anti-word

[Charles Crawford]

Hi,

	Well I guess I did not want to get into a big duscussion of this, but you 
raise points worth answering and thanks for doing so.

	People will not know anything about anything unless there is an original 
introduction to it.  So if the Prof get a text file, then he would seek to 
know how to handle it.  Just as his becoming enlightened by your reference 
to notepad, so too would he be in a position to understand use a text 
document.  Whether a text document is appropriate to the setting is a good 
question though.

	If we left it at that, then all would be more or less settled, but what 
about our rights as blind folks to access?  Are they conditioned upon 
having to use what the employer for example uses?  Well, the truth is that 
they aare.  An employer has the right to utilize any software they want and 
as long as we too can use it, then we have to learn it.

	So the challenge to blind linux users is to relate to the windows world 
not as an us versus them, but as a reality check on others who use 
windows.  It gets a bit tricky because of the accessibility issues and the 
relative ease of use issue.  If we have to go climbing mountains that 
others do not have to climb to use a product, then that is not equal 
access, but our success in getting at least a couple of Windows programs to 
work well with access techincurrs a rsponsibility on our part to use that 
technology when required.

	So we are back where we began.  We may not like having to use Ms-Word or 
Ms-anything, but if it is the standard that is accessible as well, then we 
have to do it.  Responding to an MS-Word attachment with a text file is ok 
since it equally affords the reader with the same information presented in 
a different format.

	Would like to write more, but there goes that phone again.

-- charlie Crawford.