Re: [libreoffice-accessibility] Laws and standards

The same danger from the perspective of the blind computer users also appear in other EU countries 
where the governments prefer paying for screen readers made in EU, even though none of them are as 
good as JAWS.

The governments don't care that just a few computer users need to use complex applications like 
Visual Studio, Eclipse or even a simple text editor like TextPad which is absolutely inaccessible 
with NVDA (or at least it was inaccessible a few months ago).

Octavian

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Christophe Strobbe" <christophe.strobbe@esat.kuleuven.be>
To: <accessibility@libreoffice.org>
Sent: Monday, December 06, 2010 8:59 PM
Subject: Re: [libreoffice-accessibility] Laws and standards


> Hi Alex,
>
> At 18:53 6/12/2010, Alex Midence wrote:
> > (...)  I use Jaws and NVDA as my screen readers in
> > windows and Orca in Linux.
>
> It is good to hear that there are screen reader users on this list!
>
>
> > (...)  I am relieved to see mention of
> > closed source, non-free screen readers in this thread.  Believe it or
> > not, very few people in government agencies (at least the ones here in
> > Texas) with whom I have spoken have heard of NVDA. (...)
>
> Do you mean agencies that refund (in whole or in part) assistive 
> technologies? It is true that these agencies are not always aware of 
> free and open-source alternatives. This is also the case in Belgium, 
> where I live.
> Informing these agencies about free and open-source assistive 
> technologies is not without risk, unfortunately: they might just say, 
> for example: "Now that free screen readers are available for Windows, 
> we will stop refunding JAWS, Window-Eyes, Hal, Supernova, etctera", 
> without checking if the free alternatives are good enough to replace 
> the commercial ones.
> (I heard this from someone who provides technical advice to such an 
> agency in Belgium.)
> For example, JAWS and Window-Eyes support language switching inside a 
> document; free alternatives do not necessarily support this and 
> require the user to switch the TTS language manually.
>
> Best regards,
>
> Christophe
>
>
> -- 
> Christophe Strobbe
> K.U.Leuven - Dept. of Electrical Engineering - SCD
> Research Group on Document Architectures
> Kasteelpark Arenberg 10 bus 2442
> B-3001 Leuven-Heverlee
> BELGIUM
> tel: +32 16 32 85 51
> http://www.docarch.be/
> Twitter: @RabelaisA11y
> ---
> "Better products and services through end-user empowerment" 
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>
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