Hi Hank,
Eek! I'm not saying 'no' outright but I am one of those worker bees
tasked with one of the aforementioned application rewrites. I am,
walking the walk and biting the proverbial bullet. :)
The project taking up most of my time right now is katieplayer Cocoa.
For the moment, I'll probably watch and wait - see if somebody takes
up the iTunes access challenge. If there are no takers, I'll likely
take a crack at it, a la C-Speech.
http://www.kafkasdaytime.com/cspeech/
Apologies for not stepping up and making a firm commitment right off
the bat.
Joe
On Sep 13, 2006, at 4:01 PM, hank smith wrote:
can you pick up the project as far as a front end?
----- Original Message ----- From: "Kafka's Daytime"
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To: "General discussions on all topics relating to the use of Mac
OS X by theblind" <[email protected]>
Sent: Wednesday, September 13, 2006 12:49 PM
Subject: Re: iTunes' Inaccessibility and VoiceOver
On Sep 13, 2006, at 2:47 PM, Alastair Campbell wrote:
Joe mentioned that iTunes is built differently because they
maintain it on both OSX and Windows. I use it on both, it
appears pretty much identical.
This is an incidental clarification, but I meant to (and perhaps
didn't, or at least nor eloquently) distinguish between apps
developed and maintained for more than one platform (like iTunes)
vs. apps that are maintained for Mac OS X only i.e. the
pertinent comparison is not between iTunes Windows + Mac but
iTunes and other apps that aren't deployed on platforms other
than Mac OS X.
However, that doesn't bode well for it being re-built from the
ground up, as Apple would then have to maintain two versions -
probably not economical.
Ah, the truth might be a little muddier...perhaps fortunately for
those of us who want to see iTunes fully accessible on Mac OS X.
1. It may not be necessary (or even desirable) to re-build the
application from the ground up to ensure its accessibility on both
platforms.
2. The bulk of the underlying codebase might be maintained more
or less as is and the User Interface can be abstracted by a level
or two (speaking deliberately conceptually here) so that, perhaps,
most of the special-cases are maintained at the abstracted, UI
level (with few or no changes required in the lower level code).
In short, there are quite a few options in between cross-platform
and inaccessible + cross-platform, accessible and maintained
expensively as separate applications.
3. The economics might not be so cut and dry, either. Apple has
made some pretty bold short term moves from time to time to help
ensure better things down the road. Even though we, quite
justifiably, see iTunes (in)accessibility as a major issue - it
is only one in a number of such major issues for which Apple will
have to bite the bullet, as it were. I think the long term
economics might lead one to guess reasonably that iTunes *will*
eventually be fully accessible. How, when it will happen and why
it has happened yet is more difficult to hash out.
Two solutions come to mind:
1. Apple build a script or customisation into Voiceover to deal
with iTunes. I wouldn't know if that's possible, but it isn't
how they have generally approached things so far.
2. Someone (any programmer) could build an accessible widget for
iTunes (or adapt one that's there already).
Anyone tried building widgets? I'm not sure how much of the
functionality you could access via a widget, I assume play lists
and searches would be very difficult.
Ah, there was some good list conversation on this quite a while
back. A few of us bounced around the idea of building an
application that would provide an accessible front end to iTunes.
This is most certainly doable. I did some initial work back then
but ended up shelving the idea since I (wrongly) guessed that
iTunes would be accessible by now. Travis also fiddled with the
idea, I believe, at least at the reasearch/conceptual/thought
experiment level. Sadly, he and his insight/expertise are at
least temporarily gone from the list.
I don't, personally, believe that Apple is going to build this
access into VoiceOver and, for the long term - though it would
neatly satisfy a short term need - perhaps that is not the best
way to resolve the problem. For the short term, it's probably
best for a third party to develop a stopgap solution...keeping in
mind that ultimately this will almost certainly be done the right
way with iTunes directly accessible via VoiceOver.
I guess. :)
Joe
Kind regards,
-Alastair
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