[Athen] Microsoft Word versus Open Office

Ron Stewart ron.stewart at dolphinusa.com
Wed Sep 12 14:34:21 PDT 2007


Afternoon all,

Having watched this discussion for a while I feel it is important to note
that the decision to move from a commercial product to an open-source
product may be totally out of the decision making authority of your office.


There are many colleges and universities, and large corporate IT
organizations as well, that have explored OpenSource solutions for a number
of years. Some with positive experiences and others with very negative
ones. Most have not been able to realize the promised return on investment
because of the need to maintain duplicative IT infrastructures and the
limited hardware supported by most OpenSource implimentations.

The gains Dann's staff have been able to make with OpenSource tools at the
front end of the Daisy production cycle are truly amazing. How
generalizable they are outside a sophisticated support structure is a
question that still needs to be answered. There is also some interesting
work going on in the Mac space with OpenSource Daisy tool development

Speaking in my role of working with a large AT manufacturer the quandary we
get into with OpenSource and with ODF in particular is where is the return
on investment for the work? For a lot of those in the mainstream IT space,
the most viable end for most OpenSource projects is the commercialization of
the underlying technologies developed.

Ron Stewart

-----Original Message-----
From: athen-bounces at athenpro.org [mailto:athen-bounces at athenpro.org] On
Behalf Of Berkowitz, Daniel J
Sent: Wednesday, September 12, 2007 4:59 PM
To: Access Technologists in Higher Education Network; Access Technologists
in Higher Education Network
Subject: Re: [Athen] Microsoft Word versus Open Office

Kes,

I can inform you with absolute conviction that the development team at the
Open Office Foundation is absolutely committed to making their software as
accessible as possible. I know a few of these folks personally and know of
outside people working on solutions to problems they may not have even know
existed.

They are also completely open to feedback and in the year or so we have been
using Oo for DAISY Production process have actually incorporated several
fixes and improvements we have recommended. You may not that in less than a
year Oo has moved from version 2.0 to version 2.2.1. Just try and get
Microsoft to discover, test, implement, and support that many improvements
in such a short period of time.

I know of your skills and your commitment as well and know that the Open
Office Foundation would welcome you into their fold.

Cheers --- Dann



=========================
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
<https://xmsweb.bu.edu/exchweb/bin/redir.asp?URL=http://www.bu.edu/disabilit
y>

________________________________

From: athen-bounces at athenpro.org on behalf of Kestrell
Sent: Wed 9/12/2007 3:34 PM
To: Access Technologists in Higher Education Network
Subject: Re: [Athen] Microsoft Word versus Open Office



Dan,

Yes, I do find the accessibility of open source applications something of a
hot button especially as open source so often comes with the promise of
increased usability, improved memory resource allocation, and other
usability features which, I feel, are all that more important to assistive
technology users. Add to this assuarances I have received from developers of
OO that it is accessible, despite my finding it not so, and I get a bit
disgruntled wondering if the OO folks are as concerned with accessibility as
they claim.

The irony of tools which promise increased accessibility turning out to be
not very accessible to assistive tech users continues to make me feel I have
a humor impairment.

Kes

----- Original Message -----
From: "Crabb, Nolan" <Crabb.15 at osu.edu>
To: "Access Technologists in Higher Education Network" <athen at athenpro.org>
Sent: Wednesday, September 12, 2007 2:23 PM
Subject: Re: [Athen] Microsoft Word versus Open Office



> I've been fascinated with open Office for years, but I think Robert's

> definitely onto something here: It's screen reader access, particularly

> for Writer, isn't exactly stellar. At one time, it was absolutely out

> of reach. I've never had Word crash on 200 or 300 page books, but maybe

> it's the graphics. A lot of the stuff I use isn't very graphics

> intensive.

>

> Regards,

> Nolan

>

>

>

> Nolan Crabb

> Director of Assistive Technology

> The Ohio State University

> 2054 Drake Center, 1849 Cannon Dr., Columbus, OH 43210

>

> Ph. (614) 735-8688

> E-mail: crabb.15 at osu.edu

>

>

>

> _______________________________________________

> Athen mailing list

> Athen at athenpro.org

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



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