Comments below. On the topic of access for persons with disabilities, more light and less heat would seem to be in order.
-- Bhaskar On Mon, 2006-03-20 at 17:04 -0600, Greg Woodhouse wrote: > > > --- Kevin Toppenberg <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > > Because there is so much money at stake with Microsoft potentially > > loosing its throttle-hold on the Office software end of things (not > > being able to communicate in .doc format is a big disadvantage), > that > > I am always suspicious about who might have prompted complaints > from > > behind the scenes. > > You're a cynic. The truth is that (say, for non-sighted users) > accessibility for Windows depends on third party software such as > JAWS > or Window Eyes. For OS X (Macintosh), the necessary tools are built > in. > For Linux, well, you tell me. I'm not a Linux user. (And, BTW, I am > sighted, but I do have an interest in accessibility). > > > > Yes Linux is harder to use than commercial OS's like Mac OsX or > > Windows. > > Is it? From a usability standpoint, that sounds like a bit of a > cop-out > to me. Given tha the BSD subsystem is so fundamental to OS X it > sounds > doubly odd. The truth is, I use the terminal application when it is > necessary or appropriate to do so, but if I stick with the Finder or > Mail application it isn't out of ignorance or lack of ability, it's > just the way I prefer to work. [KSB] I don't know much about customizing software for the disabled (for example, I don't know the state of the art in allowing a blind person to crank out a well laid out document, as opposed to reading and writing such a document), but it is possible to use Linux with a Braille terminal, and both KDE and OpenOffice.org have Accessibility features. There is speech to text and text to speech (a simple search on Google turned up http://linux-sound.org/speech.html). Another excellent tool that I have played with (but not acquired any expertise with) is dasher (http://www.inference.phy.cam.ac.uk/dasher). Any FOSS application that runs on BSD UNIX systems (including OS X) should easily be ported to run on Linux and vice versa. > I'm sorry to be so blunt, but Linux users (and VistA users) need to > get > off their high horse, and stop claiming that the product is harder to > use because it is "better" or "more sophisticated". It might well be > a > better operating system, but a steeper learning curve (if, indeed, > there is one) doesn't make it so. [KSB] Greg, at least on this news group, I have not read much to substantiate the allegation about high horses. We all have our preferences, but I haven't seen much, if any, high horsing of any kind with respect to operating systems. ------------------------------------------------------- This SF.Net email is sponsored by xPML, a groundbreaking scripting language that extends applications into web and mobile media. Attend the live webcast and join the prime developer group breaking into this new coding territory! http://sel.as-us.falkag.net/sel?cmd=lnk&kid=110944&bid=241720&dat=121642 _______________________________________________ Hardhats-members mailing list Hardhats-members@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/hardhats-members
