All About Access

I don’t know about you, but I tend to ignore press releases and similar such creatures: Credibility issues aside, the substance-to-fluff ratio is just too low. Every once in a while, however, you do come across one of substance — often it’s unintended substance (remember FS’ HumanWare Trade-In announcement two weeks after they acquired Jonathan Mosen?), but it’s substance nonetheless.

Today’s semi-substantive PR offering comes from GW Micro, which begins:

A milestone has been set in the assistive technology industry. Today, Ai Squared, developer of ZoomText screen magnification software and GW Micro, developer of Window-Eyes screen reading software announced that both applications could be installed and run together at the same time on the new Windows Vista operating system, providing never-before-seen access to a new operating system for blind and visually impaired consumers.

For those outside of the assistive technology field, many would ask, “Why is this such a great accomplishment?” For years, there have been difficulties trying to make new Windows operating systems accessible to visually impaired consumers due to problems and compatibility issues. However today, for the first time ever, two assistive technology companies collaborated to make sure that these types of problems are a thing of the past for blind and visually impaired consumers.

I’ll grant you that this is a milestone. That said, for those inside the assistive technology field, many would ask, “What took you so long?” Why did it take well over a decade for two companies who are not even in direct competition with one another to reach the conclusion the community would best be served by collaborating?

Perhaps I’m being cynical, but I suspect that the motivation was not the end user who needs to be able to use both a screen reader and a screen magnifier. Nor do I think that this move was inspired by the Assistive Technology specialists who over the years have had to become registry hackers extraordinaire in order to get multiple access products merely to co-exist (let alone run) on a single machine. No, as has oft been said, the first law of nature is self preservation, and it’s probably only a matter of time before we see a Window-Eyes/ZoomText trade-in program….

If the end users were truly at the center of the commercial AT universe, these companies — and their competition — would implement support for mainstream open source products because free solutions are of tremendous benefit to the user. They would work together to further reduce the problems associated with access via display driver interception — or, better still, work with Microsoft to eliminate the need for this sort of hacking chaining — because that, too, would greatly benefit the user.

As an aside, you’ve not lived until you have had a teacher or a parent call you up literally in tears because they installed JAWS/MAGic/ZoomText/Window-Eyes, and now their only computer — which they desperately need — no longer works. At all. But in the spirit of accentuating the positive, after it happens a few dozen times, you can walk folks reassuringly through the fixes in your sleep. One of the myriad joys of Linux/UNIX is that no one ever says “DCM” to (or shouts it at) you. But I digress. Where was I? Ah, yes, the press release:

GW Micro recently made history by distributing a version of Window-Eyes available to all blind consumers that would work under Windows Vista on the same day that Vista shipped to the general public. “This is the first time ever in the history of computers that a full-fledged screen reader is available to work on a new Windows operating system on the same day that it ships,” said Doug Geoffray, Vice President of Product Development for GW Micro. “A blind or visually impaired consumer could go down to their local electronics store, buy a computer, and have access to it on the same day Vista came out, just like their sighted counterparts. This is absolutely ground-breaking!”

And the fact that it is indeed absolutely ground-breaking after all these years is absolutely sad, but kudos to GW Micro all the same.

I suppose it would be superfluous to suggest how absolutely ground-breaking it would be for a blind or visually impaired consumer to be able to use the free OpenOffice.org suite just like their sighted counterparts do.

Ai Squared and GW Micro both agree that their cooperative efforts will improve the lives of millions of blind and visually impaired people around the globe.

If you take those millions and eliminate

1. the folks who cannot afford to spend $895 for Window-Eyes and/or $395-$595 for ZoomText on top of the cost of Windows, and Microsoft Office, and the computer
2. the folks who speak one of the many languages around the globe that are not supported by Window-Eyes and ZoomText

how many are left?

Is it any wonder that there are so many presentations on ODF and Open Source Solutions at CSUN?

In the spirit of openness, Rich Burridge (with my full support) has decided to move a conversation he and I were having into the open.

The conversation had started out innocently enough around the redesign of an Orca feature, but it eventually led to a bit of a rant on my part. What was I ranting about (this time) you ask? Lack of user participation.

You see, once in a blue moon you come across something that seems too good to be true, but actually isn’t: There really are free operating systems (Linux and Open Solaris), there really is a free office suite (OpenOffice.org), and there really is a free screen reader (Orca) which shows the potential of rivaling its $1000 commercial equivalents.

