FYI: DAISY Navigation Theory

["mike paciello" <mpaciello@paciellogroup.com>]

This document was forwarded to me by George Kerscher, Daisy Secretary General:

 

http://www.daisy.org/publications/docs/theory_dtbook/theory_dtbook.html

 

My conversation with Harvey Bingham unfortunately proved fruitless.

 

-Mike

 

 

Mike Paciello

TPG

+1 603.882.4122 ext 103

 

---

From: Nathaniel S Borenstein [mailto:nborenst@us.ibm.com]
Sent: Tuesday, February 14, 2006 9:19 PM
To: Peter Korn
Cc: Janina Sajka; mike paciello; office-accessibility@lists.oasis-open.org; Richard Schwerdtfeger
Subject: Re: [office-accessibility] Minutes: February 10 Accessibility Subteam Meeting

Peter Korn <Peter.Korn@Sun.COM> wrote on 
02/14/2006 09:03:35 PM:

> You are a distinguished engineer at IBM. 
 You have presumably been 
> developing software for a long time. 
 How many of the ODF documents that 
> you have created, which 
include images, have those images labeled? 

Well, the only way I've ever created an ODF document is by using 
Workplace or Open Office, and I certainly don't remember being *prompted* for 
labels by either of them.   

> More 
documentation about such things at places like 
> http://www.ataccess.org/ 
is certainly a good and welcome thing.  But 
> also largely 
ineffective at reaching the masses of thoughtful, senior 
> technical 
folks like yourself, let alone the unwashed masses. 

But neither of those are who I was suggesting we try to reach here. 
 I was suggesting people who are actually writing software, unlike "senior 
technical folks like me" who haven't done so in over a decade...

> The 
minefield/body that is buried is actually a very large elephant, and 
> he 
is in the middle of our room.  That elephant is that folks don't 
> 
create accessible content - and a larger and larger fraction of the 
> 
world population is now creating content that other folks want to read 
> 
(Gutenberg's printing press was nothing compared to the web). 

Right.  Barrier one to creating accessible content 
is if such content can't be created -- that's fixing the "holes" in ODF. 
 Barrier two is if the content creation software doesn't encourage the 
creation of such content.  Barrier three is if the people who write such 
software don't know anything about these issues.  I was focusing on the 
third, but we need to worry about all three.

Most of you have probably been through these discussions a hundred 
times before, and I apologize for any naivete on my part.  My only fear is 
that the best is the enemy of the good -- if we try to solve all aspects of the 
accessibility challenge, we won't end up solving any of them.   -- 
Nathaniel