[Promotion-technology] Fwd: [nfbcs] Unfortunate Computerworld Article

[David Andrews]

>From: "Curtis Chong" <curtischong at earthlink.net>
>To: <nfbcs at nfbnet.org>
>Date: Sun, 11 May 2008 19:22:06 -0500



>Greetings:
>
>The article, "Microsoft grows DAISY for blind computer users while Adobe
>wilts," by Eric Lai, which appeared in Computerworld on May 9, 2008, turns
>some good news into an unnecessary and unwarranted opportunity to denigrate
>the efforts of a company (Adobe) which has done some very good work to
>improve accessibility for the blind and people with other disabilities.  (A
>copy of that article is herewith attached.)  Furthermore, it inaccurately
>reported the views expressed by me as president of the National Federation
>of the Blind in Computer Science.  The tone of the article and its
>inaccurate reporting of our position diminishes the credibility of
>Computerworld as a reputable source of information.  On the contrary, it
>bolsters the view, expressed by many in the blind community, that the
>mainstream press has not taken sufficient time truly to comprehend the real
>problems of blindness, let alone accurately reporting on the specific issues
>pertaining to nonvisual access to technology and electronic information.
>
>The title of the article pretty much says it all.  It implies that while
>Microsoft is taking the lead to improve accessibility for the blind, Adobe
>is withering on the vine.  I wish to make it clear that this is NOT an
>opinion shared by the National Federation of the Blind in Computer Science.
>Our view on the matter is quite different.
>
>Over the years, Microsoft, Adobe, and other companies in mainstream
>information technology have spent a good deal of time, money, and effort to
>improve aspects of their respective technologies so that the average blind
>computer user would have a more positive experience using specific programs
>with screen access technology.  When Microsoft's Word program was first
>released to run under the Disk Operating System (DOS), most blind people
>were not able to use it at all; today, Microsoft Word is used by most blind
>people who operate Windows-based computers.  When Adobe first released its
>Acrobat Reader software for the Disk Operating System (DOS), no blind person
>I knew was able to use it with speech-based screen access technology; today,
>Adobe Reader works quite nicely with screen access technology for the blind,
>and the problems we encounter with PDF (portable document format) documents
>stem from poor document construction--not inaccessible software.  Both Adobe
>and Microsoft today engage in substantive discussions with representatives
>of the blind community to address the myriad accessibility challenges that
>still need to be addressed.  Both companies have made progress, and both
>companies still have much to do if access to all of their respective
>products is to be achieved by people who are blind.  For an article such as
>the one which appeared in Computerworld on May 8, 2008 to assert that "Adobe
>wilts" interjects controversy and acrimony where neither is needed nor
>helpful.
>
>In the article, I am quoted as saying that "Adobe has done a lot of work to
>make reading a document accessible, but it has done far less work on the
>composition side."  With all due respect to Mr. Lai, I would like to point
>out that this statement was quoted out of context.  While it is true that
>literally thousands of blind people have had experience with Microsoft Word,
>a composition tool, it is equally true that far fewer individuals have had
>any experience with any Adobe composition programs that would be used to
>produce a PDF document.  Therefore, as I told Mr. Lai, the average blind
>computer user can comprehend the work that Microsoft has done to make Word
>accessible through direct experience with that software.  However, far fewer
>people would have any experience with Adobe's programs to produce a PDF
>document.  Therefore, the majority of blind computer users, I said, could
>not help but believe that Adobe had done a lot of work to make Adobe Reader
>accessible and a lot less work to make PDF composition tools accessible;
>they would believe this based on their own practical experience no matter
>what any technology experts might tell them.  In the end, I said, what the
>average blind computer user was going to notice, regardless of whether a
>document was coded in PDF, DAISY, or some other format, was (1) whether the
>program used to read the document would work at all with a screen access
>program, (2) whether there were any parts of the document that could not be
>read at all with a screen access program, and (3) whether or not efficient
>navigation within a document was at all possible using a screen access
>program.
>
>Let me say in closing that I and the members of the National Federation of
>the Blind in Computer Science are indeed pleased with the work that
>Microsoft has done to enable documents to be saved in the DAISY format.
>This work is commendable.  However, its true benefit will only be realized
>if the DAISY documents that are so produced are properly marked up.  The
>fact that Adobe has not engaged in a similar effort is, at this point, not
>of any real concern to us.  We know (and we know that Adobe knows) that more
>work still needs to be done to improve accessibility by the blind to Adobe
>software.  We intend to continue talking with Adobe to seek the improvements
>we believe to be necessary.  Misrepresentations of our views in this area
>are not helpful to our discussions.  We trust that Computerworld will take
>steps to ensure that this kind of thing does not happen again.
>
>Sincerely,
>
>Curtis Chong, President
>National Federation of the Blind in Computer Science
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