- From: Michael Burks <mburks952@worldnet.att.net>
- Date: Wed, 17 Nov 1999 23:55:13 -0500
- To: "Gregory J. Rosmaita" <unagi69@concentric.net>, "Kynn Bartlett" <kynn-hwg@idyllmtn.com>
- Cc: "WAI Interest Group Emailing List" <w3c-wai-ig@w3.org>
Intersting....thank you! Sincerely, MIke Burks aloha, michael, kynn et. al.! (apologies for the salutationary pun!) i don't know about al gore's grandfather, either, but i think that his father (a senator from tennessee) did suffer vision loss in later life -- how severe that loss was i don't know, but i do know that the recently elected president of indonesia is blind... there was an interesting profile of him in the new york times a few weeks ago, and, while his vision loss didn't seem to be raised as an issue during his eleventh hour campaign, there does appear to be some controversy amongst pundits and opposition politicians in indonesia as to whether he is totally blind or whether he retains any gross black/white perception, as he, himself, has claimed, ever since returning from the U.S. last year after having eye surgery... the article did mention that he is led by an assistant everywhere he goes -- including inside his own home... oh, and, not that i was planning on voting for him anyway, but if al gore thinks that Narrator allows a blind individual to interact with a computer in a meaningful way, he's not fit to hold any office, much less that of president of the united states! as for the basis for that last contention, according to the documentation available from (long wrapping URL warning): http://windows.microsoft.com/windows2000/en/professional/help/screenreader_o verview.htm quote Narrator is designed to work with Notepad, WordPad, Control Panel, Microsoft Internet Explorer 5.0, some parts of Windows 2000 setup, and the Windows 2000 desktop. Narrator may not read words aloud correctly in other programs. unquote so, unless you plan on working in an office which only uses NotePad and WordPad, and you only need to access pages on the internet or the company intranet that Narrator can voice, Narrator isn't what the filename in the above-listed URL suggests it is... hmm... guess it couldn't be used in a single browser intranet either -- a least not if that single browser happens not to be MSIE 5... what a strange world it is that we inhabit -- microsoft employees have been telling me and countless others that they aren't in the adaptive technology business, and that they don't want to put AT manufacturers out of business, and that Narrator isn't intended to function as a screen reader, but then, why the sudden media blitz about Narrator with the focus clearly on its benefit to blind users? why the use of the term "screen reader" in the above-listed URL? at least the content of the pages pertaining to Narrator refer to it only as quote a text-to-speech utility for users who are blind or have low vision unquote, but then again, isn't that a common description of a screen reader? oh, and one last tie-in to another thread -- according to the information at the microsoft enable site, Narrator is not available for all languages... gregory -------------------------------------------------------- He that lives on Hope, dies farting -- Benjamin Franklin, Poor Richard's Almanack, 1763 -------------------------------------------------------- Gregory J. Rosmaita <unagi69@concentric.net> WebMaster and Minister of Propaganda, VICUG NYC <http://www.hicom.net/~oedipus/vicug/index.html> --------------------------------------------------------
Received on Thursday, 18 November 1999 00:03:49 UTC