Ah,

Thanks for the Kind words, but I'm not a developper although I'd like to count myself a friend of developpers. We've got an apple rep here too. Patric is it?

I'm glad to see folk steping up and developping for Tiger. I would even be happy with apps I can use but that do not take advantage of VoiceOver for instance, we have the calculator in tiger which when set to speak works just fine and chess is the same way. The nice thing about tiger is that there are a broad array of solutions available. I was impressed for instance bby Day chaser which to my knowledge was not even built with accessibility in mind yet for some reason works. See, I don't know how that can be which sets me apart from developpers.

Yes, I've been around a while with a bit of apple in the early 90s with outspoken, linux on a shell and run on a dos based system, windows and dos and a bit of cpm but never could get to the stage where I was actually able to develop anything.

I also work with the W3C helping to shape and promote practices which will move accessibility forward. We all have our part to play and I am glad to be hanging out with the stars.

Thanks!

--
Jonnie Apple Seed
With his:
Hands-On Technolog(eye)s


On Feb 25, 2006, at 9:30 PM, Kafka's Daytime wrote:

Hi Scott,

Thanks for the kind words. We're just at the beginning of this effort - but if we're not working in a vacuum (i.e. we're taking part in community discussions) maybe some exciting things can happen. The current version of katieplayer was developed well before the release of 10.4 Tiger (which includes VoiceOver and a wealth of other accessibility developer resources) and intended primarily as a useful_right_now solution for RFB&D Members and other folks reading DAISY 2.0/2.2 "text + audio" books. We're now, admittedly, playing a bit of catchup - updating katieplayer to take full advantage of Mac OS X's accessibility features. In the very short term, this translates to a few updates and enhancements to beef up the current version. For later this year, it means the first native Cocoa version of katieplayer. Apple has provided some really good resources for development of accessible applications - now it's really up to us to make proper use of them. Really, the Apple developer resources are so good that there really is no excuse. The hope is - if we "put ourselves out there", allow some transparency and do our part to listen and contribute in community discussions - we may have a good shot at doing this thing right.

There are more than a few developer types and experienced technologists on this list. Here are just a few that I know of (hopefully I'm not out of line in dropping a dime on these folks...but they deserve to be outed):

Greg Kearny - has developed some open source, cross-platform DAISY production tools, done plenty of other accessibility work and is always working on something new, useful and interesting

Travis Siegel - is an experienced developer who has volunteered - on more than one occasion - to contribute to the katieplayer effort.

David Poehlman - a very respected and experienced accessibility technology expert (and skilled on all of the popular computing platforms).

...and I'm sure there are others who have been quietly contributing their expertise.

Joe

On Feb 25, 2006, at 8:39 PM, Scott Howell wrote:

You know I think that is really decent of you. I hope other developers will consider joining this list. I think all benefits in many ways. I have not yet looked at this package, but have heard enough I think I just might be doing that soon.

Scott



On Feb 25, 2006, at 3:36 PM, Kafka's Daytime wrote:

Hi All,

I'm one of the katieplayer developers and happy to contribute to any discussions regarding the katieplayer software. We still provide direct support to registered users, of course...but sometimes posting a difficulty, concern or recommendation publicly leads to a valuable public discussion. I might also be able to help with some succinct answers to support questions I've seen posted here. katieplayer development, support and outreach is very time consuming but I'll try to make myself available here often...daily, if possible.

Kind regards,

Joe W.









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