I sure hope this !@%# mess is cleaned up some how before
2008 when I have to renew.  I'm not holding my breath.

        I, and probably many of us can find sighted help to do
this, but isn't that totally ridiculous?  Just once, I'd like to
say, "Wow!  That's really neat," rather than what I usually say
which if not tempered would get me kicked off the list for life.

        I had a pleasant, but utterly unproductive correspondence
with a lady from the FCC a year or two ago regarding this
situation and I suggested a couple of fixes.  One was an
automated template mechanism similar to the mechanism that some
domain registrars use if one wants to register an Internet domain
via email.  The idea is one fills in the template, sends it in,
and the computer kicks it back to you if you failed to complete
it correctly.  It is all done by email and was done this way in
the dark ages of the eighties or so so you know it doesn't take
much computing power.

        The other suggestion was simply a web page that could be
filled in from lynx that didn't require javascript.

        Of course, nothing happened and we have what we have
today.

        I have been working and playing with computers for
twenty-three years as of this month and I admit to being hard to
please.  UNIX pleases me a lot more than Microsoft does, because
access under Windows is still sold separately and the very reason
we are having this discussion is that even those of you who did
by in to Windows can't make this public system work for you
without help.  That isn't access. Q E D.  For those who didn't
run across the expression Q E D in geometry, it stands for 3
words in Latin which escape me at the moment but which mean
"to be proven."  In other words, when you prove that a triangle
is a right triangle, you can put Q E D after the proof.

        Believe me, I am not trying to start one of those
religious wars about whose operating system is better, because
it is a pointless argument since Windows is very accessible for
those applications for which access has been planned, and there
are some tasks in UNIX that at least appear easier based on what
I hear people talking and complaining about.

        My point is that this public system bought with tax-payer
Dollars doesn't appear to work for any screen reader users or at
least if it does, it is not a trivial task.

Martin McCormick WB5AGZ  Stillwater, OK
OSU Center for Computing and Information Services Network Operations Group

Barbara Lombardi writes:
>yes but it would be good to have someone sighted with you because you have
>to download a java plug-in for your browser--internet explorer. got renewal
>in a couple of days.