----- Original Message ----- From: "BlindNews Mailing List" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Sent: Tuesday, November 13, 2007 6:56 AM Subject: Microsoft and Novell Celebrate one year of progress and bring accessibility to the forefront of collaboration
> MSDN (Microsoft Developer Network) Blog > Monday, November 12, 2007 > > Microsoft and Novell Celebrate one year of progress and bring > accessibility to the forefront of collaboration > > By Brent Phillips > > > I volunteered at a local hospice for a few years while I was in school. > During that time, in addition to some administrative support at the main > office, I spent a significant amount of time with a young teenager who had > been diagnosed with Duchenne 's muscular dystrophy. If you don't know the > disease here is a brief synopsis: It is genetic. It is degenerative. And > it is, unfortunately, always fatal. The young man with whom I spent time > had been diagnosed with the disease in early childhood and - at the time > of our first meeting - was bed-ridden and could only move his fingers. > Aside from visits from me, spending time with his family, and watching > TV - the remainder of his time was spent on the computer by way of a > trackball mouse and special voice recognition technology. > > What strikes me, when I think back about it, is that his use of the > computer was probably the only autonomy and freedom he had. Any other > activity - at all - was dependent on someone else. At that time, the > Internet was still young by consumer standards and multimedia PC's were > just blooming. He was thrilled! Chat rooms, surfing the web, games, and > email became a great past-time for him. I am happy that he had that > freedom and I cannot stress how important technology was for improving his > quality of life. > > Now it goes without saying that technology improves everyone's quality of > life to some degree, but for those who have limitations for whatever > reason - immobility, blindness, hearing loss - technology can be life > changing. The challenge these days - as computing has become truly > ubiquitous and more complex - is how to offer consistent and predictable > experiences across form factors for those who are impaired. > > Enter the latest collaboration between Microsoft and Novell: The User > Interface Automation specification (details here). In short, Microsoft is > releasing the specification to the technical community while working with > Novell to improve cross-platform accessibility experiences. We're already > hearing positive feedback from the community, including the National > Federation for the Blind, and look forward to a fruitful collaboration. > After one year of working together, this announcement marks the sixth > unique project that we are working on together to address our customers' > interoperability needs. > > I am amazed to think about the progress we have made in such a short > period of time. As always, check out http://www.moreinterop.com for > details. > > For more on this announcement, see Microsoft's presspass article here. > > LINK: > http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/press/2007/nov07/11-07MSNovell1YearPR.mspx > > Filed under: anniversary, accessibility, Novell > > SOURCE > > > http://blogs.msdn.com/brentphillips/archive/2007/11/12/microsoft-and-novell-celebrate-one-year-of-progress-and-bring-accessibility-to-the-forefront-of-collaboration.aspx > BlindNews Mailing List > Subscribe: [EMAIL PROTECTED] with "subscribe" as subject > > Unsubscribe: [EMAIL PROTECTED] with "unsubscribe" as subject > > Moderator: [EMAIL PROTECTED] > > Archive: http://GeoffAndWen.com/blind > > RSS: http://GeoffAndWen.com/BlindNewsRSS.asp > > More information about RSS feeds will be published shortly. Send instant messages to your online friends http://in.messenger.yahoo.com To unsubscribe send a message to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the subject unsubscribe. To change your subscription to digest mode or make any other changes, please visit the list home page at http://accessindia.org.in/mailman/listinfo/accessindia_accessindia.org.in
