[Athen] Accessible Office Export Plug-In That's NOT UIUC

[Sesock, Kevin A]

I suppose there's no harm in sharing my thoughts about UIUC, since I've
been pretty vocal about them before. I didn't want to start a flame war,
but this list has been very mature in the past so I trust each of you to
overlook my lack of maturity (I jest, I think).

Here's the text of the message I sent to one of the listsers when he
asked me for the same. If you guys don't want to hear my rant, I suppose
then this message should be immediately diverted to the trash.

Thanks for putting up with my crap.


Quoth:

The way that the community was misled was blatantly vile: I've pretty
much talked the topic to death, about how UIUC pretty much dangled a
carrot in front of the community, got people to do beta testing, then
started charging an outrageous price by many people's standards for a
tool that should be a basic feature of already expensive software that
campuses have already had to spend nonexistent funds on. To top it off,
the older (and significantly more free) versions of the software, while
immature by the standards of the newer, are unsupported, unavailable,
and treated as though they don't even exist anymore. 

I'm a huge proponent of open source software: We've experienced vendor
lock-in before, and it's come back to haunt us when a vendor decides to
remove a feature that our environment finds vital, we have to scramble
around to find an alternative or beg the vendor to reinstate it. In
effect, we end up having to mold our environment around the software we
purchase, not mold the software into our environment. Open source
software is not only cheaper, it helps prevent this from happening to
us.

Instead, what UIUC has done, as a public institution, is decided to
operate more off the profit model, thinking this is the only way that
development would ever get done. The open source model has shown, in
several circumstances, that this is not the only development method,
that people really are willing to take good products and make them
better without the need for profit, simply because it needs to be done.
I know that if the Accessible Office Export Plug-In were open source, I
would certainly be willing to help.

We don't have an unlimited budget: UIUC seems to think that $39.95 is
cheap, but for an institution that produces a huge amount of office
documents that all need to be published accessibly, the cost goes up
when you think of the number of licenses that would need to be bought.
I've had a hard enough time justifying the cost of legitimate assistive
technology software that has a direct positive effect on students
educations. Justifying this is even more difficult. Add on to this the
added cost of supporting yet another piece of software that has to have
our rather rigid environment molded around it, and the actual man-hours
associated with this, and we're talking about something that's just
plain unconscionable.

There are other reasons why I think UIUC has done a Bad Thing(TM), and
they mostly revolve around the lack of desire to understand these issues
from our perspective, or the locked-in mentality they have that their
software development methodology is the only one that will work, but
understanding these are mostly dependent on understanding some of the
conversations that occurred on a few of the other lists I peruse that
also happened to contain the director responsible for the Office Export
Wizard.

That's it in a nutshell. Feel free to let me know your thoughts. 


Kevin A. Sesock, A+, Net+, CNA, MCSA
Assistive Technology Specialist
Student Disability Services
Division of Student Affairs
Oklahoma State University
 
http://access.it.okstate.edu
 
"Hail to the speaker, hail to the knower; joy to he who has understood,
delight to they who have listened." - Odin

-----Original Message-----
From: athen-bounces at athenpro.org [mailto:athen-bounces at athenpro.org] On
Behalf Of Cassandra Tex
Sent: Friday, February 09, 2007 10:47 AM
To: Access Technologists in Higher Education Network
Subject: Re: [Athen] Accessible Office Export Plug-In That's NOT UIUC

Greetings Kevin,
There are a handful of folks on our campus who have used LecShare Pro.
We've liked the product and the price does seem reasonable.

However, we're looking for a campus solution and are looking at all of
our options.  I'm interested in your experiences (sounds like they
weren't positive) with the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign's
Office Export Wizard
plug-in.   LecShare is only for PowerPoint presentations, where it 
looks like the UIUC tool is for PowerPoint, Word, and Excel. The
additional option of creating accessible Excel worksheets is desirable,
especially if we can get one tool that will serve many functions.
However, before jumping in, I would like to know why you don't like this
tool.  If you wouldn't mind sharing with me, I would appreciate it.

Thanks.
Cassandra Tex
Assistive Technology Specialist
Humboldt State University

At 06:47 AM 2/9/2007, you wrote:

>Thanks all, I'll give LecShare a try, but I'm still slightly peeved

that

>I'm going to have to find even more money elsewhere just to be able to

>do this.

>

>I suppose it's the principle of the thing.

>

>Anyone know of any Open Source projects to accomplish this same thing?

>I've asked before elsewhere, but as that was quite some time ago, I had

>hopedthat someone else would have gotten to work on a solution.

>

>Anyway, thanks all.

