>
>[Note from Miss Rovig:] My synopsis of long but interesting blog
>piece below: David Berlind of ZDNet, the online blogger and
>self-labeled Technology Reporter, quotes to us from his forceful
>letters to Curtis Chong of NFB, and Charleson of ACB, about State of
>Massachuchets deciding to replace Microsoft applications with new
>Open Document Format (ODF). He writes at length the pros and cons
>for PWDs, comparing ODF with Microsoft products. He wants NFB and
>ACB advocates to support ODF not Microsoft but first force vendors
>of ODF to make it accessible for now and the future, instead of
>scambling for third party firms to upgrde JAWS and other
>accessibility products behind the wave, after Microsoft makes changes.
>
>National advocate for the disabled sets terms for endorsement of
>OpenDocument Format
>Posted by David Berlind @ 7:44 am
>
>Curtis Chong is president of the National Federation of the Blind in
>Computer Science and is considered to be one of the more important
>shakers and movers in the disability community when it comes to the
>accessibilty of technology. Among the community of people with
>blindness and serious
>visual impairments, he is probably one of the country's top three most
>influential advocates on the accessibility front. For those looking to
>alter the
>technology landscape in a way that affects People With Disabilities
>(PWDs), Chong's opinion can make or break new initiatives like the
>one in Massachusetts
>where that state's Information Technology Division (MA ITD) is trying to
>establish the OpenDocument Format (ODF) as a standard format for
>creating and saving
>public documents.
>So far, Chong has opposed the Massachusetts plan. But, as you're about
>to find out, he's actually willing to endorse it and he's putting the
>ball in the
>pro-ODFers' court.
>
>While pro-ODF vendors such as IBM, Sun, Novell, Adobe, Corel, Google,
>Apple, HP, Computer Associates, Red Hat, Nokia, and others remain
>hopeful that recent
>political machinations in Massachusetts won't derail MA ITD's
>ratification of ODF as an Executive Branch-wide standard, it's clear
>that they may have underestimated
>the extent to which PWDs may not only be a lynchpin to ODF's acceptance,
>but also to which those who oppose ODF (including Microsoft and certain
>politicians)
>would use the accessibility issue as a leverage point that could lead to
>the scuttling of the ODF policy.
>
>Microsoft Office is currently the productivity suite of choice for most
>of the state's employees. But Microsoft's choice not to support ODF
>means that
>both it and its proprietary file formats will be off limits once the
>state's ODF policy goes into effect. MA ITD's plan calls for
>implementation of the
>ODF standard to start on January 1, 2007. But, ODF as a file format is
>barely six months old. Even worse, of the applications that support it
>- of which
>there are hardly any - none are in the same league as Microsoft
>Office-based solutions when it comes to accessibility for PWDs (thanks
>in large part to
>expensive third party accessibility add-ons like
>JAWS
>that are designed specifically to work with Office). As the January 1,
>2007 implementation date draws closer, the spotlight has shifted to
>state employees
>with disabilities who need a solution that's at least as accessible as
>Microsoft Office can be made to be (again, through third party
>products).
>
>Short of an ODF-compliant solution that meet or beat the accessibilty of
>Office-based solutions, ODF opponents including Curtis Chong have made
>hay out
>of the chances that disabled state employees could show up for work on
>1/1/07 and be forced to work with inadequate software (or worse, forced
>out of work
>because they can't get their jobs done). Microsoft could easily resolve
>the impasse by supporting ODF. When it has served the company's best
>interests
>before (for example, when it wanted to make it easier for customers of
>Wordpefect and Lotus 123 to switch to Microsoft's Word and Excel),
>Microsoft was
>quick to support competing file formats.
>
>But, by supporting ODF, Office could lose customers to far less
>expensive productivity solutions (such as the open source-based
>OpenOffice.org) or Web-based
>services. With no incentive to promote that sort of switching anytime
>soon
>, the company is clearly aware of the leverage being afforded to it and
>its products by the accessibilty issue. As long as Microsoft Office
>stands heads
>and tails above other solutions in terms of accessibility for PWDs, the
>accessibility issue virtually guarantees Microsoft continued domination
>of the
>state's desktops. Particularly when PWD accessibility advocates like
>Curtis Chong are doing what they should be doing: simply standing up for
>the rights
>of their constituents.
