Great Article Jamal.  Thank you and I just hope that microsof keeps its
word this time.
Edwin Montanez



On Fri, 27 Feb 1998, Jamal Mazrui wrote:

> At the Microsoft accessibility summit last week, Bill Gates, the
> corporate president, made public commitments to accessible
> products and services in an unprecedented speech, a transcript of
> which follows, including a question and answer session at the end.
>
> ----------
>                        Remarks by Bill Gates
>                       Microsoft Corporation
>                         Accessibility Day
>                         February 19,1998
>                            Redmond, WA
>
> MR. GATES: Well, good morning. And thanks for coming to
> Microsoft. We've got a very unusual mix of people here today,
> and I think it's going to be a fantastic get-together. Of
> course, the advocates for accessibility, representatives from
> government, the independent companies that have done a lot to
> build on top of our products and make PC accessibility happen as
> well as it has today, and we've got pioneers here like Gregg
> Vanderheiden, Judy Heumann who have been leaders in driving
> these innovation solutions. And then, very importantly, we've
> got the Microsoft employees who are involved in making sure that
> across our broad product line we give this the priority it
> deserves.
>
>  Our vision when we started the company was a computer on every
> desk and in every home. And in this setting, I think the word to
> emphasize there is "every." The PC can be a tool for everyone.
> And the opportunity with innovative hardware and software to
> make this essentially the greatest accessibility aid ever is
> something that is very, very exciting to us. There's no doubt
> that we have a lot more to do in this area, but just think about
> the Internet and all the information that's out there. When
> we've got very high quality voice synthesis built into the PC,
> and easy ways of doing navigation, all of that Internet
> information will be available to everyone.
>
>  Our customers, very broadly, care about these accessibility
> issues. Its been a big issue for governments at the state level,
> at the federal level, but also large corporations want to reach
> out and give all their employees the opportunity to take
> advantage of these technologies. I think there's no doubt that
> legislation and regulations are going to be looking at these
> areas. We want to make sure we get out there with solutions way,
> way before that happens. We want to make sure we're a model of
> how all this should be done.
>
>  There's a lot of creativity and cleverness that can go into
> architecting these solutions. In some areas, like allowing the
> keyboard to be redefined I think we have exercised that
> creativity. The most difficult areas have to do with the
> visually-impaired as we moved from the character mode to the
> graphical interface. That was a transition where we didn't pay
> enough attention to what this would mean for people who are
> visually-impaired, and that's something that we're really having
> to go back and put a lot more resources in to address that.  We
> have made a lot of progress. We've adopted a formal policy about
> ourproducts and services. We've developed a framework for the
> new technology.This is the active accessibility capability as
> well as the standards forcaptioning and audio descriptions. The
> product documents, now we're making them available in a format
> that's free, and that everybody can get at those in the
> different forms. And we really are starting to build the key
> accessibility features into Windows. So there's definitely been
> some highlights. We're going to use Windows' logo to help drive
> these features not only in our products, but also into our
> partners products.
>
>  In terms of low lights, I'll just mention two. The first is not
> putting enough resources into this area soon enough. And so a
> little bit being in a catch-up mode relative to Windows and
> graphical interface products, and then most recently where we
> actually took a step backwards, where we had Internet Explorer
> ship with less accessibility than in the previous version. And
> even though we were able to very rapidly turnaround and in 30
> days ship version 4.01 that solved those problems, it definitely
> sent the wrong message, internally and externally. And so we've
> got to make sure that we're not going backwards. In fact, quite
> the opposite, that as we're getting major releases out, we're
> taking big steps forward.
>
>  And so every team now, when they specify their product, they've
> got to address accessibility. That's of greatest importance for
> our high volume products, in particular products like Windows
> and Microsoft Office. We've created an initiative which is
> called Accessibility 2000 that talks about how we're going to
> get from where we are now to the point where really across the
> board we can say that we're doing a fantastic job.
>
>  Part of this is very straightforward. It's to establish a
> checklist for our product groups, and make sure that as I'm
> sitting down and doing product reviews with these groups, it's
> definitely one of the things that gets touched on. We've had
> experience with things like this in the past. International
> support, supporting all of the world's languages was something
> that people didn't pay enough attention to in the early days.
> And over a period of years, with a lot of creativity, with a lot
> of focus, now virtually all of the products we ship, ship in a
> form that makes them ready for global use. Ready for Japanese,
> Korean, even Arabic, which has been the toughest there. And so
> the same principles that we used to get those architectures in
> place and to make sure that each of the products gave it the
> appropriate priority, we'll be applying that now in this
> accessibility area. We feel that the Windows logo can also help
> us take some of these checklists and spread them out to other
> developers.
>
>  Let me talk real quickly about some specific products. We think
> Windows 98 is a step forward. It's got the accessibility
> settings wizard, it's got the screen magnifier. NT 5 has the
> on-screen keyboard. Perhaps the most exciting things we're doing
> right now are in the Office product area. We put in a framework
> with Office 9 to support Active Accessibility. Some of those
> thing were done only half way, so now we've got a lot of
> feedback. And in the release that we're building now, which
> doesn't have a formal name, internally it's referred to as
> Office 9.x to give us maximum flexibility.
