Open Source Accessibility 319
tbray writes "The strongest push-back against Massachusetts' effort to institute open, non-proprietary document formats has come from the accessibility community, who claim that Open-Source desktop software lags behind Windows; and thus that a transition to Open Document will amount to discrimination against the blind and those with other disabilities. This is serious stuff. Peter Korn, who's an Accessibility Architect at Sun, has written a massive piece that provides a general introduction to the subject, a discussion of how Open Source is doing on the the accessibility front (things could be worse, but they could be a lot better), and finally, a detailed look at the (interesting) history and (uncertain) future of these issues in Massachusetts. Anyone in Open Source who thinks they can ignore accessibility issues is probably wrong. Getting any younger? Eyes as good as they used to be? This is everybody's issue."
Accessibility isn't needed for everyone (Score:5, Insightful)
Bigger command line text (Score:3, Insightful)
Not just OSS in Mass? (Score:3, Insightful)
I mean there is more than one office software vendor isn't there?
Yes, yes. I am new here
on the other hand (Score:1, Insightful)
Where as in a big profit motivated company may not want to spend time and money to go beyond covering the majority.
Then use closed source (Score:4, Insightful)
You see, that's the beauty of it; any (specialized for a certain disability) application can implement the standard at no cost or risk besides the development itself.
Personally, I'm waiting for a bunch of BSD-like licensed libraries that implement translation of Open Document from and to other common formats like HTML, plain text, LaTeX, PDF, etc so anybody can suffice with just a few lines of code to support the Open Document format.
Re:I have no doubt they'll cave (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Bigger command line text (Score:4, Insightful)
accessibility doesn't have ANYTHING to do in a STORAGE FORMAT. this is purely a software issue, with lots of money involved.
how much do you wanna bet these so called "accessibility experts" are getting paid to say they don't want an open document format? who do you think is paying them?
and a sun accessibility expert? come on, this is the company that brought us JAVA, an accessibility nightmare in its own right.
Re:I have no doubt they'll cave (Score:2, Insightful)
fact is that if you have poor sight then you either use windows
or ignore the desktop (which you can do with emacspeak for instance).
This is a poor state of affairs.
Ironically, slashdot has a "type what you can see in the box" check for anonymous posting which is TOTALLY UNACCESSIBLE. Get it fixed guys.
Phil
Marketshare (Score:4, Insightful)
I don't really see a problem, though. It seems reasonable to make an exception with open formats for those who need aid. We let seeing-eye dogs in where pets aren't allowed.
And as far as the public face goes - dissemination of info to the public, that is - that should really be in 508 compliant HTML, shouldn't it? Which means no Word, PDF, openoffice, etc. anyway.
Re:I have no doubt they'll cave (Score:3, Insightful)
This isn't just grasping for straws, here. I used to work for the gov, and accessability is, and always has been, a big issue. All our web pages had to be ADA compliant, etc...
Of course it would be a total shame to see this make Mass. switch, but if OSS developers want adoption by government institutions, they'd better make accessability a consideration, otherwise this will always be a roadblock, and one that government institutions can't help but acknowledge.
Sorry, but this makes my blood boil... (Score:5, Insightful)
How on earth can an open-source document format be a discrimination against the blind and/or handicapped?
If it's a documented standard -- and it will be -- an open-source document format can actually be converted into other documented formats (ASCII text, ISO-8859-X text, CSV, RTF, HTML, etc, even sound waves through a vocal synthetizer) that are actually easier to use for blind users!!
Compare and contrast this with the plight of handicapped people who are now using proprietary document formats, created by proprietary applications under proprietary operating systems... and who find out, the hard way, that their applications do not work anymore with their Braille readers under the newest version of the operating system. Or that they have to go through countless hoops to convert the proprietary document into another proprietary format, that they have no way to check for accuracy and/or problems. Or that can be endlessly confused by the changes that each version of ____________ [insert application name here] intoduces in its already confusing GUI.
I worked for about a year and a half for a non-profit that was dedicated to improving the access of blind people to computer technology. Those were the days of DOS and BBS, a time many blind people remember as a true 'golden age', since most information was textual, and there was very little that could not be done with a simple Braille terminal emulator and/or speech synthetizer.
