Maybe it's time to stop playing footsie with the FCC and start to write our
Congressional Representatives and complain about how the FCC's approach to
filing application materials has provided unequal access for those of us
who are blind.  Or, maybe there is some legal remedy.  I believe that ALL
federal government web sites are supposed to be accessible.

73, de Lou K2LKK

At 10:03 PM 2/23/02 -0600, you wrote:
>         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.

Louis (Kim) Kline, A.R.S.  K2LKK
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Work Tel.  (585) 697-5753