>
>  (Laughter)
>
>  MR. GATES: But, X, I think I know what it is, but I'm certain
> what it should be, but it's a fairly near-term release that
> we'll be coming up with. It's got greatly improved support for
> the Accessibility 1.0, and we're looking at exactly how we go to
> the next major version of that and define what we'll call
> Accessibility 2.0.
>
>  Internet Explorer, as I said, we took a step backwards there,
> but with 4.01, we've got the improved keyboard navigation. We've
> got the support for Active Accessibility. With Visual Basic, we
> want to make it so anybody using that tool can build accessible
> applications as well as developers be able to use that tool. And
> so now, we've put in native support for Active Accessibility.
>
>  Now, the accessibility area is something where, in a sense,
> you're never done. There are always good ideas out there from
> users and advocacy groups about how you can take the next step.
> And so, a big part of what we're adding, and I have to give Greg
> [Lowney] a lot of credit for really championing this and
> pioneering it, is to increase the resources we have that have a
> strong dialogue between ourselves and yourself. The Advisory
> Council is an important part of that. Product review boards are
> another important part of that. The total commitment in
> resources here will basically triple the number of people we
> have on Greg's accessibility team. And that is both in the areas
> of communications and in the development area. We found that we
> really need a mix to get these things to work well. We need
> people in specific product groups who are involved in these
> activities. We also need a group where we centralize all the
> expertise, and make sure that they're speaking out, and that
> they can send me electronic mail at any time.
>
>  To run that group, we've created this new position, Director of
> Accessibility, and he is the advocate inside Microsoft. Greg
> Lowney is going to take on that role, and that's based on his
> really believing in this cause a great deal, and having a lot of
> experience in this. It was 10 years ago while working as a
> program manager on Windows that he became the first Microsoft
> person to really start to get us thinking about this.
>
>  So, in summary, I want to make it clear to everyone here that
> accessibility is important to Microsoft. We feel that the PC is
> going to be a great tool. Some of the things we're doing in
> research with speech recognition, speech synthesis, they are
> just going to take this to a whole new level. In fact, in one of
> the areas where we've got some demonstrations, you'll see some
> of those early technologies. But even though future technologies
> are a big part of that, this is a here and now issue. It's
> something that we've got to do more on.
>
>  We will improve our product for accessibility. This
> organizational step is a very meaningful one and sends a strong
> message. In order to do this well, we do need your ongoing
> feedback. And the PC industry is a community. Some of these
> issues aren't just going to be Microsoft. They're going to be
> things that we need to get other software developers and
> hardware developers to do. And so we need to work at how we draw
> in those other participants to make sure that we get a total
> solution.
>
>  And I think the basic message here is the one that's really at
> the core of what Microsoft believes in, and that's this idea
> that PCs will benefit everyone.
>
>  Thank you.
>
>  (Applause)
>
> Q&A
>
> MR. GATES: I have some time now for whatever questions or
> comments people want to make about what we're doing or what we
> should be doing.
>
> QUESTION: I [Paul Schroeder, American Foundation for the Blind]
> want to say respectfully, that I thank you for moving from what
> you were purported to have once said about accessibility being
> like a charity, moving to where accessibility is really part of
> the core decision. And I guess the question I have is, there's a
> lot of good stuff in what you've said, but how do we have a
> sense of top level commitment to accessibility being part of
> technology when market pressures are pushing you to roll out
> something, such as Internet Explorer, before the accessibility
> features were developed, to have the accessibility built in. It
> strikes me that that, obviously in a very competitive industry,
> is likely to happen again on several products, where that kind
> of pressure is brought to bear, and the accessibilities may not
> be ready.
>
>  MR. GATES: Well, the ideal, and this will become more and more
> the case over time, is to get the architecture such that
> accessibility essentially falls out of the way you design
> products. The way you create graphical interfaces today, there's
> a lot of unstructured code. And so what we face as we go back
> into these products and say, you know, how do you make this
> product accessible is, you literally have to look at all those
> different pieces of user interface code. And you've got to find
> the people who understand those and go in and do special things
> to those.
>
>  By using advanced HTML-type technologies, where the user
> interface would be described in a more abstract way, the kind of
> annotations that are necessary, where you can take things that
> are on the screen are very graphical, and yet need a description
> that can be read out, that will just necessarily be part of
> constructing that UI design.
>
>  So the first thing, and it can't be the only thing because it
> will take many years to get to full fruition, the first thing is
> doing user interfaces of these products in a much more abstract
> way. So that when people think what is the marginal effort to do
> this, it's very, very low. Until we get to that, we'll have to
> use some other approaches. We'll have to have an event like this
> one, with the key product people here, talking about it, as a
> priority. We'll have to make sure that we've got the dialogue
> going on, so that even during the beta test of those products,
> we understand what is the situation.
