Re: what makes an assistive technology an assistive technology?

HI David. I am missing urgency of the discussion. HPR is, as far as I am
concerned, a browser.  The fact that it uses netscape for the html stream
doesn't make any difference. What should be important to the UA group is
presenting content. At least I wish that were your primary concern.

My definition of "Assistive Technology" is technology created for and sold to
people with disabilities. With that definition, it is a no-brainer (definition
excluded), HPR is an assistive technology. It is designed by and for blind
folks.

As far as "operating independently of a browser," this is a concept that is
close to irrelevant. If you create an application that uses mshtml.dll, (did I
spell that correctly?) or the other IE component which I can't spell, are you
operating independently of a browser? The answer has to be - who cares? The
final question is how do you present web content.

Jim Thatcher
IBM Special Needs Systems
www.ibm.com/sns
thatch@us.ibm.com
(512)838-0432


David Poehlman <poehlman@clark.net> on 07/28/99 07:17:44 PM

To:   Jon Gunderson <jongund@staff.uiuc.edu>
cc:   w3c-wai-ua@w3.org
Subject:  what makes an assistive technology an assistive technology?





i'm still pondering last weeks minutes even after today's call and It
occurs to me that it is possible that hpr can be classed as an
assistive technology.  Som ats already parse html and controls to some
degree and there are some that take advantage of msaa in order to
achieve an accessible interface because of its exposition of what ats
ned.  Since it is not a browser in the sense that it does not opperate
independantly of another browser even though it only utilizes netscape
for the data stream and since it is not a plug in because it acts on
html and plug ins usually act on non html constructs, the only thing
lefft it seems to me is that it is an at.  I'll await the response
from Jim and others on this but thought I'd toss this in in the
meantime.
Thanks!
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Received on Wednesday, 28 July 1999 21:02:49 UTC