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-----Original Message-----
From: Jamal Mazrui <[log in to unmask]>
To: [log in to unmask] <[log in to unmask]>
Date: Monday, April 13, 1998 5:42 PM
Subject: Federal Computer Week covers Microsoft accessibility efforts


>From the web page
>http://www.fcw.com/pubs/fcw/1998/0413/fcw-mktaccessible-4-13-1998.html
>
>
>Federal Computer Week
>APRIL 13, 1998
>
>
>PCs
>
>Microsoft ups software accessibility
>
>BY MARGRET JOHNSTON ([log in to unmask])
>
>In response to demand from disabled workers who rely heavily on
>computers to do their jobs, Microsoft Corp. has begun promoting
>its plans for making its operating system and applications
>software more widely accessible.
>
>The plans include new features in the Windows 98 operating
>system tailored for people with impaired vision and a World Wide
>Web developers' toolkit that will make it easier to tailor Web
>sites to users with special requirements.
>
>Microsoft chairman Bill Gates set the tone for the initiatives
>in February when he pledged to make the PC "the greatest
>accessibility aid ever," and now the estimated 130,000 federal
>employees who reported having a disability in a 1996 Office of
>Personnel Management survey are waiting to find out how this
>will improve their work environment.
>
>Gary Moulton, a Microsoft product manager who works full time on
>accessibility issues, said the company is committed to
>addressing the needs of disabled computer users during all
>phases of product planning, development and support.
>
>"There's a lot of great government work that's going on in this
>area," Moulton said. "The government definitely appreciates the
>challenges and is setting a good example and [making] sure
>everything it purchases is accessible to people with
>disabilities."
>
>Moulton and two other Microsoft employees who are dedicated to
>accessibility issues made a stop in Washington, D.C., during a
>recent nationwide tour to inform key account managers about
>Microsoft's accessibility plans. The changes include increasing
>from nine to about 24 the number of full-time Microsoft
>employees dedicated to accessibility issues and creating an
>advisory council that will advise company executives on how
>products can be approved.
>
>Specifics on how the council will be organized have not been
>worked out, but Moulton said he envisions a panel made up
>exclusively of users of adaptive hardware and software
>technologies.
>
>"They have to have a fundamental appreciation of what an
>individual with a disability goes through in terms of their use
>of personal computer technology," Moulton said.
>
>Microsoft also plans to include two new accessibility features
>in Windows 98. One is a magnifier that will increase the size of
>type and graphics up to nine times and that can be dragged to
>any point on the screen and expanded. The other feature is a
>wizard that guides the user through the process of setting
>preferences for things such as the size of typeface within
>dialog boxes.
>
>To make Web content more accessible, Microsoft is encouraging
>developers to use special files to separate the code that
>determines a site's style from the code that determines content,
>said Charles Oppermann, a Microsoft developer who works with the
>accessibility/disability group. This would let users select
>their own typefaces, colors and backgrounds for reading Web
>sites -- simple adjustments that do not change content but make
>a difference for people who have difficulty reading, Oppermann
>said.
>
>Furthermore, Microsoft in May plans to release a tool to help
>Web content developers create more accessible sites. The
>Synchronized Accessible Media Interchange tool can be used to
>add closed captioning to an audio feed so that hearing-impaired
>people can read the script. It also can add a spoken explanation
>to the visual elements of a site so that blind people can
>understand the content by hearing a discription, said David A.
>Bolnick of Microsoft's accessibility/disability group.
>
>"Every single customer I have has a significant number of
>employees who have some type of disability," said Sean Kantorow,
>government account executive at Microsoft. If the software
>suddenly does not support their keyboards or screen readers,
>they are locked out, and that is unnecessary, he said.
>
>The disability initiatives follow complaints from people who
>were angry over the release last year of Internet Explorer
>Version 4.0, which did not include a set of tools called Active
>Accessibility, which lets applications work with accessibility
>aids, such as magnifiers and screen readers, and lets utilities
>automate the control of the application.
>
>Microsoft attempted to correct the problem by shipping Internet
>Explorer 4.01, a version that supports Active Accessibility, but
>the company was stung by the criticism and the appearance that
>it had been insensitive to the needs of disabled users.
>
>Jamal Mazrui, legislative analyst at the National Council on
>Disability, said Microsoft deserves recognition for making its
>software more accessible, but he said Windows 95 is not yet
>truly accessible to blind people, and Internet Explorer 4.01 is
>too slow in retrieving the information it needs from Active
>Accessibility to make it practical to use when reading Web
>pages.
>
>Mazrui, who is visually impaired, complained that there is
>generally always a lag between new products and the point at
>which they become accessible, especially to blind people.
>
>"It's like we're always getting access to yesterday's version of
>the software," Mazrui said. Despite Microsoft's pledges to make
>Windows 98 more accessible, Mazrui said he doubts Windows 98will
>work with most third-party screen readers. "We still haven't
>reached the point where the programs that are accessible to
>[blind people] are the latest versions of the programs."
>
>Mazrui said that with the next version of Microsoft Office, a
>suite of productivity applications that is due out soon, the
>most important thing the company could do for blind employees
>would be to commit itself to making the software fully
>accessible. "Because Microsoft Office suite has thoroughly
>dominated the market, those applications are really critical for
>disabled people to be able to succeed in the average place of
>business," Mazrui said.
>
>Microsoft's effort to promote greater accessibility is a good
>example for corporate America and probably more effective than a
>legislative effort, said Carol Hughes of Marietta, Ga., whose
>21-year-old son is disabled. Hughes, who is chairwoman of a task
>force on disability in the Georgia district represented by House
>Speaker Newt Gingrich, considers technology the key to her son's
>ability to find a job and support himself. "I would love to see
>this happen in a lot of other places," she said. "The more we
>see people with significant disabilities in the work place, the
>quicker they will be accepted."
>
>
>Copyright 1998 FCW Government Technology Group
>