Re: I Second Bill Paul's point about the importance of integration.

[Chuck Letourneau <cpl@starlingweb.com>]

Steve, 

By targeting "assistive technology solution providers", you hit the
bulls-eye.  The information would certainly have to come from "unbiased"
sources.  In my experience, if you ask manufacturers, the most common
answer is "well, it works in our shop on our equipment", which is often
true because that was the development environment.  If you ask the vendors,
they usually say "call the manufacturer (of either the assistive or
standard technology)". 

The organizations that would have the best (i.e. most unbiased) data on
compatibility would be the technical support groups that work for schools,
or agencies, or whatever, that support users of assistive computer
technology.  Also, since these people are likely already working for some
quasi-bureaucratic organization, demanding one more bit of governmental
reporting from them a couple of times a year would be business as usual.

(By the way, the last sentence above may seem like an attempt at irony. It
isn't. Irony is a crime where I come from.) <grin>
 
Regards,
Chuck Letourneau

At 19/10/98 01:27 PM , you wrote:

>I propose that Section
>508 list, as a standard, that assistive technology solution providors make
>their support databases available to Federal support organizations (in
>free-form full-text format) for the purpose of establishing an assistive
>technology, cross-product, support database.  Theoretically, this should
>help to minimize integration problems.  

-----------
W3C / WAI
Page Author Guidelines Working Group
cpl@starlingweb.com
(613) 820-2272