On 25/05/2010 4:26 AM, Pete Brunet wrote: > It seems there was talk at one time of a "screen reader present" flag, > or more correctly an "assistive technology present" flag. Was this ever > implemented? There has been a system screen reader flag in Windows for a long time now. See the SPI_GETSCREENREADER and SPI_SETSCREENREADER values for uiAction in the SystemParametersInfo function: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms724947%28VS.85%29.aspx
However, this flag is trouble and should not be relied upon. (Some applications such as Skype do rely on it and we've had all sorts of trouble as a result.) The problem is that it is a system wide flag and it is not intelligently tracked in any way. A screen reader sets it on startup and clears it on termination. If the screen reader doesn't terminate gracefully, it remains set. If you start two screen readers and then exit one, it will be cleared, even though there's still another screen reader running. From a principle standpoint, it encourages developers to do silly things such as drastically changing their visual UI when a "screen reader" is detected, rather than implementing correct, unobtrusive accessibility. The better solution is to watch for WM_GETOBJECT and enable accessibility APIs dynamically. Jamie -- James Teh Vice President NV Access Inc, ABN 61773362390 Email: [email protected] Web site: http://www.nvaccess.org/ _______________________________________________ Accessibility-ia2 mailing list [email protected] https://lists.linux-foundation.org/mailman/listinfo/accessibility-ia2