>
>Long term however, given the open standard nature of ODF and given the
>number of large vendors behind it, ODF-compliant solutions actually
>stand a good
>chance at being better for PWDs than do Microsoft Office-based
>solutions. In a blog entry I wrote two weeks ago (see
>Is the OpenDocument Format strategically better for the disabled?
>Maybe.),
>I explored this possibility and actually found a contemporary of Chong's
>- Bryon Charlson, director of the Accessibility Technology Program at
>the Carroll
>Center for the Blind in Newton, Massachusetts - who, in stark contrast
>to the testimony (full transcript
>here)
>presented at
>a recent Massachusetts hearing on ODF
>(that took place on Halloween), saw the potential of the open file
>format to result in solutions that were better for PWDs than those based
>on Microsoft
>Office.
>
>As it turns out, Charlson acknowledged that the real beef of PWDs when
>it comes to ODF isn't ODF itself but rather the January 1, 2007
>implementation date
>which, even according to the vendors that are racing to build solutions,
>is overly optimistic in terms of realistically having any highly
>PWD-accessible
>ODF-compliant offerings in the market - a critically important detail
>that the hearing never flushed out and that those involved in the
>controversy routinely
>overlook. Even so, according to a blog written by IBM vice president of
>standards and open source Bob Sutor, IBM plans to have make its
>ODF-compliant
>solution PWD-accessible as early as 2007. Wrote Sutor:
>Block quote start
>
>IBM's Workplace productivity tools available through Workplace Managed
>Client including word processing, spreadsheet and presentation editors
>are currently
>planned to be fully accessible on a Windows platform by 2007.
>Additionally, these productivity tools are currently planned to be fully
>accessible on a
>Linux platform by 2008.
>Block quote end
>
>However, if history is any guide, plans and actual ship dates can differ
>and IBM's statement does not guarantee the availability of those
>products on time.
>Accessibility experts also have told me that functional descriptions
>such as "fully accessible" can be subject to interpretation. In other
>words, there's
>no guarantee that a vendor's interpretation of "fully accessible" will
>meet the standard for accessibility as defined by PWDs. In terms of the
>overall
>availability of fully accessible ODF-compliant solutions, IBM's
>Workplace is also a special breed of application.
>Billed to me earlier this year
>by IBM as a "rich client" architecture, Workplace requires special
>server-side components and as such, is normally used as a department or
>company-wide
>solution. While its availability will be a proof point for both ODF and
>accessible solutions, to the extent that it can't be implemented as a
>single destkop
>solution (in other words, as Microsoft Office substitute) that could
>interoperate via ODF with other less PWD-accessible solutions that
>non-PWDs might
>elect to us, it is unlikely that the timely availability of IBM's
>Managed Workplace Client alone will satisfy accessibility advocates such
>as Chong.
>
>In an effort to offer some clarity to my assessment of ODF's strategic
>accessibility potential, Chong responded to my blog
>with a letter
>that detailed the reasons for his current opposition to Massachusetts'
>plans for the largely untested file format. Given his prominence in the
>PWD community,
>I took the letter very seriously. But, as evidence of how political
>wrangling, vendor maneuvering, and misinformed media coverage have
>obfuscated the
>important issues for key PWD advocates like Chong, his letter proved
>that, for whatever reasons, his position on ODF was not taking some of
>the most critical
>facts into consideration. For example, as you can see in the second
>paragraph of his letter (reproduced with his approval), Chong
>characterizes ODF as
>an open source initiative when, in reality, by the time January 1, 2007
>rolls around, the majority of ODF-compliant solutions (eg: IBM's
>Workplace Managed
>Client) will probably be commercial in nature (rather than open
>source). Wrote Chong:
>Block quote start
>
>As you might imagine, the Open Source advocates are keenly interested in
>having me and the National Federation of the blind in Computer Science
>adopt a
>position strongly supporting ODF and Open Source. There are those who
>argue that Open Source will break the Microsoft monopoly, eliminate the
>need to
>pay high prices for software, and provide people with disabilities with
>even greater accessibility than we have today. I submit that this view
>is overly
>simplistic.
