Hi all,
Following are links to a couple of articles available at ADC which I
thought some might be interested in. They're articles I've found
particularly useful/helpful.
The first article distinguishes between the standard user interface
classes in Cocoa which, to quote the document, "support a rich
baseline of accessibility"...for which you "typically need to make
only minor adjustments to support accessibility."
In the apps I'm working on currently, I'm using all standard user
interface classes so building in accessibility is
straightforward...almost a gimme.
The article also touches on "custom views" for which the developer
needs to "override certain methods [of Cocoa accessibility]" or
provide "their own full implementation [of the Cocoa accessibility
methods]."
Even if the technical nitty gritty is not for you, the article might
be worth a quick read...gove you an idea of what kind of
accessibility features developers get for "free" with Cocoa.
Here's the direct link to the above-described article:
Enabling Accessibility in your Cocoa Application
http://developer.apple.com/ue/accessibility/accessibilityincocoa.html
And the following is really good, more map-of-the-earth i.e. a bit
less technical nitty gritty and perhaps suited for a broader audience.
Universal Access: Computers That Everyone Can use
http://developer.apple.com/ue/accessibility/universalaccess.html
One of the salient points from the above article relevant to our
earlier discussions:
--begin excerpt
"You can access-enable your application by taking the steps described
in the following sections. Applications that use no custom user-
interface widgets will require, in general, very little work because
the default widgets already contain most of the coding needed to
support Universal Access. The more custom user-interface widgets an
application uses, the more effort is required to access-enable it."
--end excerpt
Earlier I mentioned standardization and sustainability and Yvonne
spoke on user experience and asked about developer motivation to use
the Apple frameworks and make applications accessible.
Salient points excerpted from the same article:
--begin excerpt
"Modifying your application to use the appropriate Carbon or Cocoa
frameworks may require significant work, but doing so has three
important benefits
It accomplishes much of the work needed to make your application
access-enabled.
It decreases the amount of work necessary to give your application
full keyboard access.
It extends the effective lifetime of your application, because many
of Apple's future innovations and performance increases will be built
upon these frameworks (especially Cocoa).
Making your application access-enabled is part of delivering a
professional product. Doing so today will give you a competitive
advantage over your competitors. In the future, it will be a
checklist feature whose absence will automatically remove your
application from customers' consideration. Simply put, access-
enabling your application is the right thing to do—for both you and
your customers."
--end excerpt
Enjoy,
Joe
