When considering to learn windows, blinks are often faced with the
assertion that employment requires knowing how to use it.
Fundamentally this is flawed.  Desktop computing available to the
general public has been around for 20 years.  The basic functionality
of what is done with computers has changed little in that time. Almost
from the start the creation of basic kinds of software has solved
problems that windows has little improved.  Windows has been at base a
marketing process, not a fundamental improvement in computing. With
the invention of spreadsheets, word processors, databases, and
interconnecting applications; the course of computers has been to gild
the lily only.  When one is employed it is assumed without almost any
consideration that a dos based machine can not perform the same
functionality as do windows based machines.  The bottom line is that
one punches in information and accesses information in structured
ways.  Even more fundamental is that basic formats of those
applications mention above can still be exchanged among dos and
windows machines.  For example, using basic text as the format, word
processing product can be created and accessed from any computer
regardless of operating system.  I have often thought that "reasonable
accommodation" can easily mean doing a few basic configurations so
that a dos machine with it's much more mature and easily learned
speech, system stability and complexity advantages should reside right
along side windows systems in employment situations.  Even where
proprietary software is used, it is often just a particular face
painted upon one of the basic applications, such as a database.  A dos
database has no problem using the basic database information when it
is stored in one of the basic formats universal to all modern
databases.  Making blind folk learn windows, with all it's problems,
is only a convenience to an employer who probably doesn't know that a
dos machine can do the same job. Employers are just as ignorant as the
general public in the face of upgrade fever based primarily in
marketing hype and not computing reality. But the myth has been
accepted and blinks are forced to use sub par access technology which
has far less universal functionality compared to the same kind of dos
applications. This is a basic reality that can't be ignored.


"Nothing needs so reforming as other people's habits." -- Mark Twain


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