>Block quote end
>
>Later in his letter, Chong goes on to summarize:
>Block quote start
>
>The information I have would lead me to believe that access technologies
>for the Open Source environment are in their infancy, and when they are
>compared
>feature for feature with what we have in Windows, they will come up
>short. When one compares the training resources and information
>available for access
>technologies in Windows against that available for Open source, this,
>too, demonstrates that the Open Source community still has a long way to
>go.
>Block quote end
>
>However, Chong's letter also acknowledges that the accessibilty of
>Office-based solutions is largely due to the "heroic" efforts of third
>party software
>developers whose software routinely breaks everytime Microsoft upgrades
>its software because of the way that software relies on interfaces to
>Office and
>Windows, many of which are not well-documented or not documented at all.
>Wrote Chong:
>Block quote start
>
>....such access as we have relies heavily upon the unsung and heroic
>efforts of a handful of small companies whose software must often steal
>and scrape such
>information as they can from an operating system and application
>programs that are designed only incidentally to provide the information
>they need. The
>access we currently have to applications running in the Windows
>environment is the culmination of literally decades of software
>development, user experience,
>and software evolution
>
>In order for the Screen access technology used in Windows to be able to
>do its job, it must rely upon a variety of informational channels to get
>what it
>needs. Some information comes from well-documented and supported
>interfaces provided by application and/or operating system software,
>some information
>comes from a direct examination of document object models (if you will,
>the format of the data), and yet more information comes through
>undocumented but
>vital video hooks that screen access software developers have been
>compelled to use out of necessity......Moreover, whenever Microsoft
>decides to come out
>with a new version of Office or Windows, screen access technology
>developers and the blind community must race to keep up. If they do not,
>such access
>as we have enjoyed could evaporate literally overnight. Yet, despite
>these imperfections, the access that we do enjoy in Windows is unmatched
>on any other
>platform in use today.
>Block quote end
>
>Then, in the letter, Chong says something that none of those who
>testified on behalf of PWDs at the Halloween Hearing bothered to say -
>something that would
>have been critical for the state senator (
>Marc R. Pacheco)
>who presided over the hearing to say:
>Block quote start
>
>The National Federation of the Blind in Computer Science would give its
>enthusiastic support to the OpenDocument format once we are satisfied
>that our concerns
>with respect to nonvisual access have been addressed.
>Block quote end
>
>Not only does this correspond with what the Carroll Center for the
>Blind's Charlson told me, but it may also be the first time that someone
>who, on a national
>level represents those with blindness or severe visual impairments, has
>acknowledged the PWD community's openness to ODF in writing. But what
>Chong's
>letter indicated no knowlege of is that the same criteria officially
>applies to Massachusetts' January 1, 2007 planned implementation date.
>In other
>words, if, on that date, the available ODF-compliant solutions prove to
>be sorely lacking in terms of their accessibility, MA ITD would actually
>postpone
>the implementation until those solutions are proven to address the
>accessibility requirements of PWDs.
>This was confirmed to me
>in the momemts just prior to the start of the Halloween Hearing by MA
>ITD CIO Peter Quinn and general counsel Linda Hamel.
>
>So, just to sumarize the crossed wires: MA ITD says it won't force the
>state's disabled workers to switch away from Microsoft Office on January
>1, 2007
>if the ODF-compliant alternatives don't offer the sort of accessibility
>that those workers need at that time. Two leading advocates for PWD
>accessibility
>- advocates with the influence to sway a massive amount of opinion -
>have acknowleged the promise of ODF and have said that they would give
>ODF their support
>once ODF-compliant solutions proved to be demonstrably acceptable. Yet,
>at the Halloween Hearing in Massachusetts, two of the three people who
>spoke on
>behalf of PWDs (Bay State Council of Blind president Jerry Barrier and
>Boston Disability Policy Consortium treasurer John Linsky) failed to
>acknowledge
>ODF's potential. In fact, not only didn't they acknowlege ODF's
>potential the way Charlson and Chong have, they also failed to emphasize
>(Conveniently?
