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Releasing HomePageReader (was RE: HPR 3.04 - IE7 - WinXP -Complete Doctype)

for

From: John Foliot - Stanford Online Accessibility Program
Date: Mar 8, 2007 11:30AM

Jared Smith wrote:
> <rant>
> It's a bit of a shame really. HPR was the best screen reader for
> developer use and I imagine that a large share of their customers
> were from the seeing community. But between lack of support, no
> responsiveness on bugs and new features, and implementing a crippled
> demo version, it's no wonder that IBM reported that sales were down
> and they were discontinuing HPR. They essentially killed it
> themselves. Wouldn't it be nice if the code were put into the open
> source realm for the community to continue working on? </rant>

Yes, this would be very cool. In fairness to IBM, while they may have
walked away from HPR, they *have* continued to demonstrate commitment to and
support of web accessibility (in their own way) through their contributions
to the ARIA work currently under way.

Is anyone aware if any kind of formal request has been made to IBM
requesting the release of the source-code into the Open Source community?
Has anybody actually asked nicely? If not, why not, and how can our
combined communities(*) work together to see if this is possible?

JF

(* Many regulars on the WebAIM list also frequent the WAI-IG list, the GAWDS
list, WSG list, and others. How can we pool our myriad members and ask with
a unified voice?)