Spoken interface for Mac OS X

[Janina Sajka]

You are also correct. To my mind there's no question but that 508 is responsible for Apple's efforts. They want to sell to the U.S. Government--a $40 Billion customer, and they know they need to be accessible to do so.

Saqib Shaikh writes:
> 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>