Another Option for Accessing ODF Documents
Peter Korn blogs:
Daniel Carrera at the Open Document Fellowship has developed a text-only ODF reader (which is part of their more general ODF Viewer project) that converts ODF to HTML and then invokes the Lynx web browser to read it. I just downloaded this early “alpha” edition of the code, and started playing with it. Thus far it opened my two test text files just fine (one of which was committee draft #2 of the ODF 1.1 specification – a 735 page document that worked out to some 3,416 “pages” on my Lynx 80×24 character terminal window). Unfortunately it didn’t do anything useful with a test spreadsheet I gave it.
I’ve had similar success with text files. Unfortunately it didn’t do anything useful with the presentation I gave it either. At least not yet. After all, it IS only an alpha version….
Peter adds:
At the moment this version works on UNIX systems, but as Lynx also runs on Windows and Macintosh, and the conversion is simply an XSLT transformation, there is little reason why this couldn’t be easily ported to Windows and Macintosh.
However, his entry does not mention what porting the ODF reader to Windows can mean for users who are blind. And it can mean a lot.
As we are all too aware, there are some pretty significant barriers to information access for individuals who are blind or visually impaired:
- The cost of the computer iteself
- The cost of the mainstream software (e.g. Windows and MS Office)
- The cost of the assistive technology required to access the mainstream software
- The cost and availability of quality training
As a result of these expenses, there are a lot of users out there who are running old versions of their screen reader. While JAWS and Window-Eyes have come a long way when it comes to providing solid access to MS Office, the major improvements have all been relatively recent. If you want to be able to effectively access complex documents, spreadsheets, and presentations, you really need to have a recent copy of your access software. If that is not an option—and for many users, it is not—the information in question winds up being functionally inaccessible.
There are other users who do have the latest greatest versions of everything, but have never received the training on how to use their office suite or the more advanced features of their screen reader. If you have no idea how to use Excel or PowerPoint and to do so in conjunction with your screen reader, spreadsheets and presentations wind up being inaccessible.
This all boils down to the following: There’s a heck of a lot of information out there—information which is technically accessible—that still cannot be accessed by users who are blind. Porting the ODF reader to Windows can change that.
Once the ODF reader is ported to Windows, and is further developed to support spreadsheets and presentations, suddenly all sorts of information that was previously inaccessible due to the aforementioned barriers becomes accessible: All you have to be able to do is open it in your web browser. That is going to make a big difference to a lot of people.