These are two completely different situations for a variety of
reasons. Microsoft Messenger for Mac is a Mac native program. iTunes
is not a native Windows one. It has to do with the API's and
frameworks used to build the apps. Making Microsoft Messenger
accessible on the Mac would have required very little effort on
Microsoft's part. Making iTunes accessible on Windows would require a
great deal of work on Apple's part, particularly given the poor access
infrastructure in Windows. This is a technical issue. It's like
comparing apples to oranges. If iTunes was a different sort of
application, built in a standard Windows way, then your argument would
have a little more merit. As it is, it does not.
And of course, the Windows infrastructure relies on the screen readers
to keep up with access more than the third-party developers. Which
was the whole point of my initial message.
Josh de Lioncourt
Twitter: http://twitter.com/Lioncourt
Mac-cessibility Site: http://www.Lioncourt.com
...my other mail provider is an owl...
On 30 Apr, 2008, at 11:42 AM, Rich Caloggero wrote:
Richie Gardenhire wrote:
I've written up a commentary on Microsoft Messenger for Mac 7.0.
It is a frustrating program accessibility-wise, because this is
the clearest indication we've seen yet that Microsoft simply does
not care about access. This program could have been made accessible
Well, you could say exactly the same thing about Apple. They keep
coming out with iTunes releases for both mac and Windows, but only
the mac version is accessible. Seems like it wouldn't be too hard to
add some keyboard accessibility to the main window. Its sort of
usable with the Jaws cursor, but I'd not call this "accessible".
Its the same story: mac wants blind users on their platform,
Microsoft wants blind users on their platform. So, why should they
make their products accessible on their competetor's platform?
-- Rich
