WebAIM - Web Accessibility In Mind

E-mail List Archives

RE: FW: HTML - <abbr> and <acronym> settings

for

From: Austin, Darrel
Date: Mar 23, 2006 2:40PM

> 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).

I'm jaded. I've had to work with and buy software for ages that just
plain sucks. The fact that software sucks really has no correlation to
its market share. I've found that bad softare is actually accepted as
the norm in a lot of corporations. So, it's a catch 22: The customer
says 'yes, the software sucks, but it's the standard, so we bought it'
and the software company says 'yes, our software sucks, but people buy
it, so why change it?'.

>From what I've seen, the only way to get out of that downword spiral is
to have some competition come along that can chip away at the
marketshare. IE didn't improve until Firefox forced it to. QuarkXPress
didn't improve until InDesign forced it to. Word didn't improve
until...well...Word still sucks.

Anyways, I'm getting way OT now...

-Darrel