Several have touched on the main thing that is wrong with
present-day computing.  We have lost flexibility which is why some of us got
in this racket in the first place.:-)

        As for flexibility, Windows is garbage.  I know exactly of what I
speak so don't call me an idiot just yet.  Those of us who are either totally
blind or who don't have enough usable vision to see the monitor have been
doing battle with Microsoft (Mostly talking and not being heard), for several
years.  Their position is that access by people who use speech or Braille
output is not Microsoft's problem and should be left to third parties who
can develop speech output software and hardware.  People who live in the
United States or who see United States Television may have seen a gentleman
on CBS's Sixty Minutes program who was blinded in an accident and who runs
a small company that writes one of the half-dozen or so access programs that
allows a blind person to use Windows and to read any text being printed
on the screen, at least in theory.

        In fact, it is a no-win proposition.  The theory behind screen readers
as such interface programs are commonly called is pretty simple.  Any text
that is to be printed in a window should go through some standard mechanism
that allows one to intercept the characters and send them to the speech
driver while letting them continue to the screen.  At Microsoft, anarchy
reigns supreme and developers are allowed to cobble together any old screen
output routine they want if they whine loud enough.  A screen reader program
is no more capable of intercepting these odd-ball interfaces than I am
of knowing each of your thoughts as you read this unless you speak up and
say something.

        One of the worst offenders in slash-and-burn software development
is Microsoft, itself so they call it creativity, of course.

        The result is that when one runs one of the screen readers with
Windows, one can list directories, set the clock, copy and delete files
all day long.  It's just when you want to do some useful work that the trouble
starts.

        Some programs do work pretty well.  Others like Microsoft word
kind of work, but the user of the program may not get error indications or
other important (essential) messages because they bypassed the output hook.

        Other common business and academic programs like Lotus Notes are
utterly useless in their present form.

        I want to be perfectly clear that this is not a problem that is
actually caused by the graphical nature of Windows and how certain concepts
are difficult for blind people, bla bla bla, etc.  Anybody who doesn't
understand such concepts as above, below, right, and left, probably needs
to be doing something else and should have all sharp objects removed from the
area.  This is simply a problem of poor technical design and the enormous
expense and frustration of trying to retrofit sanity in to something that
has none to begin with.

        I will use DOS and UNIX until something better comes along.  Grant
it, people who are blind make up a small percentage of computer users, but
we know why you can't run your good old batch scripts and automated processes.
The richest man in America simply has learned how to package two tiny left
shoes and sell this package to everybody and tell them that it fits.

        The GUI is not the problem. Windows is.

Martin McCormick WB5AGZ  Stillwater, OK
OSU Center for Computing and Information Services Data Communications Group