Open Doc Format and the accessibility gap

JanC wrote:
> On 11/3/05, Henrik Nilsen Omma <henrik at ubuntu.com> wrote:
> 
>>Andy Updegrove writes in his standards blog about how the efforts to
>>move Massachusetts local government onto the Open Document Format may be
>>derailed by the lack of accessibility support in OpenOffice. Many of the
>>Windows based accessibility tools such as JAWS and Dragon Naturally
>>Speaking work better with MS-Office. This is partly because it's the
>>dominant Office suite, but it is also true that accessibility support in
>>many of 'our' applications like OpenOffice and Firefox is lacking. This
>>will continue to be a problem when trying to introduce FOSS into local
>>and national government because the helpful MS-lobbyists will always be
>>on hand to point out the accessibility gap (and cite Sect. 508) and the
>>decision makes have no choice but to take that very seriously.
> 
> 
> How bad is accessibility in OOo & Firefox?
> 
> This _is_ important, not because we could miss government contracts,
> but because everybody should be able to use Ubuntu.
> OTOH, I know only 2 blind computer users, and both use linux with
> console applications and a "braille rule" (is that a correct
> translation?).

Red Hat hosts  a list for blind Linux users. I suggest interested souls 
join it. It's not centred on RedHat software, it's a general discussion 
list and includes Debian and other users (quite likely Ubuntu by now).

Beware, some of them are touchy. At least, they were when I was there.