Greetings, As Marc Solomon posted last night, I am adding my own personal thoughts to this thread.
First, Tom is correct that Microsoft is working on improving accessibility support in the Edge browser. At this point I do not know when their implementation will be mature and rich enough for adaptive technology companies to be comfortable adding support into their products. Rest assured Ai Squared will provide support for Edge once we feel the information we get back is correct, consistent, and complete. Regarding list moderation, we do keep an eye on topic discussions as you can see. Monitoring each post, or indeed having to watch for incivility or childish behavior is something we didn't believe was necessary for a discussion list which, for the most part, has been a welcoming, respectful, resource for Window-Eyes users for over 20 years. I find it discouraging that I even need to write this paragraph, but apparently it needs to be said: comport yourselves respectfully. If you are unwilling or unable to, then please do the rest of the list members the courtesy of unsubscribing. To the remaining 99% of you to whom the above does not apply, thank you for your patronage and for upholding the welcoming reputation for which this community is long known. Regards, Steve -----Original Message----- From: Talk [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Tom Kingston via Talk Sent: Tuesday, May 24, 2016 12:07 AM To: Window-Eyes Discussion List <[email protected]> Subject: Putting the Edge issue and the resulting flames to rest. For those who missed it and for the record, all I did was post a message saying that Edge would be accessible eventually. I prefaced that message with "This is only my personal opinion. So take it for what it's worth." Stephen Clark, who I don't know from Adam, replied and told me that I was an old man, I had no idea what I was talking about, I was out of touch with reality, and I just sat around living off government checks while he worked. He said over and over again that he was absolutely sure Edge would never be accessible and that Internet Explorer was going away. Yes, I fired back at him but I did not stoop to his level of personal insults. I then posted the statement from Microsoft saying that Internet Explorer would be supported for the life of Windows 10 along with the link to the page for those who didn't believe me. Someone else then made the mistake of agreeing that Edge would eventually be accessible. Below is Stephen's reply with my reply to it. I'm posting this for those who believed his repetitive assertions that Edge would never be accessible. On 5/22/2016 9:05 PM, Stephen Clark via Talk wrote: > Prove it. From https://blogs.windows.com/msedgedev/2016/05/12/accessible-ux-with-html5-and-uia/ Building a more accessible user experience with HTML5 and UIA By Microsoft Edge Team Recently, we introduced Microsoft Edge’s new accessibility architecture, which inherently supports modern web standards, and provides a foundation to make the web platform more accessible than ever. To build a comprehensive ecosystem across all products and users of every ability, assistive technologies build end user experiences on top of accessibility frameworks. In Edge, accessibility information is exposed through the UI Automation (UIA) framework. HTML, CSS, and ARIA markup is translated to UIA objects that assistive technologies use to provide a tailored experience. In this post, we’ll walk through some concrete examples of how our new architecture improves the end user’s experience, and specifically how markup defines the experience of navigating with assistive technologies like screen readers. Our examples focus on Narrator, but any screen reader using UIA will be able to take advantage of these improvements. Measuring success with HTML5Accessibility As part of our ongoing work to advance Edge’s accessibility, we want to make sure developers and users can easily get accurate information on platform accessibility across browsers, making it easier to build more accessible sites and make informed decisions when using accessibility features. For example, we are working closely with HTML5Accessibility’s maintainer, Steve Faulkner of the Paciello Group, to update the site and refresh its design. HTML5Accessibility is a popular resource for this information that summarizes and rates major browsers’ HTML5 platform accessibility. Some of the success criteria include mappings to the accessibility API, keyboard accessibility, and the accessibility of error states. The upcoming refresh (which you can preview today on GitHub) includes changes to clarify pass criteria, add additional tests, and even give the site a fresh and modern makeover. Comparing the old and new HTML5Accessibility.com designs. Note that the updated site does not yet reflect the accessibility improvements in EdgeHTML 14. Many of the accessibility APIs discussed in this post are tracked on HTML5Accessibility, or were leveraged to build the site’s upcoming redesign. Each element or attribute has its own test page, so you can use Narrator to try out the user experience and open Inspect or F12 to see how they are mapped to UIA. Note that HTML5Accessibility currently tracks the status of shipping versions of the listed browsers, and has not yet been updated with the new test criteria. With the work landing in EdgeHTML 14, we look forward to a much-improved score for Edge soon! We’ll share more when those updates are available. Read more at https://blogs.windows.com/msedgedev/2016/05/12/accessible-ux-with-html5-and-uia/#rXPoCvxQdq5lUl3g.99 _______________________________________________ Any views or opinions presented in this email are solely those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of Ai Squared. For membership options, visit http://lists.window-eyes.com/options.cgi/talk-window-eyes.com/sclower%40aisquared.com. For subscription options, visit http://lists.window-eyes.com/listinfo.cgi/talk-window-eyes.com List archives can be found at http://lists.window-eyes.com/private.cgi/talk-window-eyes.com _______________________________________________ Any views or opinions presented in this email are solely those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of Ai Squared. For membership options, visit http://lists.window-eyes.com/options.cgi/talk-window-eyes.com/archive%40mail-archive.com. For subscription options, visit http://lists.window-eyes.com/listinfo.cgi/talk-window-eyes.com List archives can be found at http://lists.window-eyes.com/private.cgi/talk-window-eyes.com
