🚀 go-pugleaf

Let's take a look at the scenario described below in a slightly
different light.  With the new 508 regulations being developed and the
disability community being more aware of the issues and the ada work
that is going on and all of the other various and sundry efforts, it
would be just as possible to provide a cros platform solution and
implement it as part of an accommodation strategy.  Under the current
law, if an accomodation can be shown to meet all the needs of the
company and the disabled individual without being overly burdensom that
accommodation cannot be rejected.

So, if an accessible work environment which could interface with the
other environments and seemlessly allow document manipulation to occur,
it would solve lots of problems.  Then though, we'd have to tell
employers that if they wanted us to use this or that environment, it
would be contrary to the law as the environment which is accessible
would also meet their needs.

Randy Horwitz wrote:
>
> Linix may be the best bet as you say. But I too am concerned about the job
> oriented environment. For now, Linux is not standard, and Windows is the
> standard. And, as a developer, the work is shifting more and more toward NT.
> And many companies are switching to NT based systems. So we better not
> forget about NT, and windows in general. Trust me, I love Unix, but that is
> I think where we will beforced to go, NT.
>
> Randy
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Martin McCormick <martin@dc.cis.okstate.edu>
> To: EASI@maelstrom.stjohns.edu <EASI@maelstrom.stjohns.edu>
> Date: Saturday, January 30, 1999 9:33 AM
> Subject: Re: Microsoft...Forget Accessibility...mainstream products don't
>
> >        It is my understanding that Windows NT is much more
> >standardized in its behavior than  plain old Windows.  That is very
> >good from a technical standpoint because it means that the mechanisms
> >put in place to read standard output will be more likely to work on
> >any random application that a person should happen to need to run.
> >There are two halves to the screen access problem.  One is strictly a
> >screen-reader issue of how to display the information which has been
> >captured so that a person using the system can make the best and most
> >efficient sense out of it.  This problem has existed from Day 1, even
> >with DOS.  The second half of the problem is to get a bullet-proof
> >mechanism in place to insure that there is information actually
> >getting in to the screen reader.  This is where Microsoft has blown it
> >sky high in Windows.  I simply do not have any hard facts yet about NT
> >to make any statement one way or the other, but it sounds like Windows
> >NT is more UNIX-like and has much stricter rules for how to output
> >data.
> >
> >        My own opinion is that Linux holds out the most hope for
> >solving technical problems relating to screen reading because of the
> >open source for the operating system and the fact that applications
> >must conform to strict technical specifications in order to hope to
> >run.  The down side is that applications we need to run in our jobs
> >will not necessarily have a counterpart in Linux.  It seems that the
> >accessibility of a product is inversely proportional to the popularity
> >of it and the urgency of its usefulness if it was accessible.
> >
> >        I make no bones about it.  I do not like the present climate
> >regarding screen readers for Windows.  It is too full of lawyers,
> >commercial issues, lawyers, licensing, lawyers, and lawyers for my
> >tastes.  These issues do nothing but obstruct progress in most cases
> >and this problem is imply too large and too important to leave to
> >purely commercial interests.  There just aren't enough of us to make
> >it all work to our advantage.
> >
> >        In linux, there is a lot of work to do to solve technical
> >problems such as how to make X Windows work for us.  With Microsoft
> >NT, we have those problems plus all the pesky legal/commercial
> >questions that make things expensive and more difficult than they
> >should be.  It is kind of exciting to have alternatives, but anybody's
> >guess as to which system will be the best.  I am betting on Linux for
> >the long run because the only limitation there is technical.  It's
> >still tough for the short run.
> >
> >Jude DaShiell writes:
> >>The screen reader vendors have been told by Microsoft that the future
> isn't
> >>windows 98, it's windows 2000 or what was originally known as windows nt.
> >>Maybe that was done with good reason.
> >

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