[Accessibility] Questions needing answers

T. V. Raman tvraman at us.ibm.com
Wed Jan 14 22:36:47 PST 2004


Additional responses--

What aspects of accessibility are better addressed by an open
Source framework?

Adaptive technologies for commercial platforms --- created and
distributed under a commercial motive--- 
only materialize *after* a large market is proven ---- or
*after* legislation makes it difficult for vendors to sell to
big customers without a minimal level of accessibility.

In either case, the end-user is not well served, we've seen this
in the case of the most widely deployed user environment on PCs.

The situation is no different from that off productivity suites
being internationalized only for the most widely  used languages.

At the end of the day, accessibility is about  users with
*special* needs -- with emphasis on the *special* ---- and the
open source model of a developer with an itch to scratch being
free to create   the *right* solution --- without being
encumbered by the usual commercial questions of "how big is the
market "  creates opportunities for innovation that often never
exist in the commercial world.

Q: Why accessibility for Linux if the majority of the user
community is already using Windows screenreaders?

A: Need for accessibility ---- and that the *right* form of
accessibility--- to the emerging plethora of devices.

-- 
Best Regards,
--raman
------------------------------------------------------------
T. V. Raman:  PhD (Cornell University)
IBM Research: Human Language Technologies
Architect:    Conversational And Multimodal WWW Standards
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