My take on this is that equipment these days presently comes in 3
flavors. The rarest of them are the few electronic gadgets that
tell us in some way everything we need to know to use them and
don't cost any more than devices of the last flavor which I will
get to in a second.

	I have seen talking scales and thermometers that cause
us no problem at all and give us as much information as they
give anybody else.

	The next category of stuff is what we were all talking
about before, namely things you can work through a computer that
would otherwise be useless due to their profusion of menus.

	Then there is the last flavor. This is the stuff that
has no plan B at all built in to it. There is this stupid shiny
glass pannel that is the sole output channel.

	This is the stuff that isn't in compliance with any sort
of accessibility standards. We just bought a brand new Whirlpool
gas stove in which the burners are perfectly normal. They are
controlled by rotary knobs that turn valves. You can hear the
spark light the gas and adjust the flame the way people have
done it for literally centuries except for the electric spark,
of course.

	The oven, however, has electronic controls and I think
the company actually must have hired somebody to design it to be
as inaccessible as possible. There is this oval flat touch
pannel with absolutely no clue as to where you can press to make
things happen. One of the buttons from Hell is an up arrow to
raise the oven temperature by a few degrees per push. It beeps
the first time you press it, but makes no other sound so you
don't know if you pushed it twice or didn't push it at all.

	The timer portion of the controller is the same way. You
could burn either a lot of food or even your house down by just
one or two fat-finger mistakes. The oven does beep when it
reaches operating temperature. The smoke alarm tells you when
you reached the kindling point of whatever was in the oven.

	My computer is two rooms away. Even if there was some
way to tap in to the brains of this controller, it wouldn't be
practical. This is unacceptable but I don't know of any other
model of stove that has anything better.

	I have not seen one hand-held transceiver that I would
feel comfortable using since the days of the ICom2AT. I own a
HTX202 and 404 I bought at a ham fest but they are boarder line
accessible or inaccessible. You can set them up if you are
patient.

	I whole point to all this is that the ultimate goal is
equipment we can use without hooking it up to a computer. The
stuff we can work with a computer is better than nothing and the
stuff like that oven controller and a lot of modern ham gear is
just no good at all.

Martin

Tom Brennan writes:
> Martin, I'm 57 so we're about the same age.  I remember when pretty much 
> nothing
> was accessible and the world was all about using readers.  My problem with
> things at present is that people get all excited about being able to 
> access
> something with their computer rather than directly and that's what we are 
> now
> pushing manufacturers to provide.  There are some great exceptions like 
> that
> Omnimate bar code reader but more and more what people are telling 
> manufacturers
> is "make the computer program accessible.  The standard response that I 
> now get
> when talking to manufacturers is "you can access it with our computer" 
> which is
> not access and does not comply with the ADA but rather than require that
> manufacturers spend $.50 to put a speech chip in something like they've 
> done
> with that Hamelton-Beach microwave we're just wanting it computer 
> accessible.
> So long as we call that accessible it will never change and we will have
> acknowledge ADA or 504 compliance.
> 
> Tom
> 
> 
> Tom Brennan  KD5VIJ, CCC-A/SLP
> web page http://titan.sfasu.edu/~g_brennantg/sonicpage.html
> 
>