Wednesday November 29, 2006 
The collected occasional commentary by Peter Korn, Accessibility Architect at Sun Microsystems, Inc.
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Peter Korn's Weblog The collected occasional commentary by Peter Korn, Accessibility Architect at Sun Microsystems, Inc. |
Wednesday November 29, 2006 Another ODF option coming: Corel WordPerfect OfficeCorel Corporation has announced today their upcoming support for ODF and OOXML. This means that sometime in mid 2007, there will be another, major office suite which customers can use to read and write OpenDocument format files. Since many assistive technologies already support Corel WordPerfect on Windows, this means that many users of assistive technologies will have another option for using ODF (beyond using one of several technologies that import/export ODF into MS-Office; or using whatever level of support for existing ODF apps like StarOffice/OpenOffice.org that their assistive technology already provides). Some assistive technologies - most notably the JAWS for Windows screen reader - provide a greater set of reading & editing features and functionality when used with MS-Office vs. with Corel WordPerfect. So Corel's upcoming release doesn't address all of the accessibility desires for ODF. It is, however, another significant step forward. And this step is completely in keeping with a growing trend: the increased adoption by customers, governments, institutions of ODF (as also reflected in the growing membership of the ODF Alliance) is resulting in increased support in applications. And likewise, increased support by assistive technologies for people with disabilities. (2006-11-29 23:00:34.0) Permalink Accessible U.S. CurrencyAs a fairly frequent traveler, I've had the opportunity to use a lot of different currency. Much of this currency has been thoughtfully designed to be accessible to people with a wide range of disabilities - and most especially to people with visual disabilities. Not so American currency. In fact, a 1995 National Academy of Sciences report titled "Currency Features for Visually Impaired People" noted:
An important aspect of a person's full participation in today's society is being able to conveniently and confidentially exchange currency in everyday
transactions, as when using public transportation or making purchases. U.S. citizens with low vision experience a uniquely difficult task in that U.S. banknotes are remarkably uniform in size, color, and general design. The banknotes provide no basis for denominating by blind persons.
In contrast to the American situation, it should be noted that there are many things you can do to make currency accessible, and many currencies (like the Euro, the Yen, the Australian dollar) incorporate such features. Yesterday U.S. District Judge James Robertson issues his ruling in American Council of the Blind v. Paulson, Secretary of the Treasury, holding that "the Treasury Department's failure to design and issue paper currency that is readily distinguishable to blind and visually impaired individuals violates §504 of the Rehabilitation Act." See the CNN Money article about this, as well as the ACB press release. The ruling is subject to appeal. But... perhaps with the next redesign of our currency, the U.S. will catch up with most of the rest of the world in currency accessibility. (2006-11-29 22:34:36.0) Permalink
Tuesday November 14, 2006 Strč prst skrz krkIf it is Tuesday, I must be in Prague (Praha)... Today was World Usability Day 2006, and as they did last year, the Sun Prague user interface design team helped host the Prague edition of World Usability Day - with a full agenda of speakers (text in Czech). I was a last minute supplement to my boss Harry Burks' keynote talk. He and I co-delivered our presentation (I got to do all the fun demos). Being as I had a sore throat from all of my travels (first DC for the second TEITAC meeting, then a brief 25 hours in Denmark, and now Prague), I rather felt as if I had stuck my finger through my throat, and so began my remarks accordingly... Prague is a beautiful old city, and I would be remiss if I didn't share some of my photos. The Charles Bridge (Karlův most) over the Vltava River is spectacular at night. Above it is the St. Vitus Cathedral (Katedrála svatého Víta) and Prague Castle (Pražský hrad). Alfons Mucha's work is visible everywhere in Prague, but perhaps nowhere more strikingly than in a stained glass window in St. Vitus Cathedral. No photo collection of Prague would be complete without the astronomical clock of Old Town Hall (Staroměstská radnice). And finally, I wanted to share with you one of the incredibly detailed marionette figures (available for sale to tourists and folk art aficionados). (2006-11-14 15:21:40.0) Permalink
Saturday November 04, 2006 Happy (belated) birthday: GNOME accessibility turns 6 years oldA couple of weeks ago, on October 19th, the GNOME Accessibility project had another birthday. Bad form of me to miss it, but when you are about to turn 39 for the second time, others' birthdays can get away from you... Before summarizing the recent growth and gains, I thought it'd be interesting to look back on some previous anniversaries. Here is what things looked like at five years old and what they looked like at four years old. Four years after the "birth" of GNOME - and graphical UNIX - accessibility in a public meeting in Minneapolis announcing an open source effort to build accessibility into the UNIX desktop, we had one multiple awards and were shipping early versions of three assistive technologies in GNOME 2.8. We had also just begun a standardization effort around UNIX accessibility in the Free Standards Group. One year later, at the 5 year anniversary, Sun was shipping the Solaris 10 desktop with two of the aforementioned assistive technologies (and already had 2 million licensed users of that OS), Ubuntu 5.10 was shipping with early accessibility support, and we had significant adoption by the Spanish National Organization of the Blind in Andalusia and Extremadura. Over this past year, the momentum has continued:
In addition to all of these significant achievements, we've had a number of key meetings moving the cause of graphical UNIX accessibility forward:
Finally, in this the sixth year of GNOME/graphical UNIX accessibility, we've seen a new battleground and opportunity in the fight over OpenDocument Format. This fight with Microsoft (who would prefer that folks not use ODF) is interesting for the cause of UNIX accessibility because it addresses one of the key reasons for folks to stay on Windows - the ability to read and write the same word processing and spreadsheet files, and presentations as their employer and their government. While we've largely moved to Web standards, and use standard e-mail protocols and standard calendar protocols (as long as or organization hasn't chosen the Microsoft Exchange Server with its proprietary protocols), we are only starting to move to a standard office document file format. These standards are important, because when our companies and governments and organizations adopt them, they give us the freedom to choose whatever application we want to use, on whatever platform or operating system (and with whatever assistive technology) that we want. We aren't tied to an operating system that may not support our language, or find ourselves out of luck if our screen reader won't speak in our language, or find ourselves to be like one of the 70% of Americans with Disabilities who don't have the income to afford commercial assistive technology products. While Massachusetts has led the way in ODF adoption, we are also seeing this in Denmark, and in Belgium, and in Malaysia, and a number of other U.S. States and European governments and governments worldwide. Every one of these government ODF adoptions becomes a place where citizens with disabilities don't have to spend hundreds or thousands of dollars for access software that may not even be in their own language in order to read and exchange government documents. They become places where, with open source UNIX accessibility, we can accelerate our closing the digital divide for people with disabilities. (2006-11-04 21:34:34.0) Permalink |
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