As far as I can tell, the fundamental accessibility issue with many of these clients is that, at least the way I understand it, they do not interact in text as we know it. You know, of course, that the person operating as host can share his desktop with the participants. This communication is dynamic - that is the participants can see what the host is doing with the mouse or any other pointing device; and in order for that type of communication to occur, it is GRAPHICAL in nature, and also probably encrypted. We use Live Meeting at my workplace, but I connect with those meetings by phone. The people generally set up a phone link as well as the Live Meeting setup.
As I see it, put in simple terms, I maintain that there is no screen reader on earth that can give really good access to these meeting-type clients. In one situation where we were trying to show a vendor the problems I was having with accessibility to a major program system, the host temporarily gave me pseudo-host privileges so that I could demonstrate the problems; but we also had a voice link by phone between me and the real host so that he could ask me a question or have me do something on my computer (operating at that time as a host) and the others associated with the vendor watched. But I have never been able to see or read anyone's desktop, and I doubt that I could do much in control EXCEPT what I could normally do using ONLY KEYBOARD. I wouldn't have a mouse on my system, and I wouldn't be able to do meaningful mouse operations on a meeting system. Finally, I don't expect to see any meaningful or significant improvements in the accessibility of these products; they rely too heavily on graphics to present the details that they can transmit. David Plumlee If you reply to this message it will be delivered to the original sender only. If your reply would benefit others on the list and your message is related to GW Micro, then please consider sending your message to [email protected] so the entire list will receive it. GW-Info messages are archived at http://www.gwmicro.com/gwinfo. You can manage your list subscription at http://www.gwmicro.com/listserv.