>Let's hope not) the serious shortcoming in Office-based solutions that
>have been the bain of technology and information accessibility for PWDs:
>the fact
>that programs like JAWS have to be rewritten every time Microsoft
>upgrades its software. Barrier and Linsky also intermingled open source
>and the OpenDocument
>format as though the viability of accessible open source solutions was a
>central issue when it was not.
>
>The infamous line from the movie Cool Hand Luke comes to mind: What we
>have here is a failure to communicate. Whereas the inadequate
>accessibility in ODF-compliant
>software would officially trigger an postponement of the ODF policy's
>1/1/2007 implementation date, influential advocates of PWD accessibility
>are adopting
>positions and testifying to powerful politicians as though no such
>trigger exists and those politicians have thusly turned the issue into
>a political
>football.
>
>So, I wrote back to Chong. I took his issues one at a time because, as
>someone who has been reporting on the situation, I need to stick to some
>baseline
>of understanding when interviewing all involved parties and his letter
>deviated from that baseline. In an effort to re-establish that baseline
>and to
>see if that changed his understanding of the issues, his position or
>both, my letter can be broken down in to four sections.
>
>The first of these dealt with his intermingling of open source and ODF.
>It sounded remarkably similar to the testimony offered by Barrier and
>Linsky during
>the Halloween hearing where, to anyone who didn't know any better, it
>sounded as though PWDs would be solely dependent on open source
>developers to make
>sure that ODF-compliant solutions met certain accessibility standards.
>This was not my understanding and deviates from the baseline of
>assumptions in my
>reporting to date. In my reply to Chong, I wrote:
>Block quote start
>
>Open source advocates would no doubt favor any technology that stands a
>chance of undermining Microsoft. However, other than the fact that
>OpenOffice.org
>happens to be an open source application that supports the open document
>format and the fact that other open source programs such as the recently
>revealed
>WikiCalc from spreadsheet inventor Dan Bricklin can choose to support
>the open document format as well, the open document format has nothing
>to do with
>open source. Nothing. Developers of proprietary software are just as
>free to support the OpenDocument Format as are developers of open source
>software
>as well as developers of a new breed of software known as software as a
>service or SaaS. OpenOffice.org is simply one application that supports
>the OpenDocument
>Format. Sun's StarOffice which is a non-open source superset of
>Openoffice will support it as well. So too will Corel's Wordperfect
>(not open source),
>IBM Lotus Workplace (not open source) and the Writely Web-based word
>processor (not open source). So, for the community of those with
>disabilities to
>be heard on this issue, it must dispense with the casual intermingling
>of the term open source with OpenDocument. It unnecessarily distracts
>those who
>are paying attention from the core issues. Even Microsoft has suggested
>that it's Office XML Reference Schema file format is compatible with
>open source
>yet the two never get mixed up there. So, why use the term open source
>to cloud the issue when all we are talking about is another file format
>that's
>equally supportable by applications and services of any type?
>Block quote end
>
>The second section of my letter explored Chong's explanation of how its
>the third party provided accessibility solutions that make Microsoft's
>Office accessible,
>how those solutions depend on documented and undocumented interfaces in
>Office and Windows, how those solutions break when Microsoft goes
>through an upgrade
>cycle. In this part of my reply, I openly wonder why these points
>weren't made during the hearing (they certainly would have been
>relevant) and whether
>or not that status quo is really worth protecting when there's a new
>technology like ODF that could fundamentally improve the forward and
>backward compatibilty
>of "accessible solutions." Here's what I said:
>Block quote start
>
>The second point I'd like to make is that your statements are very very
>different from the ones presented by three representatives of the
>disabled community
>during the Oct 31 hearing. A few of your points would have been very
>relevant and I'm certain that those who spoke at the hearing were aware
>of them.
