Ricky,
The answer is yes and no.
First the yes part. Those programmers that can afford to go to
Apple's annual World Wide Developer Conference are increasingly being
exposed to the importance of accessibility. There are sessions
dedicated to adding accessibility and more and more of the other
sessions also mention accessibility topics in passing, some of the
key sessions on the first day have also covered accessibility in the
last two years. So Apple is doing a lot of evangelizing in this
respect. The topic is also covered in articles on Apple's developer
site accessible to everyone. And, then of course Apple has an
accessibility email discussion list for programmers to discuss
accessibility related issues. So if anyone wants the information on
adding accessibility it is all there. Are you listening iTunes and
iWorks engineers....
Now for the no part. I do not think there is any real grass-roots
campaign to push developers to make use of that information. Whether
it would really work I do not know. People can also get dismissive if
they are bombarded with standard letters. I think the best approach
would be to campaign among users that they do not just sit and wait
for accessibility to be improved for their favorite applications, but
that they all individually start writing their own personal emails to
developers of those apps. Making a list of potential beta testers
might be helpful so that when a developer or company is responsive
you can email the people on that list and suggest that if they want
to use application X they write the developer or something like that.
But also here, an email bombardment would not work. From personal
experience I know it is better to work with a small but good team of
testers than have to deal with several tents of testers.
david.
At 3:47 PM +1100 11/3/06, Ricky Buchanan wrote:
Most of the programs I use that are not Macintosh ones are written
by individual programmers or very small companies. I think that most
of the time, when programs like these are not accessible it is
because the programmers are not aware that it is possible or don't
think it is economical.
It seems to me that we have an opportunity to solve this by
educating people. I think that if we get some information, like how
many people with a disability use Os X computers... and put together
resources that point the programmers at the information about making
their software accessible. It seems to me that we have a chance to
make a difference. It might even be possible to make a list of users
with disabilities who are willing to do beta testing of
accessibility, and of experienced programmers like some on this list
(hi David!) who may be willing to give advice to programmers who
need a hand with accessibility features.
I imagine getting the information out via a widely advertised
website and by making available a skeleton of a letter that users
could adapt to email to developers of programs that they would like
to use but can't because of accessibility problems.
Has this been done before?
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David Niemeijer, CTO
AssistiveWare(R)
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
http://www.assistiveware.com/
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