Hi folks,
I am a blind student, and I am really interested in productiveity. i would
really like to see Apple make Pagees accessable, or some other word
processor. But i am going to buy Nisus Writer, as it is incredably
accessible with VO. When i do buy it I will do a podcast perhaps on Nisus
and VO
James
----- Original Message -----
From: "Josh de Lioncourt" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: "General discussions on all topics relating to the use of Mac OS X by
theblind" <[email protected]>
Sent: Wednesday, September 13, 2006 4:49 PM
Subject: Re: iTunes' Inaccessibility and VoiceOver
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
