Hi 
Stuart has created a great page to help with Accessibility issues which seems to be a recurring nightmare for many people on the accessibility mailing list.
Could we incorporate his current advice and his Faq into a future version of the "Getting Started" guide? Is there already something there that could be expanded? Could there be a link to his Faq (or something) from around the same place as the advice to Mac users in all books?
Regards from
Tom
There is a small section in the Appendix on Keyboard Shortcuts. This
section could perhaps be expanded and it definitely should link to
more info on accessibility. A short note (pointer) in the Preface
might be good too.
I believe PeterS is looking at some changes to the Preface. Peter, you
might like to comment on where to put accessibility info and how much
to say. (Others are welcome to make suggestions, too.)
--Jean
Hi
Thanks
IBM have (perhaps inadvertantly) tried to stuff things up for us by giving their accessibility code to Apache for them to re-licence and incorporate into AOO. I think if they had given the code to LO then Apache could have easily incorporated the code into their project. That would have been about the only way to get the code into both projects. As it is LO may have to rewrite accessibility features from scratch being careful not to inadvertently write too many lines that are the same as the IBM code! Even though Apache are relatively friendly they might be forced into action in order to protect the validity of their other licenses and other projects.
The plus side is that it seems all that IBM stuff is heavily dependant on Java so LO devs would have had to re-write it in Python or something instead to be consistent with the general move away from Java.
The downside is that it leaves LO temporarily unable to really push accessibility and that has a knock-on effect in how acceptable LO is to corporate organisations.
Also it's a bit of a pain for individuals that need accessibility features to work in LO so that they are not 'forced to go back' to AOO. Stuart (and others on the accessibility list) have been doing great work helping individuals deal with minor&major issues for ages. I have been lurking there waiting for something like Stuart's Faq page to appear to make it easier to push the accessibility agenda into more mainstream areas such as the guides reach. Stuart created a couple of links from a few places but it's still not easy for people to find out how to fix Java Bridge.
The Base hand-book/guide is probably still the number 1 most important thing to get out there asap. Problems with accessibility features are still rarer and there are options (such as going back to AOO for a bit) and there is just about enough help from stars such as Stuart. So it's probably only the next most important thing strategically imo.
Regards from
Tom