This thread made me think a bit so I am going off on a
bit of a tangent, but not a rant. This is one of those things
that has no right or wrong way to do things.

	When I first got in to networked computing in 1989 after
ten previous years of pretty-much stand-alone systems and lots
of experimentation, the command line was king with occasional
hints of the Tower of Fable that is today's web-based computing.
As a screen reader user, the command line didn't need much work
except to convert text to speech. It was very conversational. It
talked, you typed.

	Today, I use a Macintosh to handle a lot of web
applications and Linux for command-line and those web
applications that still work with lynx.

	Maybe I am just being old-fashioned, but I really still
like command-line interaction best especially when filling out
forms. It is sometimes difficult to know what format to enter
certain types of information like credit card numbers or even
whether or not to enter your first name, a space and then your
last name, or whether the form wants a first name in one box and
a last name in another box.

	In my world, a space is sufficient to resolve this issue
because it denotes a separation. Web forms try to be so cute
that they start being hard to figure out.

	We have a leave time application here where I work that
is totally accessible which is good news. The bad news is that
it takes a while to figure out how to enter some fields because
they apparently are constructed as tables from which you select
the desired choice rather than text entry fields in to which you
simply type.

	Once you figure out that little mystery, it does all
work.

	I guess the closest thing to a rant I can say is that
some of this technology is simply getting too complex and then
we spend too much time trying to fix it.

	I have been using computers for 30 years and on the
Internet for 20 years and am both amazed at how accessibility has
improved tremendously over that time but also a bit agrevated at
how many opportunities keep being missed and how many new
barriers keep going up that then don't quite get fully resolved.

	Right now, touch panels are the rage for controlling
electronics but they aren't a bit of good if you can't see the
screen. It wouldn't take much to either make the touch screen
sound off as to what you are about to select or include a
Blue tooth or wWiFi interface that would allow control from some
other device, but 99% of the time, there is no Plan B. You are
just stuck with nothing.

Martin McCormick WB5AGZ  Stillwater, OK 
Systems Engineer
OSU Information Technology Department Telecommunications Services Group