But it doesn’t end there; on the contrary: At the risk of repeating myself, the Orca team is actively soliciting user input and basing their design upon the feedback they receive. There have been times (I’m starting to lose track of how many) where I’ve filled an RFE suggesting that “such-and-such feature would be helpful for the end user” and the response has been “okay” — often it’s not “okay, thanks for the suggestion, we’ll take it under advisement”, but “okay, we’ve implemented it, please give it a try and see if it meets your needs.” If it can be easily and reasonably done, Will, Rich, and Mike do it; if it cannot, they start looking for what it will take to pull it off the needed functionality. In other words, there is a free operating system, a free office suite, and a free screen reader whose design we can contribute to so that it best suits our needs. All we have to do is participate.

Yet people are not participating. That is what I was ranting to Rich about.

Of course, I am exaggerating a bit (as friends, colleagues, and regular readers of All About Access know all too well that I am wont to do) — but only a bit. Some people are participating. Some people are sharing their needs and wants with the Orca team. Most, however, are not. Why is that?

Rich had some thoughts on that matter:

Why this is all strange to the blind users who are now trying out Orca is that they are so used to paying a large sum of money to a commercial organization and dealing with the way that support is handled in such a company, that they don’t realize that alternatives exist.

Used to “dealing with the way that support is handled in such a (commercial) company”: check. “Don’t realize that alternatives exist”: check. “Used to paying a large sum of money”: I don’t think so. The average blind user doesn’t pay a large sum of money for their screen reader. The average blind user is provided with their screen reader through their local school district, vocational rehabilitation agency, employer, charitable organization, etc. It’s like medical care: Some of us pay large sums of money because we do not have health insurance; some of us pay large sums of money because we need a screen reader but for one reason or another can not obtain funding. But in both cases, that is not the majority of the respective populations. Far from it. Most of us are provided with what we need — or we do without.

So why am I nitpicking on this one point when Rich’s observations are, on the whole, spot on? Because I think the medical model of rehabilitation services is largely to blame for the limited participation of persons with disabilities in open source communities.

If everyone really were used to paying large sums of money for their screen reader, I think they’d be beating down the proverbial door to check out, and contribute to the development of, Orca. And that would be good for everyone who cares about affordable assistive technology for computer users who are blind. Does that mean I think we should immediately dump the model we currently use for providing assistive technology services? No, not any more than I think we should immediately dump the model we currently use for providing health care services. In either case, such a drastic measure would put far too many folks in a position more unsatisfactory than the status quo.

So what then do we do? To be honest, I’m not sure.

All I can think of doing is what I’m already doing, namely making people aware of the free, open source alternatives to the commercial products they currently use — or would use if they could afford to do so — and encouraging them to participate.

I also hope that as more and more members of the Independent Living community become aware of free, open source solutions for computer users with disabilities, we’ll see a significant increase in participation. After all, the FOSS movement has a lot in common with the IL movement.

I’m certainly open to other suggestions.

This past Friday, I had the great pleasure of attending the first of what will hopefully be a regularly-occurring event: The Orca users group in Boston. Thanks so much to Joe Lazzaro of ITD for hosting it! And thanks to Will Walker of Sun Microsystems for presenting not just Orca, but also the “big picture” of Linux/UNIX. I think we all came away with a FAR better understanding than we arrived with.

The turnout was great: 22 individuals, 17 of whom are blind or visually impaired; the constructive feedback even better! At the end of the day, we had compiled a list of “request for enhancements” which, as promised, I entered in Bugzilla that evening.

The subsequent response from the Orca team to the RFEs amazed me. I suppose by now it shouldn’t have. In the past couple of months, I’ve come to realize that the Orca team members truly care about creating compelling access to Linux/UNIX for users who are blind, and that they put in the long hours and effort required to ensure they accomplish no less. Still…. It was, after all, Friday night. So I don’t think it’s unreasonable for me to have been at least a little bit surprised to discover Rich examining each RFE I entered more or less in real time, in many cases responding that it would be easy to implement and describing how he would go about doing so. For a guy who claims to like science fiction, Rich has clearly learned nothing from Scotty on Star Trek. By Saturday morning, Rich was beginning to implement the solutions to the straightforward RFEs and soliciting feedback from users and the team on the rest. Will joined in the discussion, and work on the Boston RFEs continued throughout Saturday. Sunday was no different. Like I said, these guys take their work — and user feedback — VERY seriously.

If you’re wondering how I know that the Orca team doesn’t take weekends off, it’s thanks in large part to Bugzilla. Any time someone comments on an item you have entered, you are notified via email. I also periodically browse the RFEs and bugs that others have entered, adding myself to the CC list of the ones I care about so that I can follow their progress as well. Bugzilla even has RSS support. Unlike commercial software development, what goes on in the open source community is incredibly transparent: If you want to know how things are progressing, all you have to do is look. If you want to influence that progress, participate. Bugzilla is a great resource: Again, it’s users and developers partying together!

