) Here is my (slightly edited/abridged) response to a similar post on _FOSS - Policy and Development Implications_ *** quotes here are by James Prendergast**** >Agencies can turn to the marketplace—often to small state-based systems integrators—and receive bids for the best solutions at the best price to meet specific needs. With OpenDocument, the marketplace will be _more_ competitive. The major players do not have to compete, if they choose not to do so. However, choosing not to compete will inevitably result in the demise of the company. > The proposed policy throws out this system, and instead makes the blind > pre-determined selection of applications using the largely immature, rarely > deployed OpenDocument technology. The file format is specified, not the application. There is a big difference between the two. > The burden, however, reaches well beyond simple taxpayer costs. Businesses, > organizations and citizens who interact with the state will also be forced to > support Massachusetts' mandated technologies. This will force those companies to be more efficient in how they handle their documents. Right now, when a house closes, everybody has to use paper documents, because no two industries use a common file format for exchanging data. With OpenDocument, it is trivial to convert the electronic document to whatever file format is used by their _legacy_ software, and convert it back again, when needed. [Yes, you are reading that correctly. You can convert OpenDocument to legacy file formats, and back again. This means that instead of learning how to use a new program, you can simply run a conversion program, that will put the data into the appropriate file format. >Law firms that file electronically, businesses that regularly share information with agencies via electronic files, even citizens who want to take advantage of online services will potentially have to purchase, install and learn new software to comply with the policy. These added costs would be substantial. The initial costs _might_ be higher than migrating to a proprietary file format, but the long term costs are demonstrably lower. [Boeing issued a case study demonstrating that point.] > The policy also fails to consider accessibility by citizens and state > employees with disabilities who rely on assistive technologies (search). Historically, proprietary file formats have been very unusable to people who rely on assistive technologies to use the software. With OpenDocument, there is a chance for software being written from the ground up, that covers _all_ of the requirements that assistive technology users have, and are not met by currently existing office applications. Instead of having to created yet another proprietary file format, as Duxberry Systems did, a company could use the OpenDocument file formats as output, and work on user interface that fully supports a specific adaptive technology --- whether it is screen reader, speech recognition, Braille display unit, or something else. >Several such technologies, including screen readers and speech recognition, are not readily supported by applications that use OpenDocument formats. #1: AFAIK, there are no drivers that correctly work for OOo and Braille Printers. [For that matter, OOo also has issues when printing to a fixed font dot matrix printer.] Printing documents created with OOo is a known issue. This is due to the nature of OOo --- everything is an object, and braille printers can't handle objects. In theory, a driver can be written, that will convert OOo input, to the appropriate Braille pattern, and thus print out correct Braille. (A "smart" driver would read in normal English, and output Grade 2 Braille.] Somewhere along the line, one of the people quoted in the article claimed that OpenDocument would be unusable by blind people, and somebody else claimed that the file format violated the ADA., Write that currently hypothetical Braille Printer driver, and not only are both of those statements incorrect, but you have just made the contemporary office several orders of magnitude more friendly for people who read Braille. (A company could simply print out their OpenDocument file formatted documents, instead of shipping the file to one of the forty or so companies that transcribes Text to Braille, and prints it out.) #2: Freedom Scientific point blank refuses to support _any_ software that is not made by Microsoft for the Windows XP platform. Note: "made by". If Microsoft distributes software, but does not make it, the _official_ policy of Freedom Scientific is to _not_ support the software --- it is, in their words "software that is irrelevant to the end user". The fact that JAWS and OOo do not play nicely together can be blamed entirely on the incredibly short-sightedness and lack of vision of Freedom Scientific. OOo can work with JAWs --- I've used it myself. However, to configure OOo and JAWS to work, meant disabling virtually every other function in WinXP. #3 Speech recognition is a slightly different story. $10K is the cheapest "adequate" speech recognition program. $25K is the price point for solid, reliable speech recognition software That software _does_ work with FLOSS. > In commentary submitted to the Massachusetts Information Technology Division > (search), the Bay State Council of the Blind and individuals with vision > impairments strongly opposed the proposed policy. As a general rule, blind people oppose _anything_ that will change their computer environment. It doesn't matter what that change is, it will be opposed on principle. This attitude is quite understandable, since computers provide very little feedback on what is happening on-screen. [It is painfully slow to read 2 500 words on a 25 (or 40) character Braille display unit.] Screen readers are just plain aggravating, when they repeat the same thing that they said a minute ago, because one hit the up page key, instead of the down page key.