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RE: Speech enabling software

for

From: Glenda Watson Hyatt
Date: Dec 14, 2005 7:00PM



Glenda Watson Hyatt wrote:

> As a person with a disability who has to pay ridiculously overly-priced
> prices for "accessibility" - whether wheelchairs, assistive technologies,
> blah, blah, blah - it is nice to think that some site owners share the
cost
> of "accessibility".

Patrick wrote:

Yes, but taking the analogy of the wheelchair, what BrowseAloud have
done here is invent a completely new type of wheelchair which
(supposedly) only works on a particular type of surface; they give it
away for free, and then tell every building owner that they need to pay
them to add their special surface compound on all their floor
surfaces...when it fact it turns out that they only made their
wheelchair recognise whether or not it's running on the proprietary
surface and cut off the electric motor if it's not.

I agree, sharing the cost and even reverting the traditional model is
fine, but I find it ethically questionable how their plugin could work
on all sites, for everybody...but they neuter it to only work on
"approved" sites. That's simply holding site owners to ransom.

Glenda adds:

Interesting analogy. I need to give it further thought. However, it is
different from a software CD that restricts the number of installations or
prevents copying, etc? Just wondering.

Cheers,
Glenda

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