To: Internet:nfb-rd@nfbcal.org
Greetings:
I am interested in comments on the following post I received from
the BLIND-L list. Do people think Doug Wakefield is right on when
he says that the White House did something right? Or are we
looking at a form of elitism? What I mean by that is this: should
we be constrained, when accessing the White House data, to using
our own computers or should we begin pushing for equal access to
the public information kiosks that will doubtless proliferate.
Truthfully, I do not know the answer to the question. I am still
struggling with this. In any event, here is Doug's post.
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Date: Mon, 24 Oct 1994 11:30:18 EST
From: Doug Wakefield <Doug.Wakefield@GSA.GOV>
Subject: scoop on white house www
Hi,
I am posting this message on both Blind-l and Easi because
the subject has come up in both lists.
What is the White House doing?
On Thursday October 20, the White House announced the opening of
a white house www server. I demoed the service both with mosaic
and Lynx for the press. There also was a Kiosk, that some said
looked more like a portapotty, on stage. The kiosk used a touch
screen to run mosaic.
The system was demoed with a regular computer running mosaic. And
My system running with the braille display, DM80 and DOSLynx.
We in this office began working with the Office of Science and
Technology Policy on this service about the middle of June. At
first the server was a near disaster. They had whole pages made
up of nothing but images. Paul Fontaine and I put together ideas
as to what they needed to do to make it better.
We were focusing on how to make the server more compatible with
LYNX and DOSLynx. Lynx is for unix, DosLynx is for DOS.
Paul sent the first message off to the White House, they had
asked for our imput, in August. By noon the next day all changes
including some of Paul's coded examples were in place. That's
the way it has gone ever since. At one point they got so carried
away, we had to say they should ease back on menu choice for
customization.
Now I think it is the most accessible www server I've seen and
plan to use it in demonstrations. If you have a hearing problem
you can get the text of audio clips such as the President's
message. There's a map of the Federal areas and you click on the
map to learn more about a particular agency. Since lynx want do
so will with that, you can select on the very first page of the
system a text only interface. Instead of a map, you see a list
of agencies to select from.
Now that's the complete story on the WWW server, so how did
kiosks get in to the middle of this? For some reason the White
House decided to use the kiosk as an example of a way for people
to get government information Especial in Federal buildings.
Now are kiosk going to be springing up all around, You BET!
They are not accessible at present, but I will say that at
Closing The Gap, Trace demoed and encouraged user feedback on the
first accessible kiosk in my opinion that actually could be
usable. These machine will be showing up in shopping malls,
unmanned, or womaned post offices, At union station in DC after
ten at night you have to buy you train ticket from a kiosk type
machine. And yes universities and libraries are bound to have
plenty of these around.
When it comes to accessible information the road is about to get
very rough so hold on to your hats no knee jerk reactions please!
it is now time for deplomacy deleberation, and when necessary
legal action. But don't kick the White House, they've really
done something right!
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Regards,
Curtis Chong
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