Hi Hayden, Well, that's true. That is something of a catch 22. I haven't read Section 508 in full so I'm not sure what the government defines as accessible, but I'm sure it pretty much means functionally usable, and nothing more and nothing less. For example, certain Linux distributions such as Ubuntu are technically considered to be Section 508 compliant. Well, for the most part the built in screen reader, Orca, does work. You can use Evolution for e-mail, Firefox for web browsing, Open Office for office work, etc. However, accessibility in this case is still more functionally accessible rather than outstanding. If you grab Ubuntu Linux and expect everything to work as well as Jaws with Windows or Window-Eyes with Windows you are going to be disappointed. Accessibility on Linux isn't quite as good as Windows yet, but you can use it if you have to or want to. Plus out of the box Speech-Dispatcher, the Linux speech driver package, doesn't support a lot of commercial TTS engines for Linux like Cepstral, Eloquence, AT&T Natural Speech, Dectalk, etc so you are pretty much stuck with lower quality voices like ESpeak for the most part. This isn't really accessibility related, but drastically lowers the quality of the screen reading technology in my opinion. So technically speaking Linux is accessible, but admitedly it has a long ways to go before I personally think it can compete with Windows for an accessibility feature by feature comparison. Mac still has some accessibility hang ups too, but to its credit Mac OS 10.6 with Voice Over isn't too bad, but still needs a few improvements to be equal with the Windows accessibility software in my opinion. So even though something is officially Section 508 compliant don't think that means the standard of accessibility being used is the highest standard out there. I think what the government was aiming for was basic and functional accessibility and not if the software in question meets a high standard of accessibility that most of us would consider truly accessible.
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