Hi Will,
Much as your thoughts do highlight an important area, they aren't at a
sufficiently advanced stage of realisation to be a practical solution for
those of us facing the accessibility problems today. If I'm required to
use
a product which could be made accessible in a matter of weeks or months,
as
opposed to having to wait for a generic solution which could take one or
two
years, I think you can see where my employment prospects would lean.
This in no way implies that we must adopt one solution path over another.
Your aims are good, and should be embarked upon anyway. But they are a
long
term solution, not a short term fix. Sadly, those of us having jobs to do
now, need to have the short term fixes in order to get the job done.
Therefore, the pressure on product manufacturers to design and build their
products to be as accessible as possible out of the box should continue,
and
particularly pressure should be brought to bear where companies use
proprietary means of achieving solutions for the sake of being
proprietary,
and at the expense of accessibility. An example, which just happens to be
an Oracle one, but is by no means the only one, is the Oracle add-in for
Visual Studio.NET. The .NET Framework, and the Visual Studio.NET IDE in
particular, have been designed with accessibility in mind. Therefore, to
find that the add-in that Oracle have produced uses their own Java based
installer, which is not at all screen reader friendly, seems rather crass.
If they had built it using the .NET tools, then they could just as easily
have created the deployment solution using .NET, and that *is* accessible.
So I agree that the adaptive technology industry needs to take a much more
"generic" approach to providing accessibility aids. But I think this job
can be made much easier, if all products are designed with accessibility
in
mind to start with. As anyone in software development knows, getting the
design right up front is *always* a better solution than creating
workarounds after the event.
David Lant
I.T. Consultant
Consultancy & Development
ICT Services
Tel: (01392) 382464
Devon County Council accepts no legal responsibility for the contents of
this message. The views expressed do not reflect those of Devon County
Council.
-----Original Message-----
From: Will Pearson [mailto:will-pearson@xxxxxxxxxxxxx]
Sent: 01 August 2005 21:58
To: program-l@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [program-l] Re: oracle and blind programmer
Hi,
This strikes me as a lot of work. At the moment if we want something of
Microsoft's to be made accessible we have to go to the appropriate product
group in Microsoft, if we want Oracle made accessible then we have to go
to
Oracle, if we want Sun's stuff accessible, then we have to go to Sun, and
so
on. To me, this seems like a lot of repetition and hard work, and I
think
there has to be a better way. At present I don't see many complaints
about
why the screen reader vendors aren't making efforts to try and create a
generic solution to accessibility, a catch all solution if you like, one
that would make everything accessible through the screen reader. All
right,
this isn't exactly the social model of disability that we're meant to be
embracing in this modern age, but I tend not to go in for models much,
except for models of communication such as the Shannon-Weaver one *smile*.
It's not as if it isn't technically impossible. All right, it isn't
possible with the techniques currently implemented in screen readers, but
that isn't to say that techniques don't exist, or couldn't be developed,
that work towards delivering this generic form of access. There's a lot
going on in academia, including my own work and that on the semantic web,
that could go a long way to making this a reality. So, it likely can be
done, especially if you forget about section 508 *g*.
After saying that, there is one drawback. If we had a generic form of
access, then no one would be able to sell any upgrades based on the fact
that their screen reader worked with product x, or z version of product y.
Am I that cynical that I think this could be a major reason why we haven't
seen that much progress yet?
... just some musings from an academic research guy.
Will
----- Original Message -----
From: "Justin Daubenmire" <justind@xxxxxxxxx>
To: <program-l@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Monday, August 01, 2005 8:01 PM
Subject: [program-l] Re: oracle and blind programmer
Hi Gary.
Sure, we can petition oracle but they are 100% aware of accessibility
lacking in their products. In fact, they have an accessibility specialist
on board that is blind to help them out in pinpointing what is not
accessible and how to improve it. He has been with them for the past few
years and we haven't seen hardly any large increases in accessibility
that
I can tell from my interactions with others and my own personal research
on this issue. However, Oracle is not moving forward quick enough at all.
Sure, they are moving forward some, but, I think we are after large
strides and not small ones since the ability to get us accessible tools
is
there.
I'd be willing to sign any petition or whatever if someone wants to
whip
up one here and get more than 5 signatures from blind oracle dbs *laugh*.