>For example, the point you making about the precarious balance that
>exists between the specialized accessibility software and Microsoft
>Office was never
>mentioned. Nor was the fact that every time Microsoft upgrades it's
>software, the accessibility software must be completely re-engineered to
>keep up. I'm
>sure that each time the cat catches its tail, only to have the tail
>eventually slip away, that it's the work of a few heroic people that
>catch the tail
>again. But isn't there a point at which the tail catchers realize that
>this is a futile effort that stands in the way of true innovation in
>accessibility?
>I've been a technology journalist for 15 years now. In that time, it
>didn't matter who the vendor was: if a vendor came out with a product
>that wasn't
>backwards compatible with the ones before it, they were hammered out of
>the market. The fact that Microsoft keeps breaking backward
>compatibility and
>forcing heroic developers to creatively exploit both documented and
>undocumented interfaces suggests to me that the company hasn't looked at
>continuity
>in accessibility as a problem that it's responsible for solving.
>
>I don't mean to suggest that the OpenDocument format solves your
>problems. But it's clear to me that at least half the battle you're
>currently experiencing
>has to do with the fact that one company gets to decide what it will and
>won't do for the disability community. And so far, that company's track
>record,
>dating back to the IE4 and Windows 95 debacles, doesn't have a very good
>track record. At least with OpenDocument format, you have an opportunity
>to insert
>yourself into a multi-party stewarded process that stands a chance at
>breaking that chain. Just look at what has happened to date. Microsoft
>is actually
>using its hardly fought for advantage in accessibility as a leverage
>point to maintain the status quo in Massachusetts. What has it done to
>say it's going
>to answer the clarion call from those with disabilities?
>Block quote end
>
>First, the statement about Microsoft's use of its advantage in
>accessibility as a leverage point to keep ODF at bay in Massachusetts is
>an opinion, but
>a widely held one at that. In looking for reasons why Microsoft can't or
>won't support ODF, only Microsoft has suggested that such support is
>either impractical
>or implausible for the company with nearly $5 billion in the bank and
>that has supported so many third party formats before. The reference to
>IE4 and Windows
>95 refers back to the only time in history that I know of where a
>potential customer boycott (in that case, several states that were led
>by Massachusetts)
>forced Microsoft to capitulate by reintroducing certain product features
>that the new versions of its software dropped. They were accessibility
>features
>(I describe that boycott in more detail
>here).
>And, according to Chong's and Charlson's own assessments, Microsoft has
>historically played and still plays a minimal role in the accessibility
>that PWDs
>currently have. For example, for more than a decade, despite
>incremental improvements in the native accessibility to Office and
>Windows, real accessibility
>has and still ultimately requires very expensive third party products.
>According to Charlson for example, the average cost for the top selling
>configuration
>of JAWS costs $1200. In other words, accessibility to Office costs more
>than three times as much as
>Staples' $330 retail price of Office Standard edition
>itself.
>
>It's additional costs like that that unfortunately make businesses
>loathe to hire PWDs (even the best estimates cite only a 30 percent
>employment rate amongst
>PWDs). Given Microsoft's resources, it's clear that the company could
>have done more in its market dominant Office and Windows to improve the
>accessibility
>and lives of PWDs. But, instead, it allowed excessive cost and breakage
>of third party products from one version of its software to next -
>conditions
>that the broader market of technology buyers would never tolerate - to
>persist for years. I wouldn't for a minute question the state of the
>state as it
>has been described by Charlson, Chong (and those who testified at the
>Halloween Hearing) that currently, the best there is in terms of
>accessibility is
>an Office-anchored solution. That's clearly the reality of the
>situation.
