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Microsoft Backtracks On Accessibility In Windows Phone 7
beetle496 writes "One of the things Microsoft has done well for many years now (since they got called on the carpet about Windows 95) is providing compatibility with assistive technology used by the blind. Their current push is for a set of APIs called User Automation. Many of us in the field have remained skeptical of the early promises, especially those related to cross-platform compatibility. The news that Microsoft is now backtracking is disappointing, but hardly surprising. It looks like IAccessible2 is the way to go."
"One of the things Microsoft has done well for many years now (since they got called on the carpet about Windows 95) is providing compatibility with assistive technology used by the blind... The news that Microsoft is now backtracking is disappointing, but hardly surprising."
Which is it? If they've been doing it well for many years, what's with the "hardly surprising" jab? One would think that 16 years of excellent support would make the backtracking "very surprising".
I've heard they really love the iPhone. Here is an example article.
When I was in school a few years ago I had a blind gentlemen in a few of my classes. I remember him telling me about how hard (and insanely expensive) it was to get a new cell phone (Symbian based) that included voice software so he could use the menus and such, and that it was basically pretty bad.
The iPhone works as a phone, a web browser, a music player, a compass, and tons of other things, and doesn't cost $3k.
Comment forecast: Bits of genius surrounded by a sea of mediocrity.
Precursor to 2012
Beware, for the Antichrist will come in the form of a penguin. And there shall be a 7 year peace treaty with MS. There shall be a massive fanboi battle that will take place. With Linux fanbois hacking ms users to /dev/null and and MS fanbois bashing the linux users with BSODS. Ohh the carnage, Magic cards and android phones everywhere....
You are entitled to your own opinions, not your own facts.
I've heard they really love the iPhone. Here is an example article.
Reading that article tells me that the enthusiastic user isn't blind. He's legally blind.
One of the problems /. (and the world in general) has with blindness is that we forget that many (perhaps even most??) of the people categorized as blind can still see. They just see very poorly.
However, in terms of accessibility of devices, and things like internet access its a huge difference. We think of the blind and then try to imagine someone ourselves operating a touch screen with our eyes closed and no tactile feedback at all and naturally scoff at the absurdity of it.
But try squinting your eyes almost shut so you can still see the phone, but can't read anything on it. Your now "legally bind", but you can still make out the little blobs for the apps... you can pick them out easily by touch -- identifying them by position and colour. A bit of slick software to read out the text you that you can see is there but can't actually make out by double-tapping it... and voila... a very useful device.
Accessibility has to be designed in. It is like multiple language capability in software. With the right design, it is easy. With the wrong design one will always have little places where words are not properly transited. If MS did not design accessibility into the basics of MS Windows 7,if they have to design it in after the fact, they lost an incredible opportunity.
"She's a scientist and a lesbian. She's not going to let it slide." Orphan Black
Summary:
Article:
Quoth http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_UI_Automation
Seems to be a decade missing there.
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Given enough personal experience, all stereotypes are shallow.
You can use an iPhone with VoiceOver with the screen completely turned off and there are really blind enthusiastic users (this one was from Mozillas accessibility QA).
Users who are using Voiceover aren't responding to colored blobs, they are using Voiceover's auditory scanning. It reads aloud what is on the screen, such as the labels on the icons, and the user doubletaps anywhere on the screen to select one. You don't have to see the screen at all.
There's a perfect xkcd for my sig but I'm too lazy to look it up. sudo someone go find it.
Are you telling me that this will magically get Windows Phone 7 phones to have accessibility support? Because I'm not reading that.
Additionally, Microsoft seems pretty conciliatory on this. From the AFB link:
Where in TFAs does it say that MS is abandoning UIA?
I see it saying that they didn't implement it in the phone OS (probably to get it to market faster), but I don't see anything saying that MS is abandoning all future work on UIA in Windows in favor of IA2 from MSAA. There doesn't seem to be sufficient evidence from TFAs to draw that conclusion.
Did I miss something?
I had to laugh when I saw Microsoft described as "doing well" in terms of accessibility for the blind. It's simply not true; their attempts at accessibility are token at best and largely ignored by the blind community. I know lots of blind people and I don't know a single one who uses a Windows desktop or mobile product without a third-party application such as JAWS for Windows, ZoomText or Nuance. Oh and while we're on the subject: Adobe's accessibility "features" are non-functional - not only are they totally inadequate standing alone, they also prevent those 3rd party applications from doing their jobs. PDFs and Flash are pretty much inaccessible to blind users. I am holding out hope for Pico on Android ... though I have yet to get it working on anything but the emulator that comes with the SDK.
My friend Debbie Ann is so promiscuous, instead of an appointment book she needs a package manager
Apple. They have a screen reader integrated into their OS, and it is actually quite useable.