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>> >From the web page
>>http://computerworld.co.nz/news.nsf/PrintDoc/93C0C5D0A5BA96ACCC25716C001
>>CCF66
>>
>>OpenDocument plans questioned by disabled
>>By Carol Sliwa, Framingham | Thursday, 18 May, 2006
>>
>>Two words came to mind when John Winske, president of the Boston-based
>>Disability Policy Consortium, learned just before Labour Day last year
>>that Massachusetts was planning to adopt the OpenDocument Format for
>>Office Applications as a standard for its executive-branch agencies.
>>
>>"Screwed again," he thought.
>>
>>Winske, who has muscular dystrophy, says he instantly remembered how
>>Microsoft had to be "prodded and dragged, kicking and screaming" to make
>>its software accessible during the transition from DOS to Windows.
>>
>>None of the prominent desktop applications that can create and save
>>documents in OpenDocument currently work well with screen readers,
>>magnifiers and other assistive technologies - at least at a level
>>comparable to that of products from Microsoft, whose 40-person
>>Accessibility Technology Group is now widely praised by disabilities
>>advocates.
>>Now, though, an uproar generated by groups such as Winske's is
>>reverberating not only in the halls of the Massachusetts State House but
>>at the research arms of some major technology vendors.
>>
>>IBM's software accessibility team, for instance, put other projects on
>>the back burner in November to make Massachusetts-related work its top
>>priority, says Richard Schwerdtfeger, an accessibility architect and
>>strategist at the company. Among other things, that meant a resource
>>boost for IBM's Beijing labs in order to accelerate API work designed to
>>make it easier for assistive technology vendors to support the company's
>>Workplace office suite, he says.
>>
>>Another IBM engineer is chairing a newly created OpenDocument
>>accessibility subcommittee at the Organisation for the Advancement of
>>Structured Information Standards, which oversees the file format. In
>>addition, IBM tapped three other employees to serve on the subcommittee,
>>which also includes three members from Sun Microsystems.
>>
>>IBM also is accelerating development of a screen reader and a screen
>>magnifier for Linux, and Sun is working on a combined open-source screen
>>reader and magnifier called Orca. But those efforts are still in the
>>early stages of development, officials say.
>>
>>Getting support for OpenOffice, Workplace or Sun's StarOffice software
>>built into screen readers and magnifiers won't be easy. According to
>>assistive technology vendors, which are generally small companies, the
>>economics of supporting applications that have limited market demand
>>don't work in their favour.
>>
>>Freedom Scientific supports Office, Notes and Corel's WordPerfect Office
>>with its market-leading Job Access With Speech (JAWS) screen reader,
>>says Eric Damery, vice president of software product management at the
>>company.
>>
>>Supporting applications in its screen reader is "a big undertaking",
>>Damery says. The demand for OpenDocument-compatible office software "has
>>not been that great".
>>
>>"We have to support where our user base is, and like it or not, that's
>>the Microsoft operating system, applications and browsers," says Ben
>>Weiss, CEO at Algorithmic Implementations Squared, a 21-employee company
>>that makes magnification software called ZoomText. But Weiss says he has
>>reached a financially attractive agreement with IBM and the Mozilla
>>Foundation to make their products work with ZoomText and hopes to start
>>development work this summer.
>>
>>Meanwhile, Massachusetts CIO Louis Gutierrez issued a request for
>>information about plug-ins or other converter options that would enable
>>Office "to easily open, render and save to" OpenDocument files and let
>>documents be translated between Microsoft's formats and OpenDocument.
>>Gutierrez says one of the reasons the state is exploring Office plug-ins
>>is because Microsoft's products are "ahead on accessibility right now".
>>
>>The state is also taking other steps to soothe the concerns of
>>disabilities advocates. For example, Massachusetts' IT division later
>>this month plans to launch an accessibility lab that will be headed by a
>>former employee of the Massachusetts Commission for the Blind who is
>>"nationally recognised in this area", according to Gutierrez.
>>
>>But Winske says he won't breathe a sigh of relief until he hears the
>>state's planned mid-year update on its OpenDocument implementation
>>schedule, which Gutierrez has indicated will take into account what
>>needs to be done to resolve accessibility issues.
>>
>>The Disability Policy Consortium is prepared to file a lawsuit if the
>>state doesn't follow through on that promise, Winske says. It is also
>>considering legal action over the use of forms that are inaccessible to
>>the blind on the state's Virtual Gateway health and social services
>>website.
>>Copyright (c) 2005, IDG Communications New Zealand Limited. Privacy
>>Policy
>>
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