I actually had a college professor call oracle when I was in college
back
at oracle 6 think it was, faxed them all the information, I wrote up a
detailed report on it in ms word format, they got it confirmed it with
the
proff, said they would get back to the proff and never did.
So, my take on it is we are not priority at all. They've known about
this
for years and just keep putting stuff at the front to look like they are
moving into it but really, taking slow strides toward it.
Justin
----- Original Message -----
From: "Wunder, Gary" <WunderG@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
To: <program-l@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Monday, August 01, 2005 2:13 PM
Subject: [program-l] Re: oracle and blind programmer
I am a programmer and an active member of the NFB. I concur and will
do what I can to raise the visibility of Oracle in our organization,
but I can't let this go by without saying that the NFB and others who
press companies for software we can use are only as strong as blind
people and those they recruit decide we should be. Whether it's
finding the technical people to talk the language of the developers,
the legal people to talk the language of the lawyers and the
executives, or the funds to attend the meetings where the persuasion
takes place, none of this happens without the active and vigorous
involvement of blind folks. In the U.S. these days, we hear a lot
about the power of the individual, and none of us with an ego would
argue against the power of choice in our lives - especially those
choices we've made that are right. It's common to hear what "they,"
should do and to say "I'm not much of a joiner," or "I'm not much for
that political stuff," but the kind of change we want requires both
individual drive, native intelligence, and an abundance of energy, as
well as the good-sense to join with others who have the same needs
and who have a joint commitment to see that they are met. I make this
point to emphasize that it isn't that we have an abundance of money,
talent and time and all we need do is decide where to put it. We need
more of all of them, and I hope folks who really want this
accessibility as I do will join in an active, organized effort to get
it.
Gary
-
-----Original Message-----
From: program-l-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:program-l-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Eileen Lafond
Sent: Monday, August 01, 2005 12:00 PM
To: program-l@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [program-l] Re: oracle and blind programmer
Right on!!
Eileen La Fond
Phone (206) 386-0011
e.mail Eileen.LaFond@xxxxxxxxxxx
david.lant1@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx 07/30 2:02 AM >>>
... And all this just goes to confirm my proposal that NFB and the
like should be spending *far* more time rattling Oracle's cage about
their accessibility efforts. To my mind, there is no excuse for
tools being this inaccessible these days.
All the best,
David
** To leave the list, click on the immediately-following link:-
** [mailto:program-l-request@xxxxxxxxxxxxx?subject=unsubscribe]
** If this link doesn't work then send a message to:
** program-l-request@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
** and in the Subject line type
** unsubscribe
** For other list commands such as vacation mode, click on the
** immediately-following link:-
** [mailto:program-l-request@xxxxxxxxxxxxx?subject=faq]
** or send a message, to
** program-l-request@xxxxxxxxxxxxx with the Subject:- faq
** To leave the list, click on the immediately-following link:-
** [mailto:program-l-request@xxxxxxxxxxxxx?subject=unsubscribe]
** If this link doesn't work then send a message to:
** program-l-request@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
** and in the Subject line type
** unsubscribe
** For other list commands such as vacation mode, click on the
** immediately-following link:-
** [mailto:program-l-request@xxxxxxxxxxxxx?subject=faq]
** or send a message, to
** program-l-request@xxxxxxxxxxxxx with the Subject:- faq
** To leave the list, click on the immediately-following link:-
** [mailto:program-l-request@xxxxxxxxxxxxx?subject=unsubscribe]
** If this link doesn't work then send a message to:
** program-l-request@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
** and in the Subject line type
** unsubscribe
** For other list commands such as vacation mode, click on the
** immediately-following link:-
** [mailto:program-l-request@xxxxxxxxxxxxx?subject=faq]
** or send a message, to
** program-l-request@xxxxxxxxxxxxx with the Subject:- faq
** To leave the list, click on the immediately-following link:-
** [mailto:program-l-request@xxxxxxxxxxxxx?subject=unsubscribe]
** If this link doesn't work then send a message to:
** program-l-request@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
** and in the Subject line type
** unsubscribe
** For other list commands such as vacation mode, click on the
** immediately-following link:-
** [mailto:program-l-request@xxxxxxxxxxxxx?subject=faq]
** or send a message, to
** program-l-request@xxxxxxxxxxxxx with the Subject:- faq
