Mail Archives: opendos/1997/02/02/09:02:54
On Sat, 1 Feb 1997 jdashiel AT eagle1 DOT eaglenet DOT com wrote:
> So long as opendos documents and supports writing that will work
> with speech synthesizers by means of switches and doesn't require a
> mouse
>
> to work parts of it it should be able to be used by anyone and
> not risk violating the Americans With Disabilities Act.
> Failure to do this, combined with a business requiring
> the operating system to be used by all employees could potentially
> cause problems of an indirect legal nature. The first ones would be for
> the company, and the second ones would be the negative
> publicity coming out of such a case with opendos mentioned
> prominently. Anyone on this list who has read the
> A.D.A. probably knows the relevant sections.
Does that mean that if I write a program and either give it away or
sell it, that I *HAVE* to make it use BIOS screen writes or risk being
sued by blind users? I don't like the sounds of that at all! In
fact, a law forcing me to do so, would probably make me make sure that
my programs TOTALLY VIOLATE such laws just to promote freedom of
choice. Don't get me wrong here, I am not against such users as
yourself (as I'm sure you're aware of allready), however some programs
need to be as fast as possible, and I prefer speed over anything else
when writing my own programs. The end user is always free to choose
another product if mine doesn't suit their needs as well.
I'm all for making OpenDOS as user friendly to EVERYONE regardless of
disability, and my own programs as well. However when I hear legal
babble like the above, it makes me want to REBEL against being
openminded and program direct VGA registers, and go straight to video
memory in LFB mode. I don't mean to upset anyone with this posting,
but I really didn't like the "legal foot" above.
Sorry if I've unintentionally offended anyone.
Mike A. Harris | http://blackwidow.saultc.on.ca/~mharris
Computer Consultant | My webpage has moved and my address has changed.
My dynamic address: http://blackwidow.saultc.on.ca/~mharris/ip-address.html
mailto:mharris AT blackwidow DOT saultc DOT on DOT ca
Download OpenDOS, then: CDD C:\^DEL /ZS MSDOS.SYS IO.SYS \DOS\*.*
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