>
>But what I was having difficulty with, particularly in testimony but
>also in Chong's letter, was how a status quo in terms of accessibility
>that's nothing
>to write home about was being so staunchly defended without frank
>commentary about how so much more needs to be done and that if Microsoft
>wasn't willing
>to do it, that maybe those behind ODF might. After all, with IBM, Sun,
>Novell, HP, Corel, and Adobe behind ODF and with accessibility now being
>one of
>the lynchpins to it acceptance (not just in Massachusetts, but
>everywhere), surely there's an opportunity for PWDs to to take advantage
>of their newfound
>popularity. The next passage in my reply to Chong sizes up that
>opportunity and asks point blank if that's an opportunity he's
>interested in seizing:
>Block quote start
>
>Meanwhile, with the backing of IBM, Novell, Sun, Corel, Nokia, Oracle,
>Adobe, Computer Associates and Red Hat, the OASIS consortium will be
>establishing
>a technical committee that's solely decidicated to the accessibility of
>OpenDocument Formats. When was the last time you had a group of
>company's like
>that fighting for your approval? And where is Microsoft? The company
>that, according to the the people I've spoken with from your community,
>could with
>one decision make OpenDocument formatted documents just as accessible as
>its own. One decision. Does the disability community really want to
>exchange
>its soul the way it did on Oct 31 for that sort of behavior? Or, would
>you rather sieze the opportunity to break the vicious cat and tail chain
>by demanding
>a central role in the new technical committee? It's your choice Curtis.
>The opportunity for the breakthrough and the respect you've been waiting
>for is
>finally within your reach. On Oct 31, that opportunity got kicked in the
>teeth and look what happened. The opportunity came back evenstronger.
>What are
>you going to do about it?
>Block quote end
>
>Here, I'm just calling it like I see it. As I said before, something
>didn't sit right with me about how the testimony didn't address what the
>PWD community
>really needs in terms of accessibility, let alone whether or not ODF
>finally represented an opportunity to address those needs. Granted, the
>senator presiding
>over the hearing didn't ask. But, those who testified weren't
>restricted to answering the senator's questions. There was ample
>opportunity for free form
>testimony. Yet these details never came up. Some have suggested that
>the PWD community's position is so one-sided that it had to have been
>"bought."
>To test that theory, I had to challenge Chong with an opportunity that
>was too good to pass up. But to be extra sure, I made sure there was no
>question
>in Chong's mind that this was indeed a major opportunity for him and the
>PWDs he represents. I wrote:
>Block quote start
>
>In your letter, you said "The National Federation of the Blind in
>Computer Science would give its enthusiastic support to the OpenDocument
>Format once we
>are satisfied that our concerns with respect to nonvisual access have
>been addressed." Why was this not mentioned at all on Oct 31? Why
>instead was Windows
>and Office pitched as the end all and be all of accessibility that
>OpenDocument solutions could never achieve? Why did no one mention that
>the community
>would be willing to switch once the solutions you seek were proven to
>meet or exceed your expectations?
>
>I have been told by Massachusetts CIO Peter Quinn and general counsel
>Linda Hamel that unless these same conditions are met, that the January
>1, 2007 implementation
>date would be postponed until the point at which those concerns are
>addressed. I looked them in the eye. They are equally concerned that the
>date is an
>unrealistic one. Now, I'm not going to belittle the history here.
>
> From what I can tell, it does sound as though the disability community
>was largely ignored during this process. Shame on them. I mean that. But
>now Curtis,
>you hold the cards and you've got the attention of the most powerful
>companies in the industry. You finally have the audience you need to
>actually change
>the world. You have fought hard and endured so much to get to this
>point. Once again Curtis, what will you do with this opportunity? Will
>you sieze it
>in a way that can ultimately improve the quality of life for millions of
>people who are deprived of the access to technology and information they
>deserve?
>Or are you going carry that chip on your shoulder for having been
>ingored and fight for the status quo that, as far as I can tell, is
>hardly worth fighting
>for. Particularly if you're not being asked to give it up until the new
>breed
>of solutions demonstrably meets your standards. Let bygones be bygones
>Curtis. This moment comes along once in a lifetime, if that. You are
>in a position
>to name the terms. You stand nothing to lose by doing it.
