Thursday January 12, 2006

Thoughts on the "Joint Statement on OpenSource & OpenDocuments in Massachusetts"

The good folks at the Disability Policy Consortium and the Bay State Council of the blind have issued a Joint Statement on OpenSource & OpenDocuments in Massachusetts. This thoughtful document makes a number of important and concrete recommendations of actions to be taken prior to implementation of the Open Document Format implementation in Massachusetts so that people with disabilities won't "face the potential of once again being left out in the cold."

These recommendations are (slightly paraphrased):

• Conduct a thorough assessment of the assistive technology utilization of current state employees
• Roll out training prior to rolling out new technology
• Include funds for transition costs and training
• Commit to hiring new employees with disabilities by developing training programs in advance of implementing a new software platform
• Commit to maintaining training programs on Windows technology
• Make a public announcement of any requirements on vendors for compliance with OpenSource OpenDocuments

I completely agree with many of these recommendations - especially the first one. Without a good understanding of what assistive technologies are being used in the Executive Branch of Massachusetts, and more specifically how they are being used to create and review office documents, it isn't possible to commit to a specific date for when an alternative office application will offer the same accessibility, productivity, usability, and efficiency to people with disabilities as what they are using now. This is one of our first tasks, and I am glad to see that both the Disability Policy Consortium and the Bay State Council of the Blind feel strongly about that as well.

Another key task that came up at the start in discussion around the Massachusetts ODF decision is the development of training materials and a training program for the transition. As with any new product or process put into place in any organization, training is an important part of making it successful. Training is especially critical for many people with disabilities - most especially those with complex assistive technologies like screen readers and voice recognition tools. This would be case in Massachusetts with any new software application deployment - and even with an upgrade to their existing office software (such as a change to Microsoft Office 12 with its radically new user interface). You want the training materials ready, and training programs in place well in advance of switching people to the new program/process. And it should go without saying that training materials for people with disabilities are best developed by the experts in using assistive technologies.

I agree with the joint statement that Microsoft Windows will continue to be the dominant desktop for quite some time - just as DOS remained the dominant desktop for nearly a decade after Microsoft Windows 1.0 was introduced in 1985. So of course I would expect that users in the Executive Branch of the Massachusetts government will overwhelmingly remain on Windows - including users with disabilities. For reading/writing ODF files, I would again expect them to use something like the commercial StarOffice suite, or the commercial IBM Workplace suite, or the commercial WordPerfect application, (or the open source OpenOffice.org suite) - all running on the on Microsoft Windows desktop. It is telling that the Disability Policy Consortium and the Bay State Council of the Blind feel a major threat towards Windows, especially where none is intended.

But then, perhaps that is because of a continuing co-mingling of the two distinct concepts of Open Standard and Open Source. These ideas are fairly frequently confused with one another - especially to folks who are new to either or both ideas. A longer exposition of these ideas can be found in a presentation I gave titled "Accessibility, Standards & Open Document Format" (available here in both Open Document Format and also HTML format).

The basic distinction is this:

1. A standard can be a "de-facto" standard that we've all come to agree to over time (e.g. the width of a road), a "decreed" standard imposed upon us (like the Imperial measure system of inches and gallons) or an "open standard" that was arrived by an open and commonly concensus process by experts in the field. In all of these cases however, it is something that a broad group of folks can use and share, and build things on top of. Examples include systems of measure which we all use, systems of roads upon which an entire transportation system has been built, and the Internet and World Wed Web (which is actually made up of a large number of standards). Of these three flavors of standard, a truly open standard provides the greatest benefit to the largest community because experts and interested parties can join the effort and improve the standard (as accessibility has done in joining the standards underpinning the World Wide Web). Wikipedia has a useful definition of open standard.

2. Open source software is a system of software development where the source code for the software is published, and available for use by others. There are a variety of open source software licenses (and debate about whether a license meets specific tests of openness and use by others). One of the key benefits of just about all of these licenses is that open source development means that experts and interested parties can join the effort and make changes to the software (either for everyone, or just for their own use) in order to make it meet their needs. One popular example of open source software is the Firefox web browser. Because the source code is open, it has been ported to a number of different platforms by interested parties and experts (running more places than Internet Explorer, for example). Likewise interested parties have translated the user interface into a plethora of languages (and so more people can use it in their native tongue than Internet Explorer, for example). And of particular interest to this discussion, accessibility experts from places like Netscape and IBM and my own company Sun have contributed accessibility improvements to Firefox (see the Firefox/Mozilla accessibility project page) - and now Firefox supports a number of critical things for accessibility that aren't in Internet Explorer (and these work with leading Assistive Technologies on Windows like WindowEyes and JAWS). See Wikipedia has an good definition of open source.

The Joint Statement, both in its title and in the first sentence, which says:

sees this as a move to open source as well as to the Open Document Format standard. In fact, they address this issues explicitly further down in the document:

From everything I've read, and from my discussions with the staff in the Executive Branch of Massachusetts government and former CIO Peter Quinn, I understand this move to Open Document Format is explicitly a move to an open standard, and NOT a move to open source software, let alone an open source desktop. A move to an open standard like ODF is a move that allows choice in software and potentially in desktop, but in no way does it require such a move. Just like requiring a web page meet the W3C Web Accessibility Initiative guideliness in no way requires that it be read in the Lynx text-only web browser running on a GNU/Linux desktop (an open source, text-only browser on an open source desktop). Most folks will continue to read those web pages in English with an English user interface in a proprietary web browser running on a proprietary desktop. And that is just fine. But it also means that people can browse those same web pages using a web brwoser with a user interface in their native tongue (which may be too obscure for Microsoft to ship), on their choice of desktop (which Microsoft may not care to support). An open standard allows choice. Choice like that which Scott Seder argued for in recent article.

I'm also scratching my head at the suggestion that the move to ODF "exhibits a symbiotic relationship with OpenSource vendors". This feels like an echo of false and ugly accusations that Peter Quinn went on lavish junkets funded by open source vendors in order to entice him to choose ODF. This mischaracterization weakens an otherwise thoughtful and well reasoned set of concrete recommendations for moving forward.

This "open source vendor" (which is to say, a vendor of commercial software products, most of which are available under open source licenses) has been working on accessibility for over 15 years now. Another "open source vendor", IBM, has made numerous major accessibility contributions over multiple decades. Our work in "open source accessibility" didn't start with Massachusetts, isn't driven by Massachusetts, and will continue whatever the outcome in Massachusetts. To the extent that Massachusetts is interested in StarOffice for reading/writing ODF files (in Windows or on a UNIX platform), they are a potential customer of ours whose needs we seek to serve. To the extent that people with disabilities in Massachusetts are interested in our UNIX platform Solaris, they too are potential customers of ours whose needs with seek to serve. As I have noted elsewhere, I believe that for some disability needs our StarOffice offering is already a good and competitive choice on Windows and on UNIX systems, while for other disability needs it isn't there yet and we stive to address those shortcomings.

All of us in the Sun Accessibility team look forward to continuing to work with the Bay State Council of the Blind and the Disability Policy Consortium, as well as the Mass Office on Disability, the Mass Commission for the Blind, the Mass Commission for the Deaf and Hard of Hearing, the Mass Rehabilitation Commission, the Information Technology Division and the Executive Branch of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts - help ensure that people with disabilities have a accessible, productive, and efficient options for reading and writing Open Document Format files. (2006-01-12 14:22:14.0) Permalink