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Software competition (was: HTML - <abbr> and <acronym>settings)

for

From: Carol E. Wheeler
Date: Mar 23, 2006 2:00PM

Kynn said:
"I think you might not understand how entrenched the current
screenreaders are, how difficult it is for a new software company to
come out with a new product, how hard it can be to test and debug a
screenreader, and how hard it is to gain acceptance within the community
( e.g. marketing to the disability user base)."

You mean like IE doesn't have to improve because nobody would use an
open source browser that works better? After all Firefox is such a small
part of the market how could it be a threat?

Oh, but wait... ;-)

Carol E. Wheeler
American Library Association
Washington Office
202.628.8410 v
202.403.8495 f




________________________________

From: <EMAIL REMOVED>
[mailto: <EMAIL REMOVED> ] On Behalf Of Kynn Bartlett
Sent: Thursday, March 23, 2006 3:10 PM
To: WebAIM Discussion List
Subject: Re: [WebAIM] FW: HTML - <abbr> and <acronym> settings


On 3/23/06, Austin, Darrel < <EMAIL REMOVED> >
wrote:


> It may be more productive to petition the screenreader
makers
> which have products which are actually used.

As was stated, a lot of software companies are in the
business of making
money.
If their product is the one that is already used by the
most, there's no
reason for them to care about any petition.
They would, of course, care about competition.
IMHO, of course.
(BTW, I'm not specifically saying screen reader software
companies are
like this...just saying in general...)


Since the discussion is about open source...

I think you might not understand how entrenched the current
screenreaders are, how difficult it is for a new software company to
come out with a new product, how hard it can be to test and debug a
screenreader, and how hard it is to gain acceptance within the community
( e.g. marketing to the disability user base).

If you can do that with people working for free, more power to
you; but it's really not as simple as just saying "if you don't like the
current screenreaders, write your own." Even if you could write one,
you'd have many other huge obstacles that can't be solved by open source
code writing.

I think it makes more sense to recommend fixing screenreaders
than it does to imagine that you're going to a write a free, open source
screenreader that will put market pressure on JAWS (or whoever) and
possibly get them worried over the competition. Existing screenreaders
are heavily entrenched (for a variety of reasons) and it's hard for new,
for-profit companies with investment money to break into the field.

--Kynn