Hi Tony and all,
I have a theory about why Apple is handling the accessibility so, some
would say, glibly, of iTunes. I do expect that we will see an accessible
version of iTunes sooner than later.
Apple has made a commitment to accessibility. Apple is converting many
programs over to the new protocol, and while iTunes has been an
extremely important part of their success, it is not a program that is
crucial to productivity on a computer. Notice that all programs that are
important to productivity already are accessible for us, a remarkable
achievement this early on.
iTunes is a legacy application, and it is going to take a long time to
rebuild it from the ground up using the new technology. They likely only
want to have to do the overhaul once, and include as much as possible
into the initial design. None of the updates to iTunes we've got in the
past couple of years have been earthshattering, and most of it just
deals with new content being offered, like video.
Little by little, they've rolled out new services, and hyped them as
part of iTunes.
So, it is not about making a carbon program accessible at all, but
waiting for the program to be recreated from scratch. I would've loved
to see it sooner, but I am confident we will get a fully accessible
iTunes in time. I share your frustration, but I don't think Apple is
refusing to make the program accessible. We must all be patient, that's all.
Tony Morales wrote:
I'm sure most on this list are frustrated at Apple's refusal to make
iTunes accessible with VoiceOver, myself included. It has been almost
a year and a half since VoiceOver was released and to this date the
most popular application Apple offers cannot be used with it.
Yes, this is deplorable. Apple's whole strategy over the past five
years has surrounded iTunes and the iPod. Without them, there would
very likely be no Apple today.
If one looks up iTunes' history on the Internet, one will read how
iTunes was born from an application called SoundJam. SoundJam, like
iTunes of today, is/was a Carbon-based application. Discussion has
gone around and round on this list about the benefits and the
difficulties of making Carbon-based applications accessible. Yes,
making Carbon applications accessible is hard but its not impossible.
Like all things done well, it takes time to do this.
The point that is being missed, however, is that Apple has,
reluctantly or not, made a rather large commitment towards
accessibility over the past three years. We can argue about the
rationale behind VoiceOver all we like. The bottom line is that we
have VoiceOver. Further more, we've seen what Apple has in store for
us in Leopard. If we take Apple at face value for the VoiceOver
Leopard features, then VoiceOver Leopard should be a rather nice
release. However, no where on Apple's Leopard pages does it say
anything about VoiceOver working with iTunes in Leopard!
VoiceOver has existed for 18 months. Apple seems to release new
versions of iTunes about once a year, so surely somewhere in that 18
months the iTunes team had to know about VoiceOver and the importance
of accessible applications. And iTunes 7 is every bit as inaccessible
as iTunes 6 was with VoiceOver.
Again, taking Apple at face value based on the inclusion of
accessibility as one of the top 10 Leopard features, Apple is really
committed to accessibility. However, the credibility of this
commitment is in serious jeopardy when Apple sees fit to release
inaccessible versions of its most important application.
So do we now sit and wait a year for iTunes 8, hoping beyond hope that
it is at long last accessible? If not, then iTunes 9?
Thanks for reading. Just my $.37!
Tony
