Also, it would seem to me that Tim Cook is at least as committed to accessibility and inclusion as was his predecessor. He’s the guy in charge. He’s the 50,000 foot view big picture guy.
As to complaints about Voiceover’s not improving between 10.9.0 and 10.9.1, I’d say there are some improvements, but some of what y’all are asking for, such as having the read/unread status read at the beginning of the row instead of at the end, I suspect, are more design changes in Mail than they are with Voideover itself. I wish that it’d read the other way too, but if the columns are ordered such that the read/unread status is at the far right instead of the far left, how do you propose Voiceover handle that? I find some value in having information presented in the way that it’s presented to everyone else. Sure, I’d love to be able to rearrange the columns so that things would read in the order I want them to, but that’s not Voiceover’s fault. Yes, there are things that *are* Voiceover’s fault, like the inconsistent VO+J behavior, the “Blah blah busy” thing, the “1 row added” thing. But guess what? This is what we asked for. We wanted built-in accessibility to mainstream products, and we got it. There’s good with that as well as bad. I, personally, think the good outweighs the bad, but there are tradeoffs, including that we sometimes have to wait longer for bugs to get fixed. Stand in line, because your bugs get stuck in the pile with everyone else’s bugs. On Dec 17, 2013, at 8:58 AM, Ricardo Walker <[email protected]> wrote: > Hi, > > I would also like to point out, the accessibility team is made up of more > people than the people who read our e-mails and answer our calls. There are > a few dedicated Voiceover engineers. I’m guessing not many, but a few that > work on Voiceover specific issues. I think we must understand like most huge > companies, maybe even more so with Apple, things are very compartmentalized. > So, there might be an accessibility issue in Mail for example that the people > responsible for the Mail app must address. Sure, the VO engineers might > assist, and point out the errors on a technical level, but they might not be > a high priority for the Mail team to address, and the Voiceover team just > doesn’t have access to that to do it themselves. They might well be as > frustrated as you or I. And this stuff about Steve’s Jobs passing being > related to the lessoning or enhancing of Apple accessibility sounds so silly > to me its not even funny. I mean guys, do you not remember me and others > complaining about access to third party icons in the status menu? That > wasn’t added until last year. If my math is right, Steve Jobs had been gone > over a year by then. I don’t hear anyone thanking Tim cook for this. lol. > Yes, don’t get me wrong, I think Steve Jobs and others at Apple felt strongly > about accessibility. But less not kid ourselves. I don’t think Jobs was > spending sleepless nights trying to figure out how to make Voiceover better. > After all, there was a gap of around 4 years where the Mac was completely > inaccessible. I’m just pointing out facts here folks. I’m as biggest Steve > Jobs fan as you might find, but I’m not going to delude myself in thinking > he coded Voiceover with his own two hands. :). > > JMO. > > Ricardo Walker > [email protected] > Twitter:@apple2thecore > www.appletothecore.info > > On Dec 17, 2013, at 5:37 AM, Ray Foret Jr <[email protected]> wrote: > >> Of late, I have noticed complaints against the Apple accessibility team as >> if to suggest that we are being ignored. It seems to be the belief of some >> that the Apple accessibility team fixes accessibility bugs and problems with >> Voice Over. I do not believe that this is the case. It is my belief that >> the Apple accessibility team has, in fact, a very limited role at Apple. >> Frankly, with the passing of the late great Steve Jobs, that role has >> perhaps demenished greatly. I believe that the Apple accessibility team >> never has had actual decision making capacity with respect to actual >> implementation of fixes for Voice Over. They didn’t even have this power >> under Steve Jobs. Unless I am very much mistaken, all the accessibility >> team has any power to do is to forward our findings over to the development >> teams but nothing more. They cannot even tell us whether or not our reports >> will be acted upon. Now, this last is most likely a part of Apple’s non >> disclosure policy: however, I suspect that even if this was not so, Apple’s >> accessibility team would not be informed in any case. In short, it seems >> that the only function that this accessibility team has and will ever have >> at Apple is not much more than a kind of clearing house of feedback from us >> blind users. I cannot help wonder how many Apple app developmental teams >> look at submissions from the accessibility team and say to themselves, “Oh, >> no, not again.”. I suspect that this explains why it is that our reports >> seem to go unheeded. >> >> >> Sent from my Mac, the only computer with full accessibility for the blind >> built-in! >> >> Sincerely, >> The Constantly Barefooted Ray, still a very happy Mac and Iphone 5 user! >> >> -- >> You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups >> "MacVisionaries" group. >> To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an >> email to [email protected]. >> To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. >> Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/macvisionaries. >> For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out. > > -- > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups > "MacVisionaries" group. > To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an > email to [email protected]. > To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. > Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/macvisionaries. > For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "MacVisionaries" group. 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