RE: A bit of Perspective. Re: What Would you like to be Available in Future Versions of JAWS?
- From: "Jeffrey Schwartz" <sidney.schwartz@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: <jfw@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Thu, 4 Dec 2008 18:48:21 -0500
How about MS Money? I thought that Microsoft worked with FS or in some way
made their software more accessible.
-----Original Message-----
From: jfw-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:jfw-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf
Of E.J. Zufelt
Sent: Thursday, December 04, 2008 4:01 PM
To: jfw@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: Re: A bit of Perspective. Re: What Would you like to be Available
in Future Versions of JAWS?
Good evening,
Agreed in full.
Regarding Quickbooks, there is some interest by Intuit to make this
application accessible, but not anytime soon. Controls are still being
drawn to the screen to look like standard controls, but their underlying
structure is still not that of a standard win32 control.
Work is currently ongoing to create scripts for the US version of Quickbooks
and information when available will be on JAWSWiki
Thanks,
Everett
----- Original Message -----
From: "Jeremy Hartley" <jeremyhartley@xxxxxxxxxxx>
To: <jfw@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Thursday, December 04, 2008 3:25 PM
Subject: A bit of Perspective. Re: What Would you like to be Available in
Future Versions of JAWS?
> Hello Everyone.
>
>
>
> My name is Jeremy Hartley, and although I am brand new to this list, I
> have
> worked in the assistive technology business for almost 17 years. I have
> worked both as a technology trainer and consultant to assistive technology
> companies in California, as well as ran my own Internet Service Provider
> in
> the late 1990's.
>
> I bring all this up as a bit of a background to what I am about to say.
>
>
>
> For the last several posts on this topic, I have been reading how people
> would like access to Quickbooks, and other financial software, as well as
> access to, and I quote, all audio recording software. I will approach
> this
> topic this way.
>
>
>
> First of all regarding quickbooks and other related software packages.
>
>
>
> Many years ago, folks from Gw Micro, Henter-Joyce, and I'm sure Slimware