Re: [office-accessibility] NY document format study -- Request forPublic Comment

[Peter Korn <Peter.Korn@Sun.COM>]

Hi Rob,

I'm not seeing that question in the PDF.  I see a bunch of questions 
relating to accessibility (section "M", questions 39-43). 

It is a valid concern - whether existing AT solutions will work with ODF 
- but it is a concern that has been I believe adequately addressed with 
both IBM's work in IAccessible2 and support of that via JAWS and 
WindowEyes (and "coming soon" support in OOo), and perhaps more 
importantly via the Sun ODF Plugin to MS-Office which means that *all* 
AT that supports MS office (and thus .doc/.xls/.ppt/.docx/...) will 
equally well support ODF.  Recall that users of MS-Office 2003 will use 
something very much akin to the Sun plugin for reading .docx files - and 
that is how the majority of AT users will use .docx.  Many users will 
find Office 2007 unfamiliar and uncomfortable, and moving to it will 
require an upgrade in their AT (esp. if it is also an upgrade to Vista). 


Regards,

Peter Korn
Accessibility Architect,
Sun Microsystems, Inc.
>
> Hi !
>
> You may have heard that New York has just recently put out a Request for
> Public Comment on "A study concerning electronic record policy for New
> York State."
>
> The list of questions are at the following URL, and the PDF file linked
> from it:   http://www.oft.state.ny.us/oftnews/erecords-study.htm
>
> One question (#57 in the PDF) refers to a criticism of ODF  (no source
> given), which is stated as:
>
> "Another criticism of ODF has been that many vendors of assistive
> technology software have not ported their software to ODF-based
> applications."
>
> The questionnaire then whether this is a valid criticism.
>
> Any ideas on this?
>
> Thanks,
>
> -Rob