Hi all,

After reading the speech of Bill Gates from Microsoft I have more questions
than answers.
My first question: is Bill Gates liar or is the communication between the
accessibility team and Mr. Gates as good as between the accessibility team
of Microsoft and the developers of accessiblity features?

The second question who are that people listening to the speech of Mr.
Gates? Visual impaired people who are trying to access their PC's every day,
or a group of people thinking they can speak for us?

To answer the first question. Fact is that the problems of accessing
Microsoft Internet Explorer 4 were not solved with the 4.01 release as Mr.
Gates stated. So that is a lie!
As far as I know only Hal from Dolphin Computer Access can work with
Internet Explorer 4.01. The other accessibility features doesn't work with
Internet Explorer 4.01. Hal doesn't support MSAA. But it is not important to
support MSAA, as Microsoft let us believe, but it is important that
accessibility feature can work with any program.

Another fact is, that version 1.1 which is needed for Internet Explorer
include a lot of bugs.
Another fact is, that Microsoft doesn't communicate with most of the
developers of accessibility features at all.
It is also a fact that I didn't hear anything from some blind organizations
like the NFB after version 4.01 of Internet Explorer was released.
Are they glad they may talk with Microsoft. Microsoft only wants to talk
with someone if they are confidant!

Mr. Gates said there are a lot of improvements regarding accessibility in
Windows 98. The only improvement maybe the simple screen magnifier that they
built-in.

Microsoft is releasing products that support MSAA, but there are no features
that can work with it. Has this something to do with improving accessibility?
Why is Microsoft releasing product lik Office 97 and Internet Explorer 4
that does not work with existing versions of accessibility features, while
other software products like Netscape and Perfect Office wimply work without
MSAA?

It seems that nobody can answer these questions.
I think Microsoft is going to drop the MSAA concept in some years.
Some evelopers of accessibility features have already dropped the MSAA
concept. They want to work their features with any product, not only with
product of Microsoft!!!

Peter Verhoeven
Internet : http://www.plex.nl/~pverhoe (The Screen Magnifiers Homepage)