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

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Wednesday February 14, 2007

What folks are saying about OpenDocument v1.1

As I noted recently, OpenDocument v1.1 is now an OASIS standard. Yesterday evening the press release went out. I'd like to quote a bit from it.

Curtis Chong, president of the National Federation of the Blind in Computer Science said (my emphasis):

We are thrilled with the progress to date... OpenDocument is no longer a thing to be feared, as we once thought. The OASIS process exemplifies what should be done if true accessibility to both a document format and the tools to manipulate it are to be achieved.

Dave Pawson of the Royal National Institute of the Blind said:

OpenDocument 1.1 is a practical XML format that is readily transformable to the DAISY digital talking book standard for people with print impairments. The clear specification of OpenDocument v1.1 will remain usable long after commercial and proprietary formats have been condemned to the dustbin.

Technology News Daily said in their article:

OASIS members have approved version 1.1 of the Open Document Format for Office Applications (OpenDocument) as an OASIS Standard, a status that signifies the highest level of ratification. The result of a unique collaboration between advocacy groups for the disabled and open source and commercial software vendors, this new version of the standard provides key accessibility enhancements to ensure that the OpenDocument format (ODF) addresses the needs of people with disabilities.

And in related news, last week while I was in Washington DC for the Telecommunications and Electronic and Information Technology Advisory Committee meeting number 3, Sun put out a press release announcing our OpenDocument Format Plug-in for Microsoft Office. It's formal name at the moment is "StarOffice 8 Conversion Technology Preview" - technology built using the OpenOffice.org codebase for reading/writing Microsoft Office and ODF files, turned into a plug-in for MS-Office to place ODF open/save functionality into MS-Office. The technology preview will be available for free download later in February, with the final version slated for April.

Sun CEO and president Jonathan Schwartz describes the plugin (complete with a picture) in his blog earlier this week. He writes:

Whether you're an oil company or a high school student - ODF will enable seamless interoperability between open source and closed source environments - for as long as the standard, not the technology or product, exists. From a corporate perspective, this also allows a very natural migration to occur across large institutions - front office staff might stay on Microsoft Word, but the rest of the organization can move to an interoperable alternative (say, Google's word processor or OpenOffice - or both). Affordability and interoperability are a good thing for the internet - and for the successive generations we expect to use it.

And while I'm on a quoting binge, let me quote Sun executive vice president, software, Rich Green (from the Sun press release):

Organizations can now consider switching to ISO/IEC 26300 OpenDocument Format while protecting employees needing assistive devices only supported by legacy Microsoft software. ODF is important because it ensures documents will still be readable long into the future while allowing a wide choice of proprietary and open source software choices to work with the documents.

After all those excellent quotes, I can't think of a thing more to add myself! (2007-02-14 17:36:26.0) Permalink

Thursday February 01, 2007

OpenDocument v1.1 is now an OASIS standard

The OASIS ballot for OpenDocument v1.1 has closed, and without a single dissenting vote, OpenDocument v1.1 has been approved as an OASIS Standard. This is another affirmation of the increasing participation of the disability community in developing technology standards - and in the welcome that participation is receiving by at least this technology standards body. Proof of this is the fact that OpenDocument v1.1 is primarily the work of the disability community and experts in disability technology - with key additions coming from the Royal National Institute for the Blind, and the Institute for Community Inclusion, in addition to those from disability technology experts at committee members large and small.

Standards involvement is another facet of what what Joanmarie Diggs notes in her blog entry Accessibility in the "Participation Age" - the increasing active participation of the disability community in setting the directions and standards of the technology that affects their lives as much as everyone else's; and in their direct involvement in developing that technology.

In a recent blog entry, Joanmarie talks about "having spent a decade on the outside, unable to look in — forced to be a consumer rather than a contributor" to access technology. In that same entry, she goes on to say "I cannot tell you how many times I’ve come across an accessibility regression in the Windows environment and have been powerless to do anything about it." But in her work over the last six months on open source accessibility tools providing access to among other things OpenDocument format via OpenOffice.org, Joanmarie says "the fact that I, a mere mortal user, have access to that code and can track such things down and can communicate directly with the engineers pleases me to no end. Open source solutions enable you to shape and refine the tools you need yourself. It may at times be hard work, but it is incredibly empowering work."

Thanks to the contributions of Joanmarie of the Carroll Center for the Blind, and those of Dave Pawson of the Royal National Institute for the Blind, and David Clark of the Institute for Community Inclusion, and Janina Sajka of the Free Standards Group Accessibility working group, and the many other people from the disability community taking part in the open source Orca screen reader effort and the larger UNIX accessibility work, people with disabilities are no longer "forced to be consumers instead of contributors". (2007-02-01 13:21:54.0) Permalink