This week I had the privilege of attending an accessibility-oriented presentation of Windows Vista. The company representative said all the right things, but when it came time for the live demonstration, someone in the audience asked to see the improved Narrator and someone else asked him to enable a low vision scheme. As it was, the default font was so tiny that almost no one in the audience could read the screen! Much to his embarrassment, he tried to invoked both features but was so unfamiliar with the quote new and improved unquote interface that he was not successful.
Anyway, I was able to jot down the text from the most telling screen: <blockquote> In general, applications that are compliant with Active Accessibility will need to be rewritten using UI Automation to take full advantage of the new client environment of Vista. </blockquote> As I understand it, MSAA enabled productivity applications should continue to work as UIA is backwards compatible. Most AT, including screen readers and magnifiers, will have to be rewritten and Microsoft's expectation is that this will happen within six months of Vista shipping (should be January). It is possible that Narrator will be sufficient for undemanding home use. Among other things, it should be reasonably compatible with IE. The representative had Candidate Release 1, but again, did not back up his assertions with a demonstration. In the meantime, the official UIA is sparse on details, still references Longhorn, and (despite an April 2006 date stamp) it would seem the content has not been updated since May 2005. http://www.microsoft.com/enable/at/uia.aspx I still have no idea what Microsoft means by "Cross-Platform Accessibility Model".