Windows changed all that, for the worst. I knew people who used to be good programmers despite their handicaps who found themselves out of a job. Others that found themselves increasingly locked-out of the Internet revolution because the www was increasingly becoming graphical.
And now, people attack Open Document on the basis that it creates discrimination against blind people? Come on, that is the most ridiculous argument I have heard in a long while. If anything, a truly universal, XML-based document format would be perfect for these users!
In the worst possible case, I will volunteer to write converters to make sure these new documents can be exported into proprietary apps. And I am not joking: this was actually one of the things I did at the non-profit I mentioned above.
Open source opportunity (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Bigger command line text (Score:3, Insightful)
If one storage format has accessible software for it and another doesn't, then it seems pretty clear that to the end user, accessibility is all about the storage format.
Your task then is to get people to take the long view: that on a long enough timeline, an open standard is always going to end up more accessable than a closed binary one. Open formats tend to become more acessible over time as more software becomes available, closed binary ones become less so as the software is taken off the market.
I'd disagree (Score:3, Insightful)
The main problem is documents which can only be opened in the particular application that generated them. Microsoft documents are an example of this; although as they're so popular, pretty much all accessibility companion-style programs sit on top of Word and change the style of delivery (style, size, clarity, to speech, etc) appropriately.
So if everyone used open source, standards-compliant documents, there would be no need for the majority of accessibility programs. I think moving to open source document formats removes much of the accessibility problem at the source, rather than working round it, which is what most solutions do at the minute.
Non Sequitor Argument? (Score:5, Insightful)
What does one necessarily have to do with the other? Microsoft can put in the fileformat in their software just like OpenSource apps.
The Issue is "Screen Readers" (Score:2, Insightful)
There are dozens of people working on screen readers for various linux GUIs. Just do a google search for "linux screen reader". But none of them are as full-featured as JAWS, and certainly none of them are taught to blind students in school so it is unlikely that they are much use to the general blind community at the moment.
All it would take is for some reputable Windows screen reader maker, like Freedom Scientific or GWMicro to come out with a version for KDE or something. Certainly those folks have the skills and knowledge of the blind community to do it right and be quickly adopted by blind users. Why doesn't some Linux group cozy up to one of those two companies, get the product developed, and put this issue behind them?
Competitive Bid Process (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:on the other hand (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:So let's fix it. (Score:2, Insightful)
Need: Management ( check! )
Need: Programmer ( vacant )
Re:Accessibility isn't needed for everyone (Score:1, Insightful)
Instead of this, these groups seem to be spending all their time and money lobbying.. Why not produce open source accessibility software that not only suits your requirements exactly, but also benefits other people too?
If they didn't have something to whine about, who would listen to them? It would be a huge loss of status. They can not abide that.
Re:Eyes as good as they used to be? (Score:3, Insightful)
I wouldn't recommend that - there are some places where you really don't want papercuts.
Besides, if you can't see the computer screen, where you can adjust the contrast, brightness, and font size, and perhaps even get a screen reader to read the text to you, just how are you going to see text on paper ?
Re:I can afford to ignore it. (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:on the other hand (Score:5, Insightful)
on the other hand, open source means anyone (with the skills) can take matters in to their own hands and address these issues to a higher standard than a commercial product, eventually.
A claim so vague that it can't be verified or invalidated. WTF do you mean by "higher standard"? That seems to imply that there exists a single optimum solution to the problem that will make everyone happy. Well, if you have it I would like to hear it. Meanwhile, in the real world the "higher standards" dependend on both personal preference and problem domain. For example, is Linux at a "higher standard" than Windows? Depends on who you ask and in what context. Even in the open source world there are often competing(occaisionally conflicting) ideas on how to solve a particular problem, competition is good!
Where as in a big profit motivated company may not want to spend time and money to go beyond covering the majority.
Care to back this up? Or even explain how open source is really all that different? I have a lot of niche needs, and I find that open source doesn't cover them as often as it does. I use a propietary OS(Mac OS X) that covers a lot of my niche needs very well. I also use some other propietary software(in the realm of language learning) that is outside the majority, but it works rather well. There are open source alternatives, but they don't work as well for me personally. Does that mean they don't neccasarily work well for you? Of course not! Does the ideology put behind the product have any bearing on how well it functions? Again, not really. Thats not to say I don't use FOSS, on the contrary, I also use FOSS products that meet other demands that I have(I use emacs to write Ruby programs). So what was your point again?
