Hi: I am trying to work with Google on a project to make one of their products more accessible. They are setting up their stylesheet to use the audio and speech Media Types since that complies with the W3c standards. Here is something I pulled from the web. Is this still the position of Gw Micro? Note about Window-Eyes: GW Micro are quoted as having said in December 2003 that they have no plans to support aural style sheets in Window-Eyes (see addendum to Shortened forms on the Web )... With the fast development of ria applications this would seem something that would fall naturally into the Screen Reader 's lap. In those days they were talking about talking browsers, ya, sure, the folks I talked to say it is a screen reader function since making a page communicate is their area of expertise and not a browser developer's area of expertise. Besides, the user already is using a speech engine so having a browser duplicate that functionallity would be redundant and likely confusing ... Anyway, are you going to support CSS Media Types or point the finger back at the Browsers. What should I tell Google? Should I tell them to comply with the standards or modify all their code to try and fudge something? If you just say it is suppose to be a browser function I guess that means we will just continue losing accessibility to the web unless other screen readers pick it up or the browser folks build, and maintain, speech engines. Then, the voices would not be the ones we have set up for Windoweyes but whatever some webmaster picks out and none of the ones I know know or care about what you hear so long as they are compliant with best practices. Google is making an effort to make their product accessible but I just can't tell them to fudge their code for me. I can tell them they might want to be compliant with best practices in the field of accessibility. Anyway, any comments on this subject? I am planning on recommending they just add the media types to their css and if it works good. If not, they have done their part in my professional and personal opinion. Am I right or wrong in my opinion? Rick USA
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