Below is information about accessibility of the StarOffice suite,
which I'm forwarding with permission from Earl Johnson of Sun Microsystems.

Regards,
Jamal

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 As you may know, Sun recently acquired StarOffice, a full office
productivity suite of software that includes a word processor,
spreadsheet, presentation package, and much more.  StarOffice was
developed by StarDivision, a German company that is now part of Sun.
The product has been ported to a number of platforms - including
Windows, Solaris, and Linux, with a future release aimed at the
Macintosh. StarOffice is file-format compatible with Microsoft Office
97, allowing users of either product to share files and collaborate
with each other.

StarOffice version 5.1 is available at no charge for personal use,
downloadable from Sun's web site.  It can also be ordered on CD for a
nominal fee.  Sun recently announced StarPortal, which will provide
StarOffice functions over the web.  StarOffice and StarPortal are an
important part of Sun's "anytime, anywhere" strategy, so you will see
much attention to the current and future products in the press.

This being the case, we wanted to let you know the results of our
initial accessibility evaluation of StarOffice on the Windows
platform.  StarOffice version 5.1 is not compatible with existing
Windows screen reading and screen magnification techniques.  In
addition, a number of the user-interface elements of the software are
not keyboard traversable.  StarOffice does not use sound as a key part
of the interface, and so is unlikely to pose barriers to people with
hearing disabilities.  But we expect that users with visual and
physical disabilities will not be successful using the current version
of StarOffice.

We have begun working with the StarOffice team, and have started
discussing ways of addressing the accessibility issues in the product.
As details of the engineering product plans for future releases of
StarOffice and StarPortal get hammered out, we will be in a better
position to plan how to provide an accessible office suite based on the
existing applications and technologies that will allow us to address
StarOffice accessibility in a cross platform way.  As you can imagine
with a technology acquisition as significant as this one, there are a
lot of issues to work out on many levels in integrating the technology
into Sun's product family and future directions.  It will take time to
settle the many issues that need to be addressed before we put a firm
plan in place for its accessibility.

We will provide updates as our accessibility plans and directions for
StarOffice and StarPortal take shape.  In the meantime, please feel
welcome to pass along any accessibility issues you might have uncovered
and logged when you checked out StarOffice.  The potential of an
accessible office suite that can be used from any device on the
Internet anywhere in the world is very compelling, and we are working
toward that goal.

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