What is it with these vacuous fanboy comments on slashdot anyway?
Where were they in 2000 (Score:2, Insightful)
When Microsoft Office did not offer such accessibility features? Where was the pissing and moaning then?
Let's not forget that People's Republik of Taxachussetts (Sorry, I live in Mass, I get disgusted by the rampant tax-and-spend mentality that has reigned here for years) is doing this to cut back on spending as well as to make documents accessible for as long as technology exists without dealing with vendor lock - and yet, for those folks who have handicaps which prevent their working with the current version of OOo/Star Office, they are going to make reasonable accomodations by giving those users Microsoft Office (they've been up-front about this from the very beginning) and others will convert documents as-needed for those employees.
This whole "Accessibility issue" is merely a strawman Microsoft is trying to raise, because they are intent on not supporting OpenDoc because if they were forced to support the OpenDoc spec, then vendor lock is a thing of the past and the office suite market will once again be competitive. Who knows? Maybe IBM will bring back Lotus Smartsuite (AMI Pro was great in its prime) and maybe Corel will fix WordPerfect and make it into a viable product again, because if competition is introduced, there will be incentive for others to put R&D into their office suites, and then products can be chosen by both technical merit and cost, and not due to vendor lock due to purchase decisions made 10+ years ago.
The Commonwealth of Massachusetts already has plans for reasonable accomodations. The law doesn't require that EVERYTHING be accessible, but that accomodations be made for those who need the accessibility, and by offering Microsoft Office to those dealing with physical handicaps, they have fulfilled that legal AND ethical requirement.
Re:Uaaah... (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:I have no doubt they'll cave (Score:2, Insightful)
No, this is not flamebait, it's just the simple truth regarding politics in general. When was the last time any elected official acted in the best benefit of the common good rather than pander to lobbiests? See DMCA for example, and the broadcast flag, and current efforts to change P2P trading to a felony so that 14-yr-old children can be permanently marked as non-voting felons before they're even of voting age despite record companies' posting great profits in the face of P2P networks.
my 0.02$ (Score:3, Insightful)
Anyone with any visual impairments (like myself) can use ZoomText, or another comparable programm on windows, like they did with MS Office. No big difference, and not openoficce's job to fix.
As for the blind.... I'm sure one could hack together a screen reader for ODT, at least? It's a bloody xml file, after all. Provided the screen reader/braille reader already works with windows, it should be trivial.
What bothers me more personally is how IE systematically ignores the 'larger font sizé' option on a lot of webistes. I figure this is because of some use of css, but I didn't put too much effort in finding out what exactly causes the problem.
Re:Yea, sounds great! (Score:1, Insightful)
Oh, I forgot, the politicians (and apparently the disabled as well, now - just give the disabled a few peanuts, you know, "free" proprietary software, that should do it, etc.) are in the pockets of the big corporations and their strings are being pulled.
re: 508 compliance is the right idea (Score:5, Insightful)
The Microsoft camp seems to be rather oportunistic in when they choose to extol the virtue of handicap-accessiblity
Re:So let's fix it. (Score:2, Insightful)
Let's not confuse the issue here. (Score:2, Insightful)
Open Format != Open Source
-mix
Re:Yea, sounds great! (Score:3, Insightful)
Speaking as someone working in the AT industry ... (Score:3, Insightful)
... and also someone who loves open source, I have come to the same conclusion myself -- that Open Source has a way to go before it can stand shoulder to shoulder with its proprietary counterparts. The fact is, open source is already at a disadvantage when it comes to accessibility -- because so many of the accessibility features out there are being pushed by the vendor (making them effectively proprietary).
Consider Flash. It is, as some of you may be surprised to know, accessible -- but only when used with a Microsoft toolchain. That's right; for users with special needs to use Flash, it has to be being rendered through Macromedia's plugin (obviously), in MSIE, to one of a very limited group of screen readers only available for Windows (JAWS, WindowEyes, one or two others) and all on, you might have guessed by now, Windows platforms only. Even the Macintosh -- which is natively considerably more accessible than Windows (or any other OS, essentially) doesn't support accessible flash.
