- From: David Poehlman <poehlman@clark.net>
- Date: Sat, 22 Jul 2000 08:26:34 -0400
- To: User Agent Working group list <w3c-wai-ua@w3.org>
this may be of intrest. -------- Original Message -------- Subject: RE: Accessible telephone directory Date: Fri, 21 Jul 2000 15:47:24 -0700 From: "Charles Oppermann" <chuckop@coppersoftware.com> Reply-To: basr-l@trace.wisc.edu To: <basr-l@trace.wisc.edu>, "Henter Joyce Tech Support" <Jaws@Hj.com> CC: "GUISPEAK List" <guispeak@LISTSERV.NAS.NET> One thing that would greatly improve the accessibility of this application would be the use of accepted, standardized protocols to perform it's function. The internet has a standard for directories, it's known as LDAP (Lightweight Directory Access Protocol). Microsoft Windows and most e-mail and collaboration applications, such as Outlook, Outlook Express, Lotus Notes, Novell GroupWise, among others, supports this protocol. By implementing the telephone directory as a LDAP server, various clients can then use the information provided. In fact, there are a number of LDAP-based solutions that already perform this function - why bother to write a proprietary one? Even if the backend is an Access or SQL (recommended) database, a VB based front-end client can still be written that uses LDAP. That way, users have a choice of clients and don't have to load Yet Another Program to do a common task. Why leave Outlook to launch a separate application when Outlook has a number of features designed to work with directories - telephone and e-mail? Another advantage of this approach is interoperability with Active Directory. With Active Directory, a separate database is not necessary - all network users, and company contacts and customers can be placed in one highly robust, replicated and standard directory that is available on a wide scale. Compaq Corporation demonstrated over 100 million objects in Active Directory on one server - they used electronic phone books from all 50 United States with California and New York loaded twice to accomplish this. The bottom line is that beyond issues of keyboard access and using the right colors - accessibility is also enhanced by not re-inventing the wheel and developing redundant solutions. FYI - I'm working on a book for Microsoft Press on Active Directory and my first sample application is a telephone number look up tool. There is a command line version - great for accessibility - that is implemented in a short script and a graphical version in Visual Basic. You can read more about it and Active Directory at http://www.coppersoftware.com/software/activedirectory/ Charles Oppermann Copper Software http://www.coppersoftware.com chuckop@coppersoftware.com -----Original Message----- From: Rohit Trivedi [mailto:arushi@vsnl.com] Sent: Friday, July 21, 2000 9:29 AM To: Henter Joyce Tech Support Cc: GUISPEAK List Subject: Accessible telephone directory An agency is developing a multimedia telephone directory using visual basic with Access database in the background. we want to see to it that the directory is accessible to the users of screen readers. This telephone directory will have 1200000 records. We have already contacted the company and they are very open to any suggestions. They need our help. We need some tips and material which could be passed on to them. Our problem is that we also do not know what makes the software accessible. If you suggest some guidelines it will be a great help. Rohit Trivedi, Arushi, 96-9 A Saket Nagar, Bhopal-462024 (M.P.) India.
Received on Saturday, 22 July 2000 08:25:25 UTC