>
>  In the case of Internet Explorer 4.0, we had kidded ourselves,
> thinking that a piece of code would just get done. And it wasn't
> a piece of code we weren't paying enough attention to. And so
> product groups, you know, have a lot of factors to make
> decisions. They went ahead and did that shipment, feeling they
> could come back around and make that new shipment. And the 30
> days, you know, isn't really the problem, it's just the
> statement that that makes. I think we will avoid any of that
> type of regression in the future.
>
>  I think the right thing happened around that. It became,
> certainly inside Microsoft, I don't know if outside Microsoft,
> but it became very visible here. And we can measure these things
> by the thousands of emails that go around on a particular topic.
> And we've got the new five point plan, that is there to do that.
> These additional resources, these are people who care a lot
> about this, and they're going to escalate those issues. And, you
> know, it's all part of an ongoing dialogue.
>
>  I think if you look at our history, we have gotten better and
> better, in terms of accessibility. And you're going to see a
> strong trend line there. And it's great to have some milestones,
> where we say, okay, in '98 what are we going to get done, in '99
> what are we going to get done. And this is all part of the
> cooperative effort with the people who do the add-on products.
>
>  QUESTION: Roger Wall , the National Easter Seals Society. I've
> got a million questions, but I'll just put forward one. We hear
> a lot from the field from our therapists and practitioners, and
> from physicians, that people with disabilities that we serve,
> and the elderly, could stay in their homes longer, without being
> institutionalized if their homes were smarter. And I'm just
> curious -- I know there are certainly third party groups that
> are working on accessibility, home control appliances, and
> control-types of software. I'm wondering if Microsoft is
> involved in that at all, or if you have plans?
>
>  MR. GATES: Just help clarify for me, when they say making the
> home smarter, what kind of thing are they talking about? Are
> they talking about alerting if the person is not well, or being
> able to move the person around?
>
>  QUESTION: Yes, a whole range of those types of activities, from
> alerting the person, reminding them of certain things, some of
> those technologies are out there now. But, I'm not sure how
> effectively they've been funded.
>
>  MR. GATES: Well, the -- we're very excited about the increased
> use of PCs in the home environment. One thing that hasn't
> happened yet is you haven't had the PC interacting with other
> devices, whether it's TV sets, or security systems. We now want
> to build into the PC a wireless capability, and there's a lot of
> debate in the industry about the specific technology, infrared
> or RF.
>
>  One of the great things you could do very easily with that, is
> remote medical monitoring. That is, you go from a device that's
> on the person, it sends a wireless signal to the PC, that's
> connected through the Internet to the care provider. And you
> just have a standard where every 15 minutes it reports that
> everything is okay. If you don't get that positive
> acknowledgement, then you assume that something broke down,
> hopefully, it's the PC. But, you know that there is something
> that needs attention there. So that idea of doing medical
> monitoring should fall out of some bold initiatives the industry
> is going to take, around home networking and home control.
>
>  And so we should make sure that as we're getting into that,
> that we're talking to the people who build those kinds of
> devices and make sure they're very easy to set up and use. The
> elderly are getting involved in using PCs. There are some
> organizations very focused on that. And I think the idea of the
> Internet, where you can get pictures from your grand kids, and
> send mail, it is a very empowering thing. And so I do think not
> only can it let people stay in homes longer, where they may
> prefer to be. It can also allow them to do more -- a lot more
> while they're there.
>
>  QUESTION: Thank you. I'm Charlie Parker [Charlie Crawford] from
> Massachusetts. There's any number of other computer companies
> and software companies which are still fairly far behind, in
> terms of what they're doing to ensure that when a person tries
> to go to work, that they can use the software. And because
> Microsoft enjoys a certain position of prominence in the
> community of computing, what kind of leverage do you think you
> can exercise, and are prepared to exercise, to get those other
> companies to shape up?
>
>  MR. GATES: Well, I think the first initiatives to communicate
> with companies on this basis should be in a low key fashion. If
> we understand the report card of how you viewed different
> companies, that would be helpful. For anybody who develops for
> Windows, we have a close relationship with them. We have a group
> called the Developers Relations Group, which is a huge
> investment for us. And so we do a lot of interchange with them.
> We can get them to come to active accessibility events. And we
> can say to them, look you're crazy not to just do this stuff
> first, before, in a very visible way, you're shamed into doing
> it. And, I don't know who the list of those companies are.
>
>  In some categories, like Office, Microsoft is strong enough
> that I think we can meet sort of your basic productivity tools
> needs. Microsoft, by doing a very good job on that, can meet
> those needs. Now, maybe in some other categories, like design
> software, publishing software, where Microsoft isn't a strong
> product, the software from us isn't going to help the person on
> that job. And so rather than just taking a broad approach of
> sending this accessibility nudge into all our developers, which
> we're already doing, if you could tell us 5 or 10 that we need
> to be fairly pointed in that dialogue, and share our experience,
> we would be glad to do that, starting out with the low key
> approach, and then if necessary, you understand how, the message
> can be given more and more volume and impact.
>
>  Okay. I'm afraid I'm out of time. But, it's been great to be
> here, and we're excited about working with all of you to do a
> much better job in this important area.
>
>  Thank you.
>
> ----------
> End of Document
>