All About Access

The other day I blogged about Microsoft’s announcement that they would be supporting ODF after all —an announcement in which they could not resist taking a jab at ODF. At the time, this jab struck me as defensiveness. But the more I’ve thought about it, the more I’ve come to believe that this jab is not mere defensiveness; it’s more than that: It’s fear mongering. And at the risk of sounding paranoid, it’s aimed at least in part at us.

Think about it: In their press release Microsoft argues that their formats are “distinguished by their approach to accessibility support for disabled workers” and then goes on to say that “support for accessibility options” is a “key gap” in ODF. They’re trying to get our attention. But they don’t back their claim with actual evidence; they simply declare it to be true. That doesn’t make it so, of course. Besides, who is defining “accessibility” and “more accessible,” and how are they being defined? As Peter Korn observed:

It is kinda like saying “our encryption system is more secure because we didn’t have invited security experts look at it”.

Indeed. And we’ve all seen where that has gotten us…. I suppose that’s another entry for another day (like the next Patch Tuesday).

Peter goes on to say:

To make an accessibility comparison of the two file formats, you need to undertake an independent review of ODF and the Microsoft Office file formats for accessibility, and see how they both fare.

Absolutely! Without such a review, all I can conclude from Microsoft’s currently-baseless claims is that they are hoping to fill us with renewed concern and doubt so that we’ll rally behind them and attempt to slam the brakes on the Commonwealth’s migration. Personally, I’m not buying what they have to sell, and to be honest I’m rather offended that they’re trying to sell it.

What I didn’t realize until Peter pointed it out was that such an independent review has already been conducted by Dr. Cheiko Asakawa and and Rich Schwerdtfeger of IBM. The findings?

Microsoft Office’s file format failed to provide for relative font sizes, failed to encode table headers and logical tab orders in documents, and failed to provide label association for forms. Furthermore, outside of the accessibility context, the Microsoft Office file format provides no way to encode image maps (with or without appropriate ALT tags), or 3D shapes (both of which ODF provides for). Their analysis also found accessibility issues with ODF, all of which have been addressed in the ODF 1.1 proposal submitted to the ODF Technical Committee. So as I noted in late May, with these incorporated into ODF 1.1 later this year, ODF will be the most accessible document file format, bar none.

If ODF will be the most accessible document file format, bar none, then ODF is what we should be using. Period.

Peter’s conclusion?

So, I guess in a way Microsoft was correct when they said in their press release “certain compromises and customer disclosures will be a necessary part of translating between the two formats.” At least when it applies to accessibility and ODF 1.1 later this year, exporting an ODF 1.1 file to Microsoft Office file format will mean a loss of some accessibility information, because there is simply no way to express that information in the Microsoft Office file format…

If you want to learn more about the accessibility of ODF, I highly recommend reading Peter’s entry in its entirety. In and of itself it is quite informative, and it’s filled with links to other important information which will help us get more up to speed on the issues at hand.

In a press release yesterday, Microsoft announced that they would provide support for ODF through a free plugin:

Expanding on its customer-focused commitment to interoperability, Microsoft Corp. today announced the creation of the Open XML Translator project. The project, developed with partners, will create tools to build a technical bridge between the Microsoft® Office Open XML Formats and the OpenDocument Format (ODF). This work is in response to government requests for interoperability with ODF because they work with constituent groups that use that format. In addition to being made available as free, downloadable add-ins for several older versions of the Microsoft Office system, the translation tools will be developed and licensed as open source software. The translation tools will be broadly available to the industry for use with other individual or commercial projects to accelerate document interoperability and expand customer choice between Open XML and other technologies.

I am certainly pleased to hear that Microsoft is finally acknowledging the need to support consumer choice in general, and ODF in particular. That is a major step in the right direction.

But the folks out in Redmond apparently could not resist declaring their format’s superiority over ODF:

... Open XML formats are also distinguished by their approach to accessibility support for disabled workers, file performance and flexibility to empower organizations to access and integrate their own XML data with the documents they use every day. In contrast, ODF focuses on more limited requirements, is architected very differently and is now under review in OASIS subcommittees to fill key gaps such as spreadsheet formulas, macro support and support for accessibility options. As a result, certain compromises and customer disclosures will be a necessary part of translating between the two formats.

That to me sounds like a bit of defensiveness on Microsoft’s part…. I’d be interested in hearing what the folks at OASIS have to say. Peter?

Regardless, while this plugin—like the one demonstrated by Sun last month—means that the Commonwealth can proceed with the scheduled migration to ODF, it still does not resolve the issue of product affordability for people living on fixed incomes, which unfortunately is the situation in which many individuals who are blind find themselves. If you are unemployed and faced with the added expenses of alternative transportation, accessible electronics and appliances, and assistive technology, dropping $400 on Microsoft Office is not all that feasible. We really need Freedom Scientific and GW Micro to provide support for StarOffice/OpenOffice. And for those individuals who cannot afford a computer due to the high cost of Windows and Windows screen readers, we need to get involved with Sun’s Orca project.