Dear Greg and the Listers,
I entirely agree with Greg's words. It is a shame for Microsoft to
have produced a flagship version of its main suite ignoring
accessibility for visually impaired people and print impaired people
in the presence of the fact that Microsoft must be aware of its
obligations with regard to accessibility as outlined above. I should
imagine that it is against the ADA law and the Disability
Discrimination Act, 1995, in the UK. It would require though a major
representatives of business to take Microsoft to book on account of
this omission. The fact is that Microsoft must have known that Mac OS
platform is already accessible to blind and print impaired people and
to ignore this warrants an uproar.
Let us all protest in whatever ways we are able to.
With best wishes
Simon Cavendish
On 17 Jan 2008, at 14:26, Greg Kearney wrote:
According to Microsoft this morning Microsoft Office 08 is not
accessible to the blind or print disabled using VoiceOver. So don't
bother going out and buying it. I will now editorialize:
At some point someone is going to start raising the issue of
consumer products, in this case Microsoft Office, not being
accessible and if producing such products is actionable under the
Americans with Disabilities Act. That aside what in the world is
Microsoft thinking? This was a product that was delayed because the
code was changed to Xcode and here we have a major productivity
application that is not accessible? Microsoft should be ashamed of
itself and I for one would like to have someone from Microsoft offer
some kind of explanation for this oversight.
It is one thing for some small company with limited resources to not
have an accessible application it is inexcusable for a company the
size of Microsoft to re-write a major application like office and
not have it be accessible. If Xcode would not compile non-accessible
application we might have avoided this. It is interesting to note
that the only accessible spreadsheet for the Mac, Tables, is the
work of a lone programer who managed to do it with out the resources
of a Microsoft or Apple.
On a related note developer at Sun have been asking questions about
accessibility on a developer list at Apple so perhaps there is hope
that Sun will be developing an accessible version of Open Office.
Let's hope so anyway. And let's hope that someone at Apple is able
to get and explanation from Microsoft as to why an application
written after VoiceOver's release is not able to be used by the
blind and print disabled. And Apple your not off the hook here
either Pages and Numbers are not accessible either I might add.
Greg Kearney
535 S. Jackson St.
Casper, Wyoming 82601
307-224-4022
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
