Few questions about speakup

[Janina Sajka]

Well, I suppose the simple answer is that it's still possible to write an 
inaccessible application. By the way, you don't need a gui to make an 
application inaccessible, either. You can make ncurses inaccessible by 
decorating your interface with lovely ASCII art, for example. There are 
other ways.

Now, for a longer answer.

I don't know, looking specifically at StarOffice, what environment it was 
first authored for (or in). Not everything in unix (or Linux) is 
accessible, though I'd wager most of the inaccessible stuff is also 
proprietary, and doesn't come with source code.

Recall that Sun Micro bought StarOffice from a German company. They then 
set about making it accessible. That effort is now coming close to an 
initial release. 

Note also, that they made the bulk of StarOffice available in an open 
source license. 

StarOffice and OpenOffice are really the same program, in other words.

Another fact to notice about Star/Open Office ...

It will write non-proprietary XML as its default file format.


On Mon, 29 Jul 2002, Charles Crawford wrote:

> Janina,
> 
> 	Thanks for letting me know that the GUI is not an integrated piece of the 
> Linux program as is the case with Windows.  So if that is the case, then 
> how is it that the Star whatever Office program is not accessible as I was 
> given to understand?
> 
> -- charlie.
> 
> 
> _______________________________________________
> Speakup mailing list
> Speakup at braille.uwo.ca
> http://speech.braille.uwo.ca/mailman/listinfo/speakup
> 

-- 
	
				Janina Sajka, Director
				Technology Research and Development
				Governmental Relations Group
				American Foundation for the Blind (AFB)

Email: janina at afb.net		Phone: (202) 408-8175

Chair, Accessibility SIG
Open Electronic Book Forum (OEBF)
http://www.openebook.org