Part 2 of my corrispondence with chriss. was RE: I swear to tell the truth, (fwd)

Sun May 5 01:58:25 EDT 2002

here's the second installment of my email conversation with chriss. from
freedon scientific.

-- 
Shaun

If little else, the brain is an educational toy.
                -- Tom Robbins
EMAIL: shauno at goanna.net.au
ICQ: 76958435

---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Thu, 2 May 2002 22:41:17 -0400
From: Chris Hofstader <chrish at freedomscientific.com>
To: Shaun Oliver <shauno at goanna.net.au>
Subject: RE: I swear to tell the truth, (fwd)

Hi,

I have found all of the criticism sent from the SpeakUp list to be very
constructive and I didn't
feel attacked at all.  I've often taken controversial positions and have
faced criticism from all sides.

Freedom Scientific is using a MS based server for our ftp, Internet and
other network based needs.  I can't really make a claim as to whether Linux,
MS or any of them are superior as I've little experience with IT.  I've been
a system level hacker for many years but never wandered into the networking
arena.  As it is distant from my area of expertise I cannot really comment
on why Freedom picked the MS solution over any of the others.

An X-Windows screen reader would be an interesting challenge.  I've explored
this as an opportunity and found there were a handful of nearly
insurmountable hurdles:

The first notion was to make all UI objects self voicing.  This had three
problems.  The first is that not all widgets are used in a similar enough
fashion to create a generic speech and Braille solution.  Second, self
voicing objects have the problem of delivering useful contextual
information - so I might be able to tell you that an OK button is in focus
but what are you agreeing to if you activate it?  Finally, most comercial
X-Windows applications staticly link with the UI elements thus making my
self voicing ones inactive.

The next approach was to look at the variety of X desktops.  Again, we ran
into the problem of contextual information and staticly linked comercial
projects.  Peter Korn's team at Sun seems to be doing a pretty good job with
making gnome talk which may turn into a truly usable solution.

Finally, very few sysadmin types will install any special server software
for accessibility purposes.  Yes, there is ADA and 508 but the anti-virus,
anti-hacker, security frenzied culture in the IT community today will not
budge to install software for a tiny percentage of their staff.

As for the jobs issue: surely many blind folks are heading into software and
IT jobs.  Sadly, this is a small minority of the 2 million (NFB's number)
blind people in the US.  The overwhelming majority of our new constomers are
getting their first job ever.  Many of these people have been steered away
from the technical professions by well meaning special education people who
just don't understand technology very well.

Others, people like me, are those who go blind in their mid-thirties.  I was
fortunate, I had 20 years experience developing software and Ted Henter
offered me a job.  Most, though, had far more pedestrian careers (plumbers,
truck drivers, secretaries, etc.) and have little or no experience using
computers and a huge level of fear of a computer.  These people want to get
back to work but haven't the foggiest idea of where to start looking.  These
people will never become IT professionals but I've seen too many great turn
around stories to believe that they won't learn to use a computer
competently enough to get a good job in a wide variety of fields.

Personally, I find that Sun will probably post the greatest challenge to MS'
lead in the accessibility world.  Marney Beard, Peter Korn and the rest of
their gang are very smart and talented people.  With a very small budget,
they have made tremendous progress with Java and gnome.  The Java solution
is interesting as well, Sun provides the source to the Accessibility Bridge
and I know it has been ported to Macintosh and assume someone has done the
job for Linux as well.  A creative, multi-platform, Java screen reader might
be a strong entry into government agencies and academic institutions.

Thanks,
cdh

-----Original Message-----
From: Shaun Oliver [mailto:shauno at goanna.net.au]
Sent: Thursday, May 02, 2002 10:07 PM
To: chrish at freedomscientific.com
Subject: RE: I swear to tell the truth, (fwd)

Hight Chriss,
Let me point out a few things in the body of your own message.
Please read below.

--
Shaun

If little else, the brain is an educational toy.
                -- Tom Robbins
EMAIL: shauno at goanna.net.au
ICQ: 76958435

---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Thu, 2 May 2002 10:06:15 -0400
From: Chris Hofstader <ChrisH at Freedomscientific.com>
To: 'Ryan Mann' <rmann at rmisp.net>
Subject: RE: I swear to tell the truth, (fwd)

Hello,

Thanks for forwarding the thread on to me.  I'm always happy to hear from
the open source, blinux community.
Here's the first mistake.
Although thereis a blinux community and we are a part of it, This is
comming from the speakup community.

If you read my written testimony, I state clearly that there are a number of
good accessibility aids available for the Linux OS.  I add that the Linux AT
software is written by a group of hard working volunteers.  I do wish that
some of the open source vendors would start investing in accessibility the
way that Microsoft, IBM and Sun already do.  With a reasonable level of
funding the volunteers could become professionals and not concern themselves
with doing the really cool work happening already and paying the bills too.
Your second mistake. Please don't confuse open source with free software.
and I did read your testimony in it's entirety and saw only the mention
that accessability aids for GNU/Linux do exist with the efforts put in by
hard working volunteers.

