[NLedu] Researching accessibility of Silverlight-based websites

[Jan Stedehouder]

2011/11/25 Karsten Gerloff <gerloff at fsfeurope.org>:
> Hi Jan,
>
> On Fri, Nov 25, 2011 at 01:28:33PM +0100, Jan Verlaan wrote:
>> following this topic from the beginning and notice a focus to blame MS more and more.
>> The campagne is not started specifically to bash MS and his products. In principal users must have the choice to use every system, including MS.
>> The campagne is started to force the (education)marked to comply on Open Standards resulting in no student, teacher, parent is locked out of the education building despite which system the user uses.
>> Please focus on using Open Standards and the disadvantages if not using them, do not focus on bashing MS. That's done into the past already many times unsuccessfully.


Thank you Jan.

Jan Verlaan is one of the members of the Dutch campaign team.

>
> I fully agree. Those doing the wrong thing here aren't Microsoft,
> it's the Ministry of Education (and other education authorities).
>
> Our message is a positive one, namely that Open Standards provide
> accessibility for everyone.
>
> Whether Silverlight is good software or not (for whatever "good"
> means) isn't actually the question here.
>

And thank you Karsten. I do believe that the strong support we
received in the Netherlands was the result of an early focus on Open
Standards and the simple observation that educational institutions
don't comply with the NOiV framework. These two elements give our
campaign the justification that is needed and keeps the discussion
away from technical arguments (though we might need them) and is hard
to counter by commercial entities who wouldn´t want to go on record as
being against open standards.

Regards

Jan