We've all heard the rumours of Microsoft releasing its "Flash Killer" application; maybe it will be natively more accessible than Flash, but then where will that leave open source and operating systems besides Windows? Does anyone think Microsoft cares about the greater good enough to want to make the spec -- much less the product -- available for any other operating system?
Now consider Adobe Acrobat. Version 7 is chock full of accessibility features that revolve around the new tagged document structure. How many apps currently generate tagged documents? Not many. Again, Adobe has partnered with Microsoft so that just about every Office product will generate tagged PDF. There are one or two other desktop publishing packages that do it. OpenOffice managed to squeak tagged PDF 2.0 into their product (and good on them for doing it) but the support is minimalistic; it is an attempt at addressing the problem but is shy of the mark as far as users with special needs go.
Never mind that OpenDocument is anyway readable on free operating systems; users with disabilities generally wouldn't touch Linux with a ten-foot pole because the screen reader software available for it is also somewhat lacking where it counts; consider JAWS by Freedom Scientific, where they employ dozens of employees to do nothing more all day long than write key mappings and shortcut-features to applications. Guess which browser is better supported in JAWS -- MSIE, or Firefox? Guess how good the custom support for OpenOffice.org is in JAWS? You would be correct to guess it is non-existent. These people have invested thousands (and in many cases, over the USD $10,000 mark) in technologies to allow them to use computers to do their jobs or just live; it's unfair enough to have something continue to be inaccessible to them, but considerably worse (and understandably frustrating) to have something be accessible then have it taken away for the benefit of others.
The only potential saving grace in the browser market is the release of Opera for free; since it has better innate accessibility features than either Firefox or MSIE (which has virtually none) there may be some mass migration to these systems. HTML is inherently one of the most accessible forms of markup available today because of its strong, structural meaning and the fact that it is one of the very few languages that are completely open, appropriate for most uses, and heavily wide-spread.
Several opens-source projects have already made accessibility an important part of their web projects; for example, Plone [plone.org] and especially Atutor [atutor.ca] are star examples of how you can build a great application and still have it accessible to users with disabilities by design.
I would like to congratulate all authors and participants on those projects and others who work at making open source software accessible to everyone, not just the enabled majority. I would like to encourage everyone else to do some re
I thought too much time had gone by... (Score:2, Insightful)
Accessibility is relatively easy to fix, brought to the developer's attention, it could be in the next release (the Linux desktop has had accesibility tools, i.e. xmagnify, since BEFORE Windows. KDE and Gnome also have a strong showing.). Most likely the oversight was due to the natural assumption that accessibility is already taken care of at the operating system level. But of course, don't take it from somebody's who's actually programmed. Use this as ammo for as long as you draw breath that Linux users hate the handicapped, and that Stallman and Torvalds go around town knocking over wheelchairs so that their occupants spill into traffic.
Re:So let's fix it. (Score:5, Insightful)
You and many others are falling victim to Microsoft's red herrings. Open Source has absolutely nothing to do with OpenDocument. Here are some answers (yet again):
1) OpenDocument is a format specification, not a program.
2) Any program, Open Source or proprietary, can implement OpenDocument filters. That is all that is necessary to support OpenDocument.
3) Microsoft is fighting OpenDocument by changing the subject. This is being done to maintain Microsoft's monopoly stranglehold on one of its two profitable rackets.
4) If people think Microsoft Office has better accessibility than OO.o/StarOffice, then they can continue using Microsoft Office. All Microsoft, and any other proprietary company, has to do is write an I/O filter to work with the OpenDocument format.
We need to keep our focus, and not allow ourselves to get diverted into senseless debates about irrelevancies.
