Re: [libreoffice-accessibility] Laws and standards (Re: accessibility mailing list)

Le 2010-12-02 11:27, Christophe Strobbe a écrit :
> (This e-mail didn't get through the first time because I put 
> discuss@documentfoundation.org in CC.)
>
> At 07:41 2/12/2010, Marc Paré wrote:
> > Le 2010-11-29 09:23, Christophe Strobbe a écrit :
> > > Hi Florian,
> > >
> > > At 12:01 28/11/2010, Florian Effenberger wrote:
> > >> on yesterday's LinuxDay in Austria, the request for a separate
> > >> accessibility mailing list came up. (...)
> > > (...)
> >
> > This seems like quite an important developer detail to work out right 
> > from the very start. Are the developers aware of accessibility 
> > concerns? Also from a marketing point of view, if we are to market 
> > the suite to governmental agencies subscribing to accessibility rules 
> > in their procurement of software applications, then we should  be 
> > discussing this sooner than later.
>
> I don't know to what extent the LibreOffice developers are aware of 
> accessibility.
> As far as I understand, LibreOffice accessibility doesn't start from 
> scratch. See <http://wiki.services.openoffice.org/wiki/Accessibility>.
> However, the problem with using the Java Accessibility API on Windows 
> is that screen readers don't support it very well. NVDA and 
> Window-Eyes are said to provide better support than JAWS (which many 
> consider to be the dominant screen reader in the English-speaking 
> world), but even access with NVDA is not considered excellent. The 
> OpenOffice.org accessibility page mentions plans to implement the 
> IAccessible2 API, but I don't know if the project ever got started on 
> this.
> Access to OpenOffice.org (I don't know if LibreOffice has changed the 
> UI) with VoiceOver on Mac OS and with Orca on GNOME seems to work better.
>
> Of course, there is more to accessibility than screen reader access; 
> two other important issues are support for desktop themes (high 
> contrast, large font size, ...), and keyboard access (also relevant to 
> sighted users).
>
>
> > (...) We could also get links to any governmental rules/laws relating 
> > to this for reference. (...)
>
> In the US, Section 508 is being updated; see 
> <http://508-255-refresh.trace.wisc.edu/content/home>.
> In the EU, I know about laws and regulations related to Web 
> accessibility, but not about laws and regulations for software 
> accessibility in general. In some EU countries, the only relevant 
> legislation is the general anti-discrimination legislation, which is 
> probably not something you can refer to in procurement. We will have 
> to wait a few more years for a European standard that defines 
> accessibility requirements for ICT that can be used in public 
> procurement. (A call for experts for a committee to write that 
> standard went out quite recently; see 
> <ftp://ftp.cen.eu/PUB/Calls/M376.pdf>.)
>
> If you want references to standards on software accessibility, I can 
> give you these:
> * ISO 9241-171:2008 (not available for free; see 
> <http://www.iso.org/iso/iso_catalogue/catalogue_tc/catalogue_detail.htm?csnumber=39080>);
> * ISO/IEC TR 29318 (3 parts): freely downloadable at 
> <http://standards.iso.org/ittf/PubliclyAvailableStandards/index.html>.
> * the W3C's Authoring Tool Accessibility Guidelines 2.0 (under 
> development) focus on authoring tools for Web content, but many 
> criteria can be generalised to authoring tools in general (I have this 
> in another mail if you want it): <http://www.w3.org/TR/ATAG20/>.
>
> The accessibility of the ODF format itself was taken in hands when the 
> state of Massachusetts announced a move to the OpenDocument Format; 
> see for example Peter Korn's long blog post about this at 
> <http://blogs.sun.com/korn/entry/massachusetts_open_document_and_accessibility> 
> and the OpenDocument Accessibility Guidelines by the ODF Accessibilit 
> SC 
> <http://www.oasis-open.org/committees/tc_home.php?wg_abbrev=office-accessibility>.
>
> We really need a wikipage for this, don't we?
>
> Best regards,
>
> Christophe

Hi Christophe:

Thanks for the great information. Yes there is need for a wiki on this.

Re: windows and java, there was some talk of trying to move the suite 
away from java dependency. I don't know how much this would affect AT on 
LibreOffice.

Marc

--
Marc Paré
http://www.parEntreprise.com


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