Joe, your right and there are some very knowledgeable folks and a
very helpful group at that. I think software developers like your
company are like a poster-child for the accessibility of software.
Scott
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:
