Spoken interface for Mac OS X

[Saqib Shaikh]

Yes, very true Janina.  As a developer I've spent quite a bit of time
looking at their accessibility support which is very similar to MSAA, except
that it goes further.  I also *think* it is similar to the Gnome
accessibility, but haven't had much experience of the latter .

All software written since OS x 10.2 was released will be accessible, and
this may well include many shareware apps that can be downloaded from the
internet, but will definitely not include any Microsoft products, including
Office X, Internet Explorer or MSN Messenger.  Office is the only one I'd
want to use anyway.  Also apps like Norton Antivirus/Systemworks may not
initially be accessible.  This is all because they existed under OS9, and
the developers have just ported them to OS x using Carbon, which doesn't get
accessibility by default (only Cocoa apps do).  But, with the 508
legislation etc this could change.

But I don't want this to negate the great stuff that Apple is doing - I
believe that all Apple software, such as the Ilife suite, is written in an
accessible way (or will be modified to be cccessible very soon).

Saqib

-----Original Message-----
From: speakup-bounces at braille.uwo.ca [mailto:speakup-bounces at braille.uwo.ca]
On Behalf Of Janina Sajka
Sent: 22 March 2004 00:17
To: Speakup is a screen review system for Linux.
Subject: Re: Spoken interface for Mac OS X

Well, Apple is fairly confident that many applications will talk out of the
box. As I recall the demo I had, they're saying something along the lines of
90% of the apps written with their new developer tools where accessibility
support has been included since the tools where released two years ago.
We'll see, of course, when we get a closer look.

Also, I suspect that "screen reader" may not be the right term. In fact,
Apple isn't using this term, and I think they're correct. There's no
"reading of the screen" going on. Rather the objects which make up the
application all have accessible properties which are queried to support the
spoken interface. So, while there's an on screen interface, the spoken
interface is actually a synchronized parallel interface.

At least, this is how I understand what I heard during my half hour or so
with Apple last Thursday.

Sean Murphy writes:
> Hi All.
> 
> As the saying goes, don't count your chickens until they all have 
> hatch.  I be very surprised if version 1 of the product works with 
> many commercial applications other than the OS itself.  Think about 
> the number of years that the windows screen readers have taken to get 
> to their current point.  There is a lot of issues that has to be taken 
> into concideration when designing a screen reader.  How flexiable will 
> the product be, will it be like Microsoft Narritor or the old Berkly
Outspoken.
> 
> Time will see.
> 
> Also, the market share that Apple has is very small and it will be 
> interesting how much of an impack it will have to the mark for
disabilities.
> 
> Sean
> 
> 
> 
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-- 
	
				Janina Sajka, Director
				Technology Research and Development
				Governmental Relations Group
				American Foundation for the Blind (AFB)

Email: janina at afb.net		Phone: (202) 408-8175

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