And then there is Rich’s blog. Rich blogs about all sorts of interesting things — one of which is Orca. That’s how I found out that this weekend he also added support for a pronunciation dictionary. Very cool! (And yes, Rich, I should admittedly read the changelogs more often than I do. Please keep blogging about Orca! )

Finally, there is the Orca web site (http://live.gnome.org/Orca) and the mailing list (see http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/orca-list for more information). If you’re interested in Orca — and I do hope that you are! — I encourage you to check out both so that you can learn more about, and contribute to the development of, what is becoming a really great screen reader.

Ok, so perhaps that’s not as quite as catchy as “Beware the Ides of March.” I nonetheless have a sinking feeling that some of us won’t be fairing much better than ol’ Julius in the weeks to come.

What’s going to happen on the first, you ask? IE 7 is going to come out via Automatic Updates.

So why is that a problem? It’s not, as long as you are running the latest version of your screen access software. And that is the kicker: Given the high cost of assistive technology — screen readers in particular — there are tons of users who aren’t. They cannot afford to. How many of these users are going to go ahead and install IE7 when prompted to do so, only to discover that web browsing no longer seems to work correctly? While I hope I am mistaken, I suspect quite a few. (First ribbons, and now this. I do wish Microsoft would stop doing us favors…. )

Rehabilitation Engineer Geoff Howard posted the following on the NHBlind-Talk list. I’ve decided to borrow it since the information is valuable. Besides, I have to conserve my energy for all of the inevitable questions and support requests that will result from Microsoft’s decision.

• If your computer is set to automatically download and install critical updates, you could turn on your computer some morning and find that you’ve been updated. The current versions of most assistive technology products are not fully compatible with Internet Explorer 7.
• My first recommendation is to set the automatic updates feature to “Notify me but don’t automatically download or install”. This can be found in the Control Panel, under Automatic Updates. You’ll be able to view a list of available updates as they are released, just make sure not to choose the Internet Explorer 7 update yet.
• Internet Explorer 7 turns on “Clear Type” by default, which may cause some video corruption for large print users. This can be turned off in the Internet Options, Advanced Tab.
• ZoomText users: Ai Squared working on ZoomText version 9.04. This will be a free update to users of the version 9 product. Version 9.04 will be compatible with Internet Explorer 7. The release is expected in November. You can check for the update in ZoomText by going to “Check for Program Updates” in the ZoomText programs help menu.
• JAWS Users: JAWS 7.0 and earlier do not support Internet Explorer 7. JAWS 7.10 is recommended for testing, but JAWS will not be fully optimized for Internet Explorer 7 until the release of JAWS 8.0.
• MAGic Users: Version 9.50 and later can be tested with Internet Explorer 7.
• Window-Eyes: GW Micro has some registry tweaks for some items that they have found in IE 7. Information can be found in the knowledge base section of their web site. They detail support for IE 7 in the information section for beta 6, which can be found at http://www.gwmicro.com/News_&_Events/Latest_News/?newsNo=45

I just found out about the OATS project.

OATSoft is dedicated to improving Assistive Technology and computer accessibility through the power of Open Source development techniques. OATSoft makes the best Open Source Assistive Technology Software or OATS easy to find and install. Users and developers are meeting at OATSoft to create better OATS.

It is wonderful to see yet another instance of the assistive technology and open source communities coming together. Through such collaborative efforts, universal design stops being a mere ideal and starts becoming a reality. I definitely want to get involved with the OATS project!

I learned about OATS via Henrik Omma, dubbed Ubuntu’s “Mr. Accessibility,” who blogged about yesterday’s project launch in London. He gives a good overview of where things seem to be and links to some comments and advice he gave the project: all quite good and worth reading. But there’s one thing Henrik said that especially struck me:

As an Open Source enthusiast I’m happy that this project has chosen open source as the vehicle by which to achieve (”better computer access”). But at the same time I acknowledge the fact that for most disabled computer users (and other computer users) the open-sourceness of their tools is not the key factor. I think we should keep in mind that the quality of the result is more important than the license used for those who end up using it.

I agree 100% that the quality of the result is most important and that the license, in and of itself, is irrelevant in the minds of most users. However, while the open-sourceness of the tools is not the key factor today, I do think that will change.

Open source solutions facilitate a move away from the medical model of assistive technology service provision — a model which for so very many reasons is unsatisfactory. Thanks to open source solutions, the user can finally cease being a passive recipient of AT, instead taking on the far more empowering roles of true consumer and active participant. As more and more users with disabilities see all that open source has to offer — far more than mere products! — the open-sourceness of the tools will indeed be a key factor if not the key factor.

