Thread Subject: Re: Basic questions

From: Jim Tobias
Date: Wed, Nov 15 2006 1:30 PM

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> -----Original Message-----
> From: Gregg Vanderheiden [mailto: = EMAIL ADDRESS REMOVED = ]
> Sent: Wednesday, November 15, 2006 2:46 PM
> To: 'TEITAC self contained/closed products subcommittee'
> Subject: Re: [teitac-closed] Basic questions
>
> Hmmm
>
> There is a distinction here we need to make.
>
> Buying accessible products: good.
>
> Buying " personal workarea" products that can be made
> accessible (or have readily obtainable equivalents): good
>
> Buying "shared" products that can be made accessible: not so
> good. They in
> general will never get "made accessible". This is not prohibited but
> generally is not very effective. Should be a fall back
> position. One
> thing often cited is that once the purchase of the "can be
> made accessible"
> product is done
> - there is no funding to bring in the access modifications,
> - nobody to make them work together,
> - and no way to test the product to ensure that it is
> accessible before purchased.
>
>
> Will be difficult but important to work this out so that it
> results in something that is practical in the real world --
> and also works in the real word.

Since you don't indicate what you're commenting on, I'm going to assume it's
my straw man proposal regarding "closed" products.

First, there is an explicit statement somewhere in the regs that there is no
obligation to make every product accessible, in the sense of installing a
screen reader on every PC purchased by the federal government.

Second, there is no additional effort required to make a connected printer
accessible, as long as the utility software includes all the functions of
the product and the utility software itself is accessible or compatible.

This is already the case with the majority of printer utilities, but not
all. I have encountered several utilities in which more work needed to be
done, but none in which that work was not feasible, and in most cases
completed in short order.

Let's look at soft phones as a solution to inaccessible desktop phones. For
employees who have a PC that must be accessible for all their desktop uses,
isn't an accessible softphone the best answer? I've never encountered a
disabled federal employee (or telecom manager!) who felt that it wasn't.
Why wouldn't the same be true for printers?

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