who do I email to get itunes accessible and garage band accessible?
----- Original Message -----
From: "David Niemeijer" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: "General discussions on all topics relating to the use of Mac OS X by
theblind" <[email protected]>
Sent: Friday, November 03, 2006 10:37 AM
Subject: Re: Requesting accessible programs
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?
--
--------------------------------------------------------------
David Niemeijer, CTO
AssistiveWare(R)
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
http://www.assistiveware.com/
--------------------------------------------------------------
