Judith E. Heumann, Assistant Secretary for the Office of Special
Education and Rehabilitative Services (OSERS) in the U.S.
Department of Education, has asked that I post the following
letter from the Lotus Development Corporation. As you know, Judy
and staff from the Department recently met with representatives
from Lotus regarding the inaccessibility of Lotus' software
including Lotus Notes and Lotus SmartSuite.
Judy would like to thank each of you for your interest and
involvement in this ongoing discussion, and we have no doubt that
the e-mail messages and written letters from many of you have
helped to bring about what we hope will be a positive outcome.
We are cautiously optimistic as a result of this letter from
Lotus, and await further information regarding their plans to
include accessibility into the design of their software.
You will note that the letter from Mr. Papows refers to
enclosures which outline in detail the steps Lotus will be taking
to carry out the objectives of accessible software design. We
have not seen this additional material as yet, but understand
that it is being forwarded to us. Lotus has asked that we not
release the details contained in the enclosures as they involve
proprietary information about Lotus products which the company
does not yet wish to release publicly. We will comply with this
request.
However, although somewhat general in nature, the letter below
does make some very specific pronouncements about Lotus'
intentions in this regard, and we are hopeful that they will
follow through on the promises they have made.
Of course, we will keep you posted, and Judy asked that I let all
of you know that she will continue to take a very personal
interest in this discussion, as well as in the whole area of
software design.
April 2 1997
Ms. Judith E. Heumann
Assistant Secretary
Office of Special Education and Rehabilitative Services
Ms. Gloria Parker
Acting Chief Information Officer
Department of Education
MES Bldg.
330 C Street
Washington, DC 20202
Dear Mss. Heumann and Parker:
I would like to thank you for your interest in Lotus Notes and Lotus
SmartSuite. The purpose of this letter is to inform you that Lotus
Development Corporation is absolutely committed to making Lotus
products accessible to people with disabilities. The approach we will
take is outlined below with more detailed schedules provided as an
attachment.
1. Extend the IBM screen reader for OS/2 to work with Lotus Notes.
This is complete.
2. Provide user interface detail to screen reader manufacturers to
assist them in creating tools to make Lotus products accessible. This
work is ongoing.
3. Domino applications can be designed for accessibility via a
browser. Mid-1997 enhancements to Domino will make this even more so
the case.
4. Participate with IBM as a charter sponsor of the World Wide Web
Consortium's Web Accessibility Initiative.
5. Change the user interface of the Lotus Notes client and SmartSuite
to further enable accessibility. This will be done for products to be
delivered at end of year and early 1998. Industry standards and newly
available toolkits will be used to provide accessibility in these
releases.
6. Comply with the Guidelines for Accessible Software Design from the
Department of Education in our product testing.
7. Include accessibility considerations in our other work such as our
Java components.
8. Include members of the disabled communities in our beta and
usability testing.
We believe we have a social and business responsibility to make our
products accessible, and we intend to do that. Thank you for taking
the time to address this issue with us. Please refer to the enclosed
documents from our Notes and SmartSuite Product Managers for more
detail on some of our plans and efforts.
Sincerely,
Jeff Papows [Signed]
JPP:sr
Enclosure
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