Re:I have no doubt they'll cave (Score:3, Insightful)
- No or poor support from vendors to anything except MS Office
- Packaged speech recognition on platforms other than Windows
Had you take the time to read TFA (but being a shill, you could not), you would have learned the following things :
- Open Source is pretty efficient in providing accessibility API
- MS and MS Windows are the more deficient systems concerning accessibility API
- Support for accessibility from vendors is specific to MS Office in Windows
- Support for accessibility from vendors is very poor or inexistant for anything else
- OSS desktops actually offer some tools more powerful than what is available from ISV on Windows
Open Source desktops provide accessibility APIs, Jave provide accessibility API, but MS Windows do not provide any useful accessibility API. It's specifically explained in the article that JAWS made significant investment to provide accessibility tailored for MS Office, as Windows has no API for such things, for example. So it's not that open source software is deficient, but that ISV do not support anything beside MS Office. Mandating ODF would mean the present provider of accessibility tools will have an incentive to provide the support other Office suites need.
if OSS developers want adoption by government institutions, they'd better make accessability a consideration
Except that, as always, they already do and you are clueless (and you won't even read the article to be less clueless). Accessibility was one big consideration behind Gnome 2, and recently in KDE 3. It's very efficient, and for example, there are at least two (optional) libraries and apps (for example gok, at-spi) specifically for that in Gnome, and it's supported by most of the Gnome core apps (people often complain about the amount of libraries in Gnome, perhaps they will start to understand why this is the case).
The problem here is actually in Windows which has no API for that, and manufacturers that do not use Java or OSS APIs for their tools, not the dedication of OSS in accessibility, or the state of it.
Of course, the state of the API and tools dedicated to accessibility can be improved, as some bugs remain, and the features can be improved too, but the support is there and alive.
Biggest work is from manufacturers. I think JAWS (or others) can adapt their product to these API if they want to have a part of the pie.
Re:Yea, sounds great! (Score:2, Insightful)
The developer who is developing OSS project XYZ "free of charge" is likely doing it for a purpose important to him/herself. Whether it's for their own use or for some other purpose they deem appropriate motivation, it's something for them. Selfish? Maybe, but not in the typical sense. While they're likely creating it for a purpose that is 'selfish' on some level, point is that they don't then keep it for ONLY that purpose. They then let others have it for their own purposes as well.
What precisely is in it for the person donating their time to implement it for a *business*? Maybe it would be different if you had mentioned doing it for a charity or non-profit, but you didn't. Because you know as well as I do, that you'd have received myriad responses from folks who HAD done that. Doing free work for a *business* (directly, rather than as an indirect consquence of doing something for yourself) is nothing short of stupidity.
Mind you, I can fathom cases where it might be advantageous for a particular person to implement a particular package(s) for a particular business or three. But that then would answer the 'what is in it for them' question. Additionally, these are going to be the exception rather than the rule.
Re:So let's fix it. (Score:3, Insightful)
This is what open-source is all about: use the software for free, and if you want enhancements, you add them yourself, or hire someone to do it for you. And we're not talking about "ridiculous prices" here - just the salaries of a few developers. The Massachussetts government probably spends more than that just on office supplies.
Re:The Issue is "Screen Readers" (Score:3, Insightful)
Sera
Skinnable Apps (Score:3, Insightful)
Guess what - a skinnable interface is one that can easily be adapted to overcome a given visual handycap, and a non-skinable interface is one that will be effectivly unusable for some people with normal or better intelligence - period.
Instead of dissmissing skinnability, how about working on any of three things:
1. Skin deliberately to address at least some common visual disabilities.
2. Code an app that shows how persons with common visual impairments see things (i.e. click button 1 to see what this web-page or interface would look like to a person with red-green color blindness... click button 2 to see what it looks like to someone with blue color blindness, click button 3 to see how this looks to the average 50 year old, etc.).
3. publicize how OS is addressing these needs, if only to offset some of this "Open Source sounds like Communism" FUD you're so concerned about.
Much of the point of the blog (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Yea, sounds great! (Score:3, Insightful)
They have an IT component that *ought* to be competent in programming or managing programming or procuring applications.
True, Government, itself, is not an IT shop, but they do have an IT shop associated with them. Not many organizations
are IT shops. Most have one associated with them, as part of the organization, but are enabling, not core,
in just the same situation as Government.
True, Governments are not IT shops. But lets look at part of that statement again. "..don't usually have the expertise in either programming or managing programming projects...". That seems to me to be claiming that there is no IT associated with Goverment.
Which is not true.