Hello Cory,
It's good to hear from a user once and a while who actually knows what
he is talking about !
Yes, Microsoft dropped the ball a bit and let VoiceOver on the Mac,
iPhone, and iPad show them up a lot. So I would imagine that Microsoft
will do its own thing with Narrator and with the new UIA (User
Interface Automation) technology which it introduced to replace MSA.
And, remember that GW Micro already supports it, and recall that Doug
(if I remember correctly) said that GW Micro would support HTML 5 as
soon as it was officially finished and adopted. It will, of course,
make it possible for the GW Micro developers to redo the Browse Mode
so it works very well again.
Clearly, access to Windows products from Microsoft won't go away,
rather it will improve because of federal requirements in the bid
process for federal contracts and because Apple and GW Micro won't
stand still over the next few years.
I look forward to the next release of Window-Eyes and expect all users
will be delighted as usual.
Peter Duran
-----Original Message-----
From: Cory Martin [mailto:[email protected]]
Sent: Saturday, June 18, 2011 6:17 AM
To: [email protected]
Subject: Concerns about the future of Windows
Hello,
This is one of my sleepless nights where I fall asleep listening to
tech news podcasts and such (yes I am a real nerd), and I just wanted
to comment on the following:
Note in advance this is not a rant, I and anyone else have to admire
the work that GW Micro does in trying to insure compatibility of
products over a very wide market. I may express frustration at times
with things like anybody else as an end-user, however the work that a
screen reader developer has to do is staggering.
I am however very concerned with the prospects of Windows 8. There are
a few reasons for this which I will explain as follows.
I've listened to a podcast that someone did on an unreleased build of
Windows 8. Don't ask me how they got ahold of this, I do not know. I
suspect they were certainly not authorized by Microsoft to have it.
None the less they had it and this is what we now know. I learned of
this through the Serotalk podcast and those who are interested can
refer to that for more information or to listen for themselves. No,
this podcast is not by Serotek, they just refer to it. Microsoft is
puting some real genuine effort in to improving Narator in Windows 8.
I'm guessing that Apple really played them hard in terms of
accessibility and now they look really sorry compared to what Apple
has done. Apple of course has an easier time of it as all their
hardware is uniform and released by them and thus controlled by them,
so Voice Over works great because they know exactly how it wil behave
in various situations and can predict it very precisely. However,
Narator will no longer be that sluggish program which can barely do
anything. Granted it is in no way able to compete with what Window
Eyes can do, but what they're doing with it is impressive, based on
this early beta. This in itself can only be a good thing for me. As a
computer nerd and tech and someone who installs Windows and does far
more than just uses a computer at a casual user level, having a more
powerful screen reader built in can only be a good thing. I originally
got System Access exactly for this purpose, because I could plug it in
to a customer computer and not have to install anything, and other
than some temp files when I remove my U3 drive at the end of my work
session, their computer has not been modified or had anything extra
installed on it. I do not use System Access for daily use, but it
certainly is good for that short computing session where you don't
want to change someone's computer with intercept drivers and such. So
having Narator is a good thing.
However, some of the other things that Microsoft is doing are quite
frankly really scary for us as blind Windows users. According to the
Windows Weekly podcast, Windows 8 which is scheduled to ship in mid
2012 will employ a whole new user interface. They apparently are
adopting a look something like that which you get on a Windows Phone 7
device or tablet device, along with multi-touch features and tiles.
This interface will apparently be available on all Windows platforms,
from desktops and laptops up to tablets. Fortunately this interface
can be switched off and Windows will behave much like Windows 7 does,
however as we know if DOS and command line applications are any
indication and as indicated in the podcast, the old style of user
interface with a desktop, start menu and system tray, will be going
away, probably with Windows 9 in 2015. On top of this, I was told that
the new Windows 8 will not allow mirror drivers which most screen
readers today rely on for functionality, so a whole new way of
accessing screen information will be necessary. Apparently Microsoft
considers mirror drivers to be a security risk. Hopefully this is not
true. This new Windows is going to be pushing for more applications
which are cloud-based and rely on HTML 5 standards.
Again this is not a complaint, I'm sure GW Micro already knows these
things and likely already has some preliminary plans in place for
dealing with them. But I just wanted to stress that definitely I
believe that improving Window Eye's ability to handle HTML should
definitely be a major priority for the next release. If this is done
,this I would assume would not only help Window Eyes deal with web
browsing better, but also applications in general, especially if all
the new Windows applications are going to be based on this new HTML 5
standard, along with APIs to interface to them. The good news is, that
in the demo of this pre-release of early Windows 8, the podcaster had
Jaws, NVDA and System access working with moderate success, with
System Access being the winner due to its virtual mouse feature. He
was supposed to demonstrate Window Eyes but didn't, I think he got
side tracked by some of the issues he was having.
Either way, things like this are still a good way off and not
something people should worry about as an immidiate concern, but at
the same time I'm sure and hope that GW Micro is aware of these issues
and preparing for what they will have to do to keep Window Eyes
working in such a drastically changed user interface. Although a good
thing that could come out of this might be opportunity for Window Eyes
to find itself on to new tablets and more portable computers. Window
Eyes on a windows 8 tablet to compete with the Ipad would be very cool.
Just some thoughts, I hope nobody is offended by this.
Cory
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