For a long time now, I have been a user of Sendspace. For those
unfamiliar with it, Sendspace is a service that enables one to send
large files over the net. Basically, you upload a file to sendspace
and specify a recipient Email address. The recipient receives an
Email containing a link to download the file.
Uploading files can be accomplished via a web interface, or by using
the "Sendspace wizard", an application that allows you to easily
upload and download multiple files and folders. On the windows side
of things, this Sendspace wizard is very accessible, however, I was
incredibly disappointed with the Mac version which worked horribly
with VoiceOver. I submitted feedback concerning the accessibility
issues and was surprised to receive a positive reply within an hour.
According to the reply, the fine folks at Sendspace were aware of the
accessibility issues, consider accessibility a priority and hope to
have a VO compatible version out within a week, or two. I replied
indicating that I'd be willing to help beta test and was offered a
beta version for testing. Furthermore, they indicated that I could
freely share the beta with anyone interested in testing with the
understanding that it's a beta and as such, they know things are
broken. They're hoping to have an official version released within a
week, or two, so we may have to move pretty quick on this one. That
having been said, I'm very impressed with Sendspaces commitment to
accessibility on both the Windows and Mac versions of their software.
before providing the links, let me explain how the wizard seems to be
working as although it's about 90% more accessible than the current
version, it's not totally there yet. On the program's main screen,
you'll find two "unknown" areas in addition to a standard toolbar and
menu bar. The second, or bottom of these "unknown" areas just dings
at me when I try to interact with it, so I'm not exactly sure what it
is. I suspect it's a transfer window or something, but don't know for
sure. Now we get to the top "unknown" area and this is where things
get a bit confusing. Interacting with the top unknown area results in
two additional unknown areas. The first of these is the local
browsing pane and the other is the remote pane. Both of these areas
are very similar and for the most part very accessible. The file
lists, both local and remote are displayed in tables. Unfortunately,
the only way I've found to navigate to parent folder is to use the
"move to parent button" cmd+up arrow doesn't do anything. You can tab
somewhat around the wizard -- tab brings you through all the buttons
and table of the local file pane, then the buttons and table of the
remote pane and finally a third table which shows on-going transfers.
Occasionally, I've noticed that keyboard focus seems to get messed up
-- switching out and back into the wizard window seems to fix this for
whatever reason. In the options dialog, things are pretty accessible
-- there are a few "unknown" areas but these can be interacted with.
OK, now for the links. In order to use the wizard, you'll need to
have a sendspace account -- a free account works with the wizard I
believe, but with a paid account, you can of course do more i.e.
multiple transfers and that sort of thing. You can sign up one of two
ways -- either go directly to www.sendspace.com or if you want to be
nice to me, use my referral link
http://www.sendspace.com/invite/puhj8v which which allows me to earn
points regardless of what kind of account you choose. The wizard
itself can be downloaded at
http://www.sendspace.com/file/wq0g65 .
Finally, I'd just like to say that I think we have a great opportunity
here to make a good product even better. It's wonderful that they are
not only interested in improving accessibility, but are actually doing
something about it. My hope is that with constructive feedback,
they'll go a long way and make this app work.
thanks,
Steve