If you also look at my resume (put in as Exhibit 1), you will see that,
along with Richard Stallman, I was the co-founder and president of League
for Programming Freedom.  I have been a vocal advocate for Project GNU and
have worked on the defense of a number of companies being sued for patent
infringement and user interface copyright issues.
I commend that. However, if one wants to truely say that they stand out
from the rest, why not "boldly go where no one has gone before" and code a
suitable screen reader for the xwindows system and make a killing?
Mr. Stallman never was against making a few dollars for your software, he
just has some very different ideas as to how the world of software should
work.
When it comes to accessibility, however, I believe the single most important
aspect is getting jobs for people with disabilities.  With estimates for
unemployment among blind people running as high as 75% and with virtually
all potential employers requiring skills in MS Windows then it is essential
that adaptive technologies work in the environment that the consumers want.
In the commercial environment, Microsoft is the overwhelmingly dominant
source of Operating systems and, for a long time, Microsoft has invested
time and resources into accessibility and is the corporate leader in this
area.
I'd have to agree with this point also, but, it's not the only option out
there.
Sure we need microsoft to be able to function in the office environment
but, what about those of us that want to aspire to be admins of isps or
for that matter, maintain an existing one?
would you honestly use a microsoft product as an ftp or www or for that
matter dns server?
I wouldn't due to the fact that any microsoft product isn't relyable
enough for extended uptimes and the fact that alot of what microsoft does
during installs that screw with system settings require a reboot which is
unacceptable in that sort of situation.
Permitting incomplete or altered versions of the Microsoft operating systems
to be sold will reek havoc on a system level product like JAWS and all of
its competitors.  I, therefore, stand behind my testimony entirely.
This point if by no one else is taken by me and I see what you're driving
at.
no matter what operating system one uses, one should not have to use a
broken system and wonder why the accessability software that is used on
that operating system doesn't work.
Having said that, I feel that some knowledge of computers either hardware
or software is necissary for blind or low vission users to get by.
This is probably why alot of us turn towards i.t.
By the way, there's alot to be said for editing a config file and
restarting the process.
But, again, having said all this, I'm not going to cut my nose off despite
my face,
I still need windows for some tasks and as a registered user of jaws, that
is my prefered screen reader under windows.
I hope these comments will be accepted as constructive critisism and not
seen as an attack on freedon scientific and it's product.

 Respectfully,
Cdh

Chris Hofstader
VP, Software Engineering
Freedom Scientific, Inc.
11800 31st Court N.
St. Petersburg, FL 33716
PH: (727)803-8000 ext. 1061; (800)444-4443
Fax:(727) 803-8001
email:  ChrisH at freedomscientific.com
Check out our website!  www.freedomscientific.com

-----Original Message-----
From: Ryan Mann [mailto:rmann at rmisp.net]
Sent: Wednesday, May 01, 2002 8:56 PM
To: chrish at freedomscientific.com
Subject: Re: I swear to tell the truth, (fwd)

---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Wed, 1 May 2002 20:44:19 -0400
From: Scott Howell <showell at lrxms.net>
Reply-To: speakup at braille.uwo.ca
To: speakup at braille.uwo.ca
Subject: Re: I swear to tell the truth,

What amazes the hell out of me is that if the sighted folk of the world only
gave some though to the matter, they'd probably agree that editing a file is
considerably faster then any gui. Not to mention keyboard access can out run
a mouse clicking any day...that's a proven fact. <grin> Oh how I love these
discussions. Did I mention that do to windows the adverage employee is
producing less? Afterall all that crashing and rebooting reduces output
don't you think??

On Wed, May 01, 2002 at 07:48:43PM -0400, Igor Gueths wrote:
> Hi Cecil and all. An example. I was using War Ftpd on my Winblows
> laptop. It uses Unix style permissions for file access. Only problem is
that the gui makes it extremely difficult to set file permissions, and very
hard to tell to what exactly you are setting those permissions to. In Linux,
all you have to do is edit a config file, and that's it! A process that
should take 1 or 2 minutes, took me about three hours because of the f-ing
gui!
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: Cecil H. Whitley <cwhitley at ec.rr.com>
> To: <speakup at braille.uwo.ca>
> Sent: Wednesday, May 01, 2002 6:57 PM
> Subject: Re: I swear to tell the truth,
>
>
> > Okay, okay just one more and I might shut up.....
> > Blind people need a GUI.  Isn't that the real msg?  Why doesn't he
> > give them the real story?  Text mode os's are accessable to a degree
> > that a GUI will never be by their very nature.
> >
> > Cecil, stater of the obvious.
> >
> >
> > _______________________________________________
> > Speakup mailing list
> > Speakup at braille.uwo.ca
> > http://speech.braille.uwo.ca/mailman/listinfo/speakup
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Speakup mailing list
> Speakup at braille.uwo.ca
> http://speech.braille.uwo.ca/mailman/listinfo/speakup
>

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