Hi Mary, While I don't know about accessibility to the blind, I do know many sighted people who've been trying to use these as replacements for MS Office, and who have been very unhappy, especially with trying to edit documents this way.
The feature set is very restricted compared to something like MS Word or Outlook, and so you can only achieve relatively simple documents. I'm not sure if you can manage say a document mailing list, with a database of information, at all; certainly, you can't easily do macro programming like you can in MS office to achieve document automation and integration with other systems. It's free, and you get what you pay for. If that's not enough, to make really good use of MS outlook calendaring the big drawback is that you need to operate a MS exchange server. This is both time-consuming, and difficult. So, there have sprung up many companies that will sell you time, over the internet on their exchange servers. That is, they do all the administrative work of creating accounts and keeping the server running and up to date, and you pay X$ a month per person, and your outlook is tied into their exchange server invisibly. As long as you have high speed internet, it is supposed to work fine (we have our own exchange server, but we did operate like this at one time, having someone else operate the exchange server for us). There's no doubt that MS Word and Outlook are the gold standard for collaboration, calendaring, and word processing, and are quite accessible. There's also a web interface that these companies can operate, and so should offer to you, which gives you remote access to your email and calendar when out of the office, and it's called Microsoft outlook web accessibility. The latest version is accessible; earlier versions were not. It's a difficult interface sometimes, as any web-based app can be for the blind, it's not at all like using outlook on your pc, but it is possible. hth, Chip ------------------------------ Chip Orange Database Administrator Florida Public Service Commission [EMAIL PROTECTED] (850) 413-6314 (Any opinions expressed are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of the Florida Public Service Commission.) > -----Original Message----- > From: Mary Otten [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] > Sent: Friday, November 14, 2008 1:21 AM > To: [email protected] > Subject: on line calendar and document sharing > > Hello folks, > I'm in a group that is seriously considering moving to on > line calendar > and document sharing using google calendar and google documents. Had > anybody had experience with these features using WE? How usable are > they? And if they are not easily and efficiently usable, do you have > other more accessible suggestions for on line calendaring and document > sharing, storage and collaboration? Thanks. > > Mary > > If you reply to this message it will be delivered to the original > sender only. If your reply would benefit others on the list and > your message is related to GW Micro, then please consider sending > your message to [email protected] so the entire list will > receive it. > > All GW-Info messages are archived at > http://www.gwmicro.com/gwinfo, and can be searched through > and sorted using the search > form at the bottom of the page. > > If you wish to unsubscribe from this list, send a message to > [EMAIL PROTECTED] and include leave gw-info in the body > of the message. > > If you reply to this message it will be delivered to the original sender only. If your reply would benefit others on the list and your message is related to GW Micro, then please consider sending your message to [email protected] so the entire list will receive it. All GW-Info messages are archived at http://www.gwmicro.com/gwinfo, and can be searched through and sorted using the search form at the bottom of the page. If you wish to unsubscribe from this list, send a message to [EMAIL PROTECTED] and include leave gw-info in the body of the message.
