[Kde-accessibility] [MA ODF Accessibility Team] Report from a11y meeting 29 Nov

[Thomas Zander]

On Wednesday 07 December 2005 00:43, Gary Cramblitt wrote:
> Mark Bucciarelli and I attended a meeting 29 Nov in Boston,
> Massachusetts.   The meeting was sponsored by the Disabilities Law
> Center (DLC), Massachusetts Office on Disability (MOD), and the
> Disability Policy Consortium.
...
> 6.  I was only allowed to speak for about 2 minutes, in which I stated
> that Mark and I were volunteer developers representing the e.V.

Excellent little-speech :)


> 4.  Disabled government employees are concerned that a) they are going
> to need extensive training in using the new software (one blind person
> stated that he required 6 months of training with MS Office and JAWS),
> b) if a variety of software is used within the MA government, their
> ability to move jobs from one agency to another would be impaired, 

The communication from MA has always been[1] that the focussing on a 
standard file format instead of a standard application means that people 
can use whatever software fits them best.
If KOffice is waaay better in a11y then a disabled person can use that 
instead of openoffice at any time.
I understand the normal fears that IT does not want to support all ODF 
apps out there, but if the disabled want to complain about anything, its 
that they can't choose the app that works best for them in all 
circumstances.
With MSOffice <12 going away, this argument is will give everyone (but MS) 
a win-win situation.

> c) 
> since most disabled people in MA use Windows, their ability to get a MA
> government job will similarly be impaired, 

Are you saying that KOffice (and thus Qt4) accessibility stuff does not 
work on Windows?
If not, then I don't follow this argument.

> d) the current state of a11y 
> in ODF software is horrible and just won't do, and e) promises are
> being made to fix this, but they don't have confidence those promises
> will be fulfilled.


> I was also disturbed by #4, #5 and #6 above.  In essence, this is the
> pro- "software monoculture" argument.  If everybody in the world uses
> the same software and it never changes, then users with disabilities
> are much better off.  It was particularly distressing to me to hear
> these comments coming from the MOD and MRC people, who will be writing
> the software a11y standards.

I'm wondering if they have been introduced to the thought process that is 
actually being enabled by open standards.
That anyone can talk to each other with the software of his/her choice.
In other words; having 1 perfect application for blind people is all the 
government needs to meet the demand since the user can now communicate 
with all of the government via ODF.

Can you comment on that?  This idea may need more push from our side 
otherwise.


> IMHO, this "software monoculture" argument could be the greatest
> obstacle to adoption of ODF and open source software in MA, second only
> to the dirty politics.

Agreed.


> In addition, Leon wants to perform usability testing of KOffice.

I'd love to cooperate with him on that!  Maybe he should talk to 
openUsability.org since I have an agreement with them to do KOffice 
usability testing soon as well :)
Which is a good thing since any feedback ou.o gives in an informal manner 
can be directly incorporated by the developers due to the shortened 
lines.  Next to that it helps that I know both trades (coding+usability)

> He 
> wants us to supply him with the "best" version of KOffice we can manage
> to put together and also provide someone who can "hand hold" while they
> do the testing.  That person would not have to be physically present,
> but they must be reachable by phone or email and knowledgeable.  He
> wants to do this testing very soon (around end of year).  This is also
> an opportunity for KOffice to get some valuable and detailed testing
> results.

That would always be the latest stable (1.4.2) for the simple fact that I 
really don't want their first impression to be an unstable svn-trunk 
version.
Its easier to say "Ah, yes, we fixed that!" then it is to explain its a 
developers version.
This is another reason to push Ou.o to do any testing since they know us 
and I know I can say what works and what does not yet work in trunk.

> He also wants to perform accessibility testing of KOffice.  I'm trying
> to talk him out of this one, since I've already written a detailed
> accessibility report myself.
Perhaps you can convince him to postpone that to the 1.5 final release 
instead.  Which in turn gives us a good incentive to do more work.

Again, thanks a lot for putting your expertise and time into this! 

1) The actual message was that MA does not want to force all of MA to 
switch at ones but to be practical and push in place file-converters and 
upgrade paths that fit the various departments best. This either implies 
or concludes into my point above.
-- 
Thomas Zander
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: not available
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 189 bytes
Desc: not available
Url : http://mail.kde.org/pipermail/kde-accessibility/attachments/20051207/eb8a356a/attachment.pgp