>

>Kevin A. Sesock, A+, Net+, CNA, MCSA

>Assistive Technology Specialist

>Student Disability Services

>Division of Student Affairs

>Oklahoma State University

>

>http://access.it.okstate.edu

>

>"Hail to the speaker, hail to the knower; joy to he who has understood,

>delight to they who have listened." - Odin

>

>-----Original Message-----

>From: athen-bounces at athenpro.org [mailto:athen-bounces at athenpro.org] On

>Behalf Of Stacy L. Smith

>Sent: Friday, February 09, 2007 8:35 AM

>To: Access Technologists in Higher Education Network; Berkowitz, Daniel

>J

>Subject: Re: [Athen] Accessible Office Export Plug-In That's NOT UIUC

>

>I've been using LecShare and love it.  (www.lecshare.com)

>

>Doesn't Flash put the captions over the slide itself?  (In other words,

>your captioning may be covering part of the text of the slide.)  There

>was a presentation on PPT at the Higher Ground Conference....should be

>on your CD if you purchased one.

>

>Stacy

>

>Quoting "Berkowitz, Daniel J" <djbrky at bu.edu>:

>

> > I'll echo Sean. I saw a demo of LecShare at Accessing Higher Ground

> > and picked up a copy on the spot. Given the price it was worth

getting

>

> > a copy to try out. I have used it to create accessible version of

> > PPT's for many presentations - including this one:

> > http://www.colorado.edu/atconference/etext_production.htm

> > <http://www.colorado.edu/atconference/etext_production.htm>

> >

> > It's a good basic program that does what it promises.

> >

> >

> >

> >

> > =========================

> > Daniel Berkowitz - Assistant Director

> > Boston University Office of Disability Services

> > 19 Deerfield Street, 2nd floor

> > Boston, MA 02215

> >

> > (617) 353-3658 (office)

> > (617) 353-9646 (fax)

> > djbrky at bu.edu <mailto:djbrky at bu.edu>  (eMail) www.bu.edu/disability

> >

> > ________________________________

> >

> > From: athen-bounces at athenpro.org on behalf of Sean Keegan

> > Sent: Thu 2/8/2007 12:46 PM

> > To: 'Access Technologists in Higher Education Network'

> > Subject: Re: [Athen] Accessible Office Export Plug-In That's NOT

UIUC

> >

> >

> > Hi Kevin,

> >

> > You may want to check out LecShare.  Similar in concept (different

in

> > technical functionality), LecShare can take a PPT file and convert

it

> > to several different accessible formats.  Their higher end product

> > LecShare Pro can also support the addition of voice media to slides

> > (and do some basic automated captioning).  Site is:

> > http://www.lecshare.com

> >

> > Take a look at the trial version - it is fully functioning and just

> > embeds a LecShare watermark on each exported format so that you do

not

>

> > use the trial version for prime time.  Works for Macs and PCs, so

that

>

> > is a nice feature.  Currently it only works with PowerPoint files,

so

> > if you are looking for Word or Excel support, then it is the Office

> > Export Wizard (aka Accessible Web Publishing Wizard).

> >

> > I have also had a number of faculty approach me regarding the use of

> > Camtasia to deliver PPT content (obviously a more expensive

solution).

>

> > The result is just a Flash video of the presentation with a

voice-over

>

> > narration (this is somewhat similar to one of the exports of

LecShare

> > Pro also does).  The current version of Camtasia also provides a

tool

> > for captioning the presentation.  It does appear to have many

> > customization options, but I am looking into this a bit more.

> > Probably not exactly what you are looking for, but it is something

> > that more faculty appear to be doing.

> >

> > Take care,

> > Sean

> >

> >

> > ________________________________

> >

> > From: athen-bounces at athenpro.org [mailto:athen-bounces at athenpro.org]

> > On Behalf Of Sesock, Kevin A

> > Sent: Thursday, February 08, 2007 9:10 AM

> > To: Access Technologists in Higher Education Network

> > Subject: [Athen] Accessible Office Export Plug-In That's NOT UIUC

> >

> >

> > There are a few who have been witness to my complaints about the

> > University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign's Office Export Wizard

> > plug-in. I'm not going to get into that now (if anyone is

interested,

> > mail me for a sample tirade off-list), but I do need a good

> > alternative to convert Powerpoint and other Office documents to an

> > accessible HTML alternative.

> >

> > Up until 1.06, the Illinois tool was free and didn't nag or annoy,

and

>

> > if anyone has that version, that would be helpful (I have lost my

> > copy), otherwise, anyone have other recommendations?

> >

> > Kevin A. Sesock, A+, Net+, CNA, MCSA

> > Assistive Technology Specialist

> > Student Disability Services

> > Division of Student Affairs

> > Oklahoma State University

> >

> > http://access.it.okstate.edu <http://access.it.okstate.edu/>

> >

> > "Hail to the speaker, hail to the knower; joy to he who has

> > understood, delight to they who have listened." - Odin

> >

> >

> > _______________________________________________

> > Athen mailing list

> > Athen at athenpro.org

> > http://athenpro.org/mailman/listinfo/athen_athenpro.org

> >

> >

>

>

>Stacy Smith

>Adaptive Technology Specialist

>Disability Support Services

>202 Holton Hall

>Kansas State University

>Manhattan, KS  66506

>Phone:  785-532-6441

>FAX:  785-532-6457

>Email:  stacylee at ksu.edu

>

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