Hi Will, At 9:07 +0000 16/3/06, Will Thoms wrote:
I've answered your points as part of the text. Thanks for joining the email list. its brilliant to have another developer on board communicating so directly with end users.
thanks for the welcome. Being unfamiliar with how blind readers deal with multiple nested comments in an email, please correct me at any time when I am making things illegible.
Regarding your remark:
>From what I've heard this isn't correct. At least one company were interested in producing a screen reader but Apple wouldn't provide enough information about some of the OS X code even though the company involved were under a Non disclosure agreement.
Well, that sounds very much like Apple, they do not like to reveal that much, though I must say my collaboration with them has mostly been very pleasant. While their sales folks may know little about accessibility, their engineers seem to become more and more knowledgeable and aware every year in see them at WWDC.
Regarding your remark:
Since Voice Over has been released I've come to realise that there is already very little stimulus for larger third parties to spend time and money making their programs accessible. A large amount of programs on the Mac are cross platform and as far as I know and I could be wrong, it's very hard to make these kind of programs accessible with out producing an individual code base for each operating system.
To me this sounds like silly excuses. Of course some work may be involved, but most of time as long as standard interface elements are used the accessibility comes for free. For non-standard elements some work is involved but is not that hard. I think the hardest part is making custom text entry areas accessible, but I think this in only one of the many things that should be done when porting from other platforms. If a developer wants to make a real Mac program there are many other areas requiring some custom platform specific work. I think the real problem is that some developers simply do not care, or their management does not care enough. Yet others simply do not realize what needs to be done. I think it is mainly an issue of priorities. I am confident that programs will be come more and more accessible as this has many other benefits including automated testing.
Regarding your remark:
An improved Voice Over should use all kinds of dirty tricks to game information from a programs user interface. Most other screen readers have been doing this for years and its absolutely necessary. With out it a huge amount of programs will remain inaccessible just because Voice Over and Apple takes the floored position that they've provided a product that works in optimum conditions and the third party developers should stop spending time improving there own software for commercial reasons and rewrite parts of there user interface just because, well, erm, it would be nice.
I do not agree with this. With the technology now build into Mac OS X since 10.2 there should be no need for dirty tricks anymore. Those kind of accessible foundations were simply missing in earlier operating systems. Dirty tricks lead to crashes, to security issues and to things breaking whenever an application is updated or localized. I personally believe that if Apple does not take a firm stand in this the incentive for developers to play by the rules will simply be absent. Apple rules typically work in the end (like the Edit menu and many keyboard shortcuts being identical across applications) but may take time to seep through. At last years WWDC there were for example many sessions where Apple stressed accessibility aspects. They are really hammering on developers, I think even one of the major keynotes covered this as one of the key topics to address when developing for Mac OS X. Sure, that means that early adopters are left in the dark when trying to use certain applications (including some of Apple's own), but I think it will lead to a more stable and powerful platform in the end. To sum up, I think VoiceOver is a huge educator for Apple engineers and third-party developer and I am confident that the accessibility foundations of Mac OS X are very good and well thought out. We just need to keep pushing more developers to adopt the simple work involved in making their stuff play nice with VoiceOver. If you want to hammer on Apple, don't hammer on them about VoiceOver not doing dirty tricks, but hammer on their lack of accessibility in all the iApps. I think we have all reasons to complain about them not supporting their own accessibility APIs and guidelines!
Regarding your remark:
IF a third party released out a good quality screen reader that included access to programs such as I Tunes and other major products not yet accessible to Voice over people would spend 500 to 1000$. Obviously not every body would, but on windows people have been happily selling screen readers at that price for years. There are cheap screen readers for the Pc that do an ok job but VI customers still spend the extra to get the very best access available.
I am sure a thinking Pro user would be ready to send that money and earn it back in terms of productivity gains. However, whether it would make business sense for a third-party to compete with VoiceOver I am not sure. Maybe an open source initiative would work?
Regarding your remark:
, There isn't any guaranty that 10.5 will include updates that I'm aware of, its just a case of every body hoping. Personally I do think there will be improvements included but releasing updates for a screen reader every 2 years is ludicrous. Especially when Apple distribute other updates through out the year for other products.
Those regular updates are largely bug fixes, not new features. Of course not being a VoiceOver user I have no idea whether Apple has been fixing simple bugs in VoiceOver or not. I am also confident there will be an update to VoiceOver in 10.5, though have no idea how substantial. I have not heard that the VoiceOver team has been let go, so they must be doing something :-)
Regarding your remark:
On a more cheerful note, I do really appreciate the efforts you're making in producing access software for the Mac. Since coming across Proloquo I realised that it isn't meant to be a screen reader in any way and provides access in other ways. Good luck with its development and congratulations for making it Intel compatible already.
Thanks, and I do plan to do more for low vision users in the future. It is just that my roots are with the development of solutions for people with physical disabilities so low vision is a new terrain for me and I am learning as we go.
By the way, Proloquo itself is Intel compatible but the Acapela voices we use not yet. We are working on that with Acapela and I am confident that the next free update to Proloquo will be fully Universal.
Thanks for all your feedback. Glad to have joined this list! Cheers, david. -- -------------------------------------------------------------- David Niemeijer, CTO AssistiveWare(R) [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.assistiveware.com/ --------------------------------------------------------------
