>Date:         Tue, 4 Nov 1997 16:44:07 -0500
>Reply-To: Access to GUI via Speech <[log in to unmask]>
>Sender: Access to GUI via Speech <[log in to unmask]>
>From: Mary Otten <[log in to unmask]>
>Subject:      MicroSoft $ 4.0 (fwd)
>To: [log in to unmask]
>
>Hello, list members. Below is a message forwarded off of another list
>which discusses the ACB and other organization's response to the ie4.0
>problem, but also talks about other efforts and makes a couple of
>suggestions on what we can do to help. I'm posting it to the list, not
>because I want to start yet another round of ms-bashing, but because I
>wanted people to hear about this task force of which I had been unaware
>and also let the list know, in response to some comments made by a few
>list members, that ACB, like NFB and the AFB, is indeed involved with this
>issue. Please, folks. Let's not start another useless counter-productive
>round of flaming.
>Mary Otten
>[log in to unmask]
>
>---------- Forwarded message ----------
>Date: Mon, 03 Nov 1997 23:00:06 -0500 (EST)
>From: BRIAN CHARLSON <[log in to unmask]>
>Reply-To: [log in to unmask]
>To: [log in to unmask]
>Subject: MicroSoft $ 4.0
>
>+== acb-l Message from BRIAN CHARLSON <[log in to unmask]> ==+
>I know that many of you have been wondering what ACB has been
>doing about Internet Explorer 4.0.  As the former Co-chair of the
>ACB Environmental Access Committee and now as the ACB Officer in
>charge of ACB's information access services, I want to take a few
>moments to outline what has been happening and what ACB intends
>to continue doing about this and other information access issues.
>
>The American Council of the Blind has been involved in pressing
>MicroSoft to adopt a policy of total accessibility to their
>products by those with disabilities since way before the
>introduction of Windows.  While much of our work has been
>conducted on a face-to-face basis with members of the MicroSoft
>disability access team, we have not backed off from public
>confrontation when we believed that it was in the best interest
>of our members and the blind and visually impaired community at
>large.
>
>A case in point is the two-state boycott of MicroSoft products
>that occurred in 1995.  Members of the American Council of the
>Blind, and our friends and allies brought pressure on
>Massachusetts and Missouri to call MicroSoft to account on the
>inaccessibility of their products.  We were successful in our
>efforts to get the software giant to sit up and take notice.
>
>As part of our efforts to gain access to MicroSoft products, we
>joined with AFB, AER, NIB and NCSAB to create the Information
>Access Task Force.  Each organization was invited to appoint two
>individuals to serve on this task force and through frequent
>conference calls and an internal listserv, the five organizations
>could keep one another up-to-date about issues of interest to all
>of those who care about information access.
>
>Joint action by the task force has been taken on a number of
>occasions.  We offered, and had our offer accepted by MicroSoft,
>to work together to promote MicroSoft Active Accessibility, a
>product that would have gone a long way toward enabling out-of-
>the-box access to any program fully implementing it.  Access
>developers were encouraged to expand their products so as to
>access the information made available by MicroSoft Active
>Accessibility (MSAA) enabled programs.  The introduction of
>Internet Explorer 3.0 with MSAA was an excellent first attempt to
>show the value of this kind of access tool.
>
>MicroSoft failed to live up to its commitment to work with the
>members of the task force to promote MSAA opting instead to
>promote MSAA through their marketing team.  As a result, we
>believe, MSAA has not yet met with the success we think it
>deserves.  In addition to this failure on the part of MicroSoft
>to live up to its commitments to the blindness community, they
>failed to return phone calls, to answer e-mail or to inform any
>member of the task force of any problems they were having in
>gaining support for MSAA within and without MicroSoft.
>
>Recently, MicroSoft released Internet Explorer 4.0 without MSAA
>implementation.  We were led to believe that once MicroSoft had
>implemented MSAA in a product line that future releases would
>retain or exceed that implementation.  Failing to do so,
>MicroSoft has betrayed us all!
>
>Even though MicroSoft has condemned themselves by their own
>actions, you need to know that much more is at stake than just
>MSAA in Internet Explorer.  I am confident that Internet Explorer
>4.0 will include in its next release extensive implementation of
>MSAA.  MicroSoft has invested a great deal of time and resources
>into this already.  In addition, I would not be surprised to find
>that they have implemented MSAA in one or two other products to
>be released in the near future.  The problem is that we, the
>American Council of the Blind, the Information Access Task Force
>and the community of blind and visually impaired people at-large
>are not being taken seriously.  MicroSoft is making us knock down
>the wall of inaccessibility to their products one brick at a
>time.  We do not have the time or resources to take on every new
>program, every new operating system, every new developer tool.
>We need a commitment to access at the core of MicroSoft, Sun
>Micro Systems, IBM and all the rest of them.
>
>Last week I attended the Closing The Gap conference in
>Minneapolis, Minnesota.  I went as the representative of ACB and
>the task force.  I spoke with the MicroSoft access team, with the
>Sun Micro Systems access team and the IBM access team.  I made it
>clear both in public and in private that nothing less than a full
>commitment to access is acceptable.  While this annual conference
>has many opportunities to learn about how to use adaptive
>technology, I was there to see to it that the "big guys" knew
>that as far as ACB and the Information Access Task Force were
>concerned, the time is now to get on the access band-wagon.
>
>In my conversations with the MicroSoft access team I indicated
>that they would have to make a public demonstration of their
>corporate commitment to access by the end of November 1997 or we,
>the ACB, AFB, AER, NIB and NCSAB would once again bring our
>demands to the single largest purchaser of computer software and
>hardware, the government, and remind them of Section 508 of the
>Rehabilitation Act.  If people with disabilities cannot use a
>piece of office automation equipment, the government cannot buy
>it.
>
>While you read NFB's letter to MicroSoft, remember that ACB
>individually and in coalition, is working each and every day to
>assure that blind and visually impaired people have the same
>opportunity to succeed as those with sight.  We need access to
>the work place, to the class room and to the day-to-day
>appliances in our homes.  We can only secure this access if we
>spend our time and energies pounding down the walls of
>bureaucratic side-stepping.  Take the fight to MicroSoft.  We
>have been there; we are there and we will continue to fight the
>good fight!
>
>What you can do to help is to document via letter to Microsoft,
>your state rehabilitation agency, and to ACB, any situations or
>incidences where you or another blind or visually impaired person
>has been adversely impacted by the use of MicroSoft products. Has
>the use of MicroSoft Access, the database program, meant that you
>or someone you know could not apply for a job or promotion? Has
>conversion of your workplace to Windows NT meant that your job is
>in jeopardy? Write and let MicroSoft and ACB know.
>
>Write to:
>
>William H. Gates III
>Chairman/Chief Executive Officer
>Microsoft Corporation
>One Microsoft Way
>Redmond, WA 98052
>
>
>Brian Charlson
>57 Grandview Ave.
>Watertown, MA  02172
>(617) 926-9198
>************************************************************
>* ACB-L is maintained and brought to you as a service      *
>* of the American Council of the Blind.                    *
>************************************************************
>
>