Peter Korn's Weblog

Starting not long after the Information Technology Division (ITD) of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts issued their Enterprise Technical Model version 3.5 that specified that starting January 1, 2007 all internal office documents within the Executive Branch of government would be in the open file format ODF (or in PDF), ITD realized that this would impact people with disabilities, and their needs must be taken into account in such a policy change. To that end they held a series of meetings with members of the disability community in Massachusetts (one of which I got to attend in person), and they promised two key things: (1) that the needs of people with disabilities were higher priority than this move - the move would be delayed as needed in order to ensure that any change met their needs at least as well as their existing solutions; and (2) that ITD wanted to keep the pressure on the companies making Open Document Format applications and accessibility solutions, and would do a mid-year assessment of the progress being made before deciding whether or not the date of implementation needed to slip.

This morning ITD issued their Mid-Year Statement Regarding ODF Implementation. This statement highlights the primacy of accessibility support for people with disabilities, and also states their belief that with ODF plug-in technology they will be able to both meet the needs of people with disabilities, and their January 1, 2007 planned move to ODF.

The law and simple justice require that people with disabilities have equal access to public sector information technology. By putting accessibility first among the priorities for ODF implementation, we are signaling a deeper commitment to accessibility for all future information technology projects undertaken by ITD and Executive Department agencies.

And these paragraphs summarize the results of their accessibility investigations:

Earlier this year, alternative ODF-supporting office suites were being considered by ITD. The accessibility of these applications, and their ability to work with assistive technology, has improved steadily. Over time these suites will improve the options available to people with disabilities. However, it is our judgment that they are unlikely to be fully supported by assistive technology vendors, or alternatively to include fully functional adaptations in the packaged product, by January 1, 2007, the original target date for ODF implementation.

But promising new projects are underway this year to create translator software that will enable the Microsoft Office suite to translate documents from Microsoft formats to ODF and vice versa. Upon public release and validation, these tools will enable Executive Department agencies to begin implementing ODF while leveraging the installed base of Microsoft Office and available assistive technologies. We anticipate one or more of these projects to allow ODF adoption to commence before January 1, 2007.

Specifically, we plan to implement ODF, using translator technology plugged in to Microsoft Office, in a group of early adopter agencies, including the Massachusetts Office on Disability, by January 1, 2007. Thereafter, we plan to migrate all Executive Department agencies to compliance with the standard, in phases, by June of 2007.

With this mid-year review, everything is on target for Massachusetts to go forward with their planned deployment of Open Document Format on January 1, 2007, while ensuring that the needs of people with disabilities are fully addressed. So long as one or more of the promising ODF plug-in options are delivered as expected, users of existing screen readers, magnifiers, voice recognition systems, and other assistive technologies on their existing Windows platform will be able to use ODF from within Microsoft Office, on January 1, 2007. (2006-08-24 12:18:16.0) Permalink


	Peter Korn's Weblog The collected occasional commentary by Peter Korn, Accessibility Architect at Sun Microsystems, Inc.

Massachusetts ODF mid-year Accessibility Statement