(This is especially true when the raised dot on the "5" has worn away.)] > State employee Sharon Strzalkowski wrote, "We have worked long and hard to > get the computer access we now enjoy, and it would cause much harm to go to > this new and inaccessible system." The OpenDocument file format is much more accessible than competing file formats are. OOo and SO do require The Java Accesibility Bridge to be installed. Sun does not make it easy to find, or download that component. When one does find it on the Sun website, the notice next to it, saying that it is only required for developers is going to make non-techies think that that is not the software that they need, for their a11y needs. > Some have suggested that the policy would violate the Americans with > Disabilities Act (search). If anything, it will enable companies to more easily provide data in accessible formats. One input document. Output a web page (Though OOo HTML is pretty bad) a PDF, a text file, and a printed document. With the hypothetical braille printer driver I mentioned earlier, Braille output is a no-brainer. I _think that all that is left is a driver that reads in the OpenDocument file format, and outputs an MP3, or WAV file. [And somebody might have already created such a driver.] > Since most of our users are not IT experts, such interoperability and > functionality are critical to the day to day operation of our offices…. This is where the OpenDocument file format is superior to other file formats. You might not be able to open your document, because of a corrupt file. Unless the corruption is with the Zipfile, it is fairly easy to recover your data, and, in most cases, fix the corrupt part, using a text editor. If it is the ZIP file that is corrupt, you are out of luck. If you password protected your OpenDocument file, and forget your password, then you are equally out of luck. [I doubt that there will ever be an industry that specialises in recovering "inaccessible" OpenDocument files, for the simple reason that either the end user can recover it by themselves, or nobody can recover the file. >We are unaware of any organizations with which we exchange documents that use products such as OpenOffice or StarOffice." Still more FUD. Odds are, at least one organization that they do business with, is using SO/OOo, but sending them documents in an MSO file format. . > The proposed policy is also puzzling and arbitrary in its approach to Adobe's > PDF format (search). The policy acknowledges that PDF falls outside the > "open" format mandate, but grants PDF an exception so that agencies can > continue to use it. a) PDF is, in theory, a read/print only file format. b) The PDF file format has been publicly released, so an end user is not required to use a proprietary product to read the file format. [In passing, I will admit that, once upon a time, after installing the appropriate FLOSS software on your Linux box, one could open a PDF, then edit it within OOo, and print out the new document, or save it in .SXW format.] >The exception essentially underscores the weakness of establishing fixed formats in the first place. Adobe may be happy to find a special place carved out for its format, but the company should be wary nevertheless. It is fairly easy to convert a PDF text document to UTF-8 text file.[Of course, you do lose all the markup, but you retain the content, which is all that counts. Graphics in PDFs are a different story. > In a letter to Governor Mitt Romney about the policy, Citizens Against > Government Waste righlty pointed out that, "Not only will this mandate > undermine free market competition and drive up costs, it will also curtail > the ability of the people and government of Massachusetts to benefit from > future innovation." If anything, it will _increase_ innovation. [Companies don't have to worry about the file format, but can instead think up new "bells and whistles" for their customers to use (or more likely, not use, but think re essential 'must have' features.] > Government is not directly in the business of innovation, but it should > support policies that drive innovation. Massachusetts drafted its proposed > policy to improve document management and archival access, which is a worthy > goal. The biggest issue with FLOSS, is that the only revenue stream is from selling support services. Depending upon your POV, that is either a good thing or a bad thing. >But there is no certainty that OpenDocument file formats will become a standard supported by future applications. i) Ignores the fact that OpenDocumetn is on track to be an ISO standard; ii) Ignores the fact that OpenDocument is a European standard; [I've forgotten which other multi-national standards body made it an official standard.] *********** end of my abridged / edited response *********** > Can someone point me to factual information as to how OOo or StarOffice > accomodates disabilities? These fall into four major groups: i) Aural; Noisy environments Silence requirements Flashing Screen ii) Cognitive; Screen readers Speech to Text iii) Motor; Keyboard Shortcuts Mouse Gestures OnScreen Keyboards Joysticks / Trackballs iv) Visual Data Input * keypad * Speech to text; * Mouseball/trackball * Other Data Display * Screenreaders; * Braille Display Units; * Other; Data Output * Moon Language Printers * Braille Printers * MNP3, WAV, and other sound formts; * Other; > Especially *blind* people, as that seems to be the core of Microsoft's > argument. 1: Turn on "narrator"; Start MSOffice; Turn of your monitor; Write an essay singing the praises of Narrator as an a11y tool; 2: Print a document created with MSOffice on a Braille Printer, without running it through Duxberry Braille Translator, or similar format. Those two examples should suffice in demonstrating just how committed Microsoft is, about producing software that adheres to the ADA. xan jonathon -- Does your Office Suite conform to ISO Standards?
