---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Wed, 30 Dec 1998 16:05:13 -500
From: Brent Reynolds <[log in to unmask]>
Reply-To: Multiple recipients of NFBnet GUI-TALK Mailing List
<[log in to unmask]>
To: Multiple recipients of NFBnet GUI-TALK Mailing List
<[log in to unmask]>
Cc: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: NYTimes on the Web accessibility
HI, Joe,
A couple of points on a fair presentation you made.
1. Lynx and Net-Tamer were never the only choices for Internet access for
blind people. Net-Tamer cannot even be run from a Unix shell account. It
is a self-contained DOS-based program that requires a PPP connection, and
does E-mail, FTP, UseNet, IRC, non-graphical web-browsing, and several other
internet things, and it can do it on machines that can't even run a version
of Windows later than 3.0. There are at least 20 other web browsers for
Windows, not counting the talking ones, besides Netscape Navigator and MS
Internet Explorer.
2. YOu've obviously neither looked at or read much about SynthaVoice's
WindowBridge. If you had, you would rethink your statement that JFW is the
best and most powerful Windows screen reader program. The latest version of
Dolphin Systems' Hal 95 also works with InterNet Explorer, including the
latest versions, better than does the latest version of JFW. WindowBridge
and ASAW both work as well or better than JFW with NetScape's Navigator and
other programs in their Communicator Suite.
The only serious screen reader for the Macintosh platform is Alva Access
Group's OutSpoken, which Alva acquired from Berkeley Systems about two years
ago.
If somebody ever develops a good native screen access package for Linux,
that supports speech and braille display output, blind people will have full
access to an operating system and set of applications that will put the
entire world of Windows 95/98/nt/2000 to shame.
3. Blind people are not the only people who have trouble with and have to
go to great expense and bother to access overbloated, overgraphical, huge,
combersome, overly busy web pages. Such pages take too long to download and
too long to process on low-resource systems used in much of the world
outside North America and Northwest Europe, and in places where every minute
and/or message and/or kilobyte of download is charged for over and above the
cost of the phone call, and the monthly Internet access charges.
4. There is not one single screen access program that uses either speech or
braille output that can deal with interactive JAVA-driven applets and
websites, and none of them have even hinted to us that they are seriously
trying to address that problem. And of course, no screen reader can
decipher and read text that is presented as a graphical picture of a page,
rather than as actual text, a practice that is becoming more common every
day.
We should enjoy what little we have while we've got it, because the way
things are going, in another five years, totally blind people will be
listening while others talk about the wonders of the Internet and/or the
Worldwide Web, or whatever its successor will be called. Not only will we
have to fight to even get every little bit of access we can to the Web,
we'll have to continue to be dilligent in advocating for it not to be taken
away every time the site changes management or ownership, or some new kid
has a new idea how to make it look even more Cuul.
Reply to: [log in to unmask]
Brent Reynolds, Atlanta, GA USA
* "Pentium + Windows 98 = speedboat bogged in mud"
Net-Tamer V 1.11.2 - Registered
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