>Block quote end
>
>In the last section of my letter, I clarify my position. From my point
>of view, Chong is another of ZDNet's readers; the type of reader that
>I've always
>stood up for when it comes questionable vendor behavior; the type of
>reader to whom I have
>routinely and strongly recommended the adoption of open standards
>in lieu of proprietary technologies. Not only do I explain my motives,
>but I volunteer to put him and the pro-ODF vendors into the same room
>where I, as
>a journalist covering the issue, can really see if these vendors are as
>committed to accessibility as they say they are. After all, if I'm
>willing to
>test Chong's resolve, then I should be equally willing to test the
>promise of some of ODF's strongest proponents. If either party walks
>away from the
>table, then a hidden agenda is found and all is not as it seems. If
>not, then the breakthrough is newsworthy. Here's how I concluded:
>Block quote start
>
>Finally, to be honest, I could care less about the fortunes of the big
>players here... IBM, Sun, Red Hat, or whoever. I have villified all of
>them at one
>time or another and would be happy to do it again every time they do
>something that's not in the best interests of my readers. I have long
>extolled the
>virtues of standards and how they put technology buyers in control. I
>have strongly advised our readers to stay away from proprietary
>technologies including
>proprietary extensions to open standards and crucified vendors every
>time they try to lock ZDNet's readers in. It's the reason
>I've won
>one of the few President's Awards for Journalism from the American
>National Standards Institute. The minute you end up married to a
>proprietary technology,
>you end up stuck. Look at the very reason you cannot easily switch to
>another solution right now. It's the marriage of your specialized
>solutions to the
>proprietary technology.
>
>So, you must understand where I'm coming from. I think Microsoft makes a
>fine solution. I'm using it right now as I write this email. So, in ODF,
>I see
>just such an opportunity for buyers to take control of a part of their
>technology that one company has had complete control of. It controls
>the security
>of your technology. The stability of it. The cost of it. And for you
>especially, the accessibility of it. To the extent that I've always
>stood up for
>readers first, you now have my attention and I will stand up for you
>too. If you want me to bear witness to your attempts to insert yourself
>into the process
>- in other words sit side by side with you as you convey your concerns,
>your requirements, and your terms to guys like IBM's Bob Sutor or Sun's
>Jonathan
>Schwartz, I can be there. I can even make the meetings happen. And if
>anybody is being unreasonable, I will call it like I see it. They know
>that. They
>fear that. I answer to one constituency and one constituency only. My
>readers.
>
>You call the shots. You come up with the requirements and the road map
>(some of it is already in your email to me). You tell them what you
>need. Even a
>budget if you need that to make it someone's full time job to monitor
>the progress. You have my ear. If they screw up, back out, or tell you
>to go to
>hell, then the pen is my sword. They can live by it. They can die by
>it. Like I said before, what have you got to lose? The worst that can
>happen is
>that the status quo stays. That's no different than what you have today.
>The best that can happen is you move a mountain that was once immovable.
>Carpe
>Diem Curtis. Sieze the day.
>Block quote end
>
>Next came Chong's amazing reply and it's perfectly clear that he has no
>agenda. As far as I can tell, he is truly a champion of the PWDs he
>represents
>and this could be a newsworthy moment for both sides. Here's how he
>answered:
>Block quote start
>
>David:
>
>Let me say at the outset that every point you have made is valid. I am
>not prepared to articulate a full response right now, but suffice it to
>say that
>I agree with what you have said and take seriously your call for us to
>participate in the effort to make the OpenDocument format accessible.
>Our access
>to information should not be riding on as tenuous a thread as it is
>today.
>
>I apologize for intermixing the two terms OpenDocument and Open Source.
>I should not have done that. In this instance, I will confine my
>discussion to
>ODF.
>
>The NFB in Computer Science is ready to take the next step, and if
>Massachusetts' recognition of the unrealistic nature of the January 1
>date can be made
>"official," I would be pleased.
