Comment So When Will Accessibility APIs become accessible? (Score 1) 375
The problem, the way that I see it, is that a lot of people out there are making a lot of money off of people whom need accessibility by providing the promise of accessibility, but not actually providing the quality itself.
What do I mean by this? Look at the following quote:
If actual accessibility were being provided it would be application independent, not tied to a specific software application or application vendor. This is indeed the real meat of the problem.
So what do we need then? How about accessibility support built into the underlying APIs that applications on any particular platform or environment (I really don't care which, all have their merits and problems) can quickly, cheaply, and easily be made accessible by coders whom don't understand all of the nit-picky things about accessibility that a differently abled (I know it sounds PC, but it is closer to the truth, trust me) user would quickly notice.
In short, users should not have to wait until application vendors and programmers have millions of dollars and man-hours available to spend making their program play nicely with one specific so-called accessibility interface (which won't help users using some other interface) just to be able to use software the rest of us can easily make use of.
As is often said about websites: Accessibility needs to be designed in from the ground up--a lesson which should apply to all computer-related systems.
I already apply accessibility practices to all of my work (in the web sphere), so I know it isn't that difficult. So really now, whom in the API-level programming world is ready to stop complaining and take this issue on in a truly complete an meaningful manner?
What do I mean by this? Look at the following quote:
Think about it for a minute now, why does this need to be difficult? The answer is that it doesn't.Freedom Scientific supports Office, Notes and Corel's WordPerfect Office with its market-leading Job Access With Speech screen reader, said Eric Damery, vice president of software product management at the company.
Supporting applications in its screen reader -- typically referred to by its acronym, JAWS -- is "a big undertaking," Damery said. He added that the demand for OpenDocument-compatible office software "has not been that great."
If actual accessibility were being provided it would be application independent, not tied to a specific software application or application vendor. This is indeed the real meat of the problem.
So what do we need then? How about accessibility support built into the underlying APIs that applications on any particular platform or environment (I really don't care which, all have their merits and problems) can quickly, cheaply, and easily be made accessible by coders whom don't understand all of the nit-picky things about accessibility that a differently abled (I know it sounds PC, but it is closer to the truth, trust me) user would quickly notice.
In short, users should not have to wait until application vendors and programmers have millions of dollars and man-hours available to spend making their program play nicely with one specific so-called accessibility interface (which won't help users using some other interface) just to be able to use software the rest of us can easily make use of.
As is often said about websites: Accessibility needs to be designed in from the ground up--a lesson which should apply to all computer-related systems.
I already apply accessibility practices to all of my work (in the web sphere), so I know it isn't that difficult. So really now, whom in the API-level programming world is ready to stop complaining and take this issue on in a truly complete an meaningful manner?