The license still won’t matter though.

Technorati Tags: open source, OATS, FOSS, FLOSS, assistive technology

This morning I received an email from Joe Lazzaro, Manager of the Assistive Technology Group at ITD in response to my earlier post. With Joe’s permission, I am posting his reply:

I read your blog entry regarding Orca with great interest. As you know, we’re setting up an assistive technology testing lab here at the Commonwealth’s Information Technology Division. Moreover, we’ve established an Assistive Technology Group, and I’m honored to be its first project manager. The Assistive Technology Group is under the umbrella of the Enterprise Applications Bureau, which is responsible for developing software applications and deploying information technology for most of the Commonwealth state agencies, so we’re in a good place to make positive change with the development of information technology to make sure it’s accessible. The Group is responsible for testing all ITD applications for accessibility, including web sites, web applications, software applications, and even documents. We’re inserting language into procurements to inform vendors bidding on state IT contracts that accessibility is a major component that must be met. We will also be looking at legacy applications to determine how to repair accessibility issues.

The Assistive Technology Group is currently reaching out to stakeholders in the disability community for feedback while we do the lab build out, and form the new group within ITD. I would like to offer ITD as a place for the Orca users group to meet, discuss new ideas, and expand the technology. We could also work with the emerging open source software packages and their integration with Orca, and it would be a good learning experience for us all.

ITD is at One Ashburton Place in downtown Boston, and is close to the Park Street MBTA Station, which would make it easy for people to get to our facility.

As a blind person, I’m interested in a very personal way about Orca and Open Office, as it’s free software that has the potential to help literally tens of thousands of persons with vision and other disabilities. I don’t have to tell you how expensive most assistive technology is, and open source software has great potential to significantly close the digital divide for persons with disabilities on fixed incomes. With a free screen reader, free office suite, free web browser, persons with disabilities can live, work, and learn more independently, and without breaking the bank.

We are also interested in hosting other user groups focusing on assistive technologies from both commercial and open source providers.

If folks want to contact me directly, my voice phone is 617-626-4410, and my email is Joe [dot ]Lazzaro [at] state [dot] ma [dot] us. The ITD web site is www.mass.gov/ITD.

This is great: Now we have a meeting place. Thanks Joe!!

Over the past few weeks, I’ve been migrating my PCs over to Ubuntu and learning how to use Orca, an open source screen reader for Linux being developed by Sun Microsystems. For a product that’s only at version 0.2.6, Orca is quite impressive. And you sure can’t beat the price: Your operating system, office suite, and screen reader come to a grand total of — oh wait, they’re free. But that’s old news. What’s new — at least for me — is the approach to development adopted by the open source community in general, and the Orca team specifically.

As someone who has spent the last ten years working with assistive technology in the Windows environment, I’ve grown accustomed to approaching access to software as an uphill climb:

• Trying to convince the mainstream companies to design their software in such a way that lends itself to access through the keyboard and by screen readers — and often being ignored.
• Trying to convince the assistive technology manufacturers to do the necessary customizations within their product. Alas I don’t usually get very far here either, lack of demand and/or inherent inaccessibility always being cited.
• Trying to customize the assistive technology myself to provide a basic level of support so that the mainstream technology is not completely unusable. Some days are better than others in this regard.

If you use and/or teach assistive technology for Windows, then you undoubtedly know exactly what I’m talking about. It’s no fun — sometimes it’s downright maddening. And we pay thousands of dollars for the privilege…. But what can you do???

You can go open source and give Orca a try. In the open source world, it’s not a three-way fight among users, AT manufacturers, and the mainstream software companies. It’s a collaboration. Or, as Dave Winer would put it, it’s users and developers partying together.

It’s a bit strange at first: not just being listened to, but being truly heard, and knowing that your participation is valued; seeing the AT and mainstream developers work together to find solutions — and to find them quickly as a result of their collaboration. Now I know how Dorothy felt when she looked around and concluded that she and her four-legged friend were no longer in Kansas…. But unlike Dorothy, I don’t want to go back home. If I want an uphill climb, I’ll go for a hike.

Of course, transitioning from the known to the unknown can be rather daunting. Therefore, what I think we need is a local Orca users group: A place to come together, share tips and tricks, and support one another as we learn. Let’s help each other get up to speed on technology that has the potential to fundamentally change computer access as we know it. Are you interested? If so, do please get in touch! joanmarie [dot] diggs [at] carroll [dot] org.