- From: Kynn Bartlett <kynn-hwg@idyllmtn.com>
- Date: Tue, 26 Oct 1999 13:47:50 -0700
- To: David Poehlman <poehlman@clark.net>
- Cc: "Gregory J. Rosmaita" <unagi69@concentric.net>, WAI Interest Group Emailing List <w3c-wai-ig@w3.org>
At 04:19 PM 10/26/1999 -0500, David Poehlman wrote: >just to add to this. if you think for a second that scanning hard >copy and performing ocr on it is an ideal, think again. I'm always amazed by companies that don't provide electronic copies upon demand -- because in this day and age, ALL documents are, in their original formats, electronic! You don't _have_ paper-only documents being created anymore; everything is done in Word or Excel or some other electronic format. Recently the HWG received a proposal via fax from a potential strategic partner. The fax was clearly a powerpoint presentation that was "printed" -- as I needed to distribute the proposal to my board, and we "meet" via email, I asked for a copy of the PPT file. It was denied -- instead he wanted to fax it to all of us! Why, I'm not sure -- but I still stand by my conviction that since documents are natively electronic, there's no reason NOT to provide them electronically. A nicer story from the HWG relates to the book we use in our HTML 4.0 online class, written by Ann Navarro and published by Sybex. One of our students is blind and thus can't just use the printed version; we contacted Sybex and found that for the same price as the printed book, an electronic version on disk could be purchased, as long as a non-disclosure agreement (NDA) was signed. The reason for the NDA is that it's easier to create a new version of the book from the electronic copy than the dead tree version. This was a fortunate surprise for us in the Guild, because now we can feel a little better about offering online classes and knowing that there are alternatives to our required textbook that can be used by students who require electronic copies. -- Kynn Bartlett <kynn@hwg.org> President, Governing Board Member HTML Writers Guild <URL:http://www.hwg.org> Director, Accessible Web Authoring Resources and Education Center <URL:http://aware.hwg.org/>
Received on Tuesday, 26 October 1999 16:58:02 UTC