>
>Yours sincerely,
>
>Curtis Chong, President
>National Federation of the Blind in Computer Science
>Block quote end
>
>So now - to you MA ITD CIO Peter Quinn and to you
>IBM's Bob Sutor
>and
>Sun's Jonathan Schwartz
>(both of whom have blogged about this issue) and the rest of you vendors
>that are behind ODF and to you
>OASIS OpenDocument Technical committee
>- the ball is officially in your court. Mr. Chong may not represent the
>entire community of PWDs, but his influence is so great that a meeting
>of the minds
>could be a breakthrough.
>
>To Mr. Quinn:you must officially explain why and how the January 1, 2007
>ODF implementation date is actually flexible in such a way that state
>employees
>with disabilities will never be asked to do their jobs with inadequate
>tools. This of course requires an umistakable way of recognizing
>inadequacy as
>well as minimally acceptable adequacy when it comes to accessibility.
>
>Mr. Sutor and Mr. Schwartz: the burden is now on your companies to work
>with Mr. Chong and Mr. Charlson (who told me via phone he'd be happy to
>participate
>in the process as well) to clearly, and in no uncertain terms, define
>what the minimal acceptable level of accessibility is in order for a
>productivity
>suite to meet the requirements of PWDs. I know that you vendors recently
>discussed the issue in Armonk, but that discussion didn't include the
>most important
>people. I'd also strongly recommend inviting the
>World Wide Web Consoritum's director of Web accessibility Judy Brewer
>and
>Massachusetts Office on Disability
>director Myra Berloff to participate. In her testimony during the
>Halloween Hearing, Berloff stated that her office had started working
>with MA ITD to"work
>on specific or to identify specific accessibility needs for people with
>disabilities."
>
>To keep the test realistic, it should also factor in the degree to which
>the Office-anchored solutions are accessible is today. After all, that's
>what is
>currently being held up as the gold standard. Plus, it should try fill
>in any major shortcomings of that existing state of the art (such as the
>way forward
>compatibility breaks each time the underlying software is modified).
>Beyond that, additional criteria should serve as a roadmap for ODF's
>continued evolution.
>
>This "test" - more like a document or a checklist - should be developed
>at the vendors' cost. Not Chong's or Charleson's. I know that Sun's
>chief accessibility
>architect Peter Korn has already articulated some of the criteria in
>a recent blog of his.
>That's a good start. But again, the discussion needs to include the
>people it concerns most. The stakes are obviously very high and the
>vendors stand
>a lot gain from the support of PWD advocates like these two men. If
>you're that serious about accessibility, putting this sort of skin in
>the game will
>be chicken feed to you.
>
>Back to Mr. Quinn, to make sure there's no ambiguity about what sort of
>accessibility will trigger the implementation of the ODF policy, then
>you should
>agree to use that test as the trigger point for implementation of your
>ODF policy. If on January 1, 2007, the shipping ODF-complaint solutions
>don't pass
>the test, then the date must be moved to a more realistic date. As a
>part of your official statement, I think you need to include something
>in your official
>statement that acknowledges that accessibility will be determined by a
>mutually established test developed with input from you, PWD advocates
>not limited
>to Chong and Charlson, and the vendors.
>
>Finally, by now, you're probably saying "Hey David, as a reporter, why
>don't you just take this proposal to the other parties and report on the
>outcome
>of those interviews?" That's a reasonable question. I think the
>blogosphere creates a unique opportunity. Those interviews could get
>bogged down in
>a back and forth discussion that could take months. And sure, guys like
>Sutor and Schwartz can respond to me directly and I can report on that.
>But they
>have blogs and they can respond there as well. Why not take advantage
>of the efficiency of the blogosphere while making the process as
>transparent as
>possible? There's no need for me to own this news or beat other
>journalists to the punch. My job is to speak for ZDNet's readers as
>I've done here. I
>don't speak for the vendors. By publicly putting the pressure on them,
>my job is done. Now comes the opportunity for vendors to speak for
>themselves
>and for the world to see. Are they for real on their promise of
>accessibility or not? What I've proposed here is not unreasonable.
>Whatever they say,
>that's news. And that is also my job as a journalist. To flush out the
>news. News that belongs to everybody. Especially those with
>disabilities.
David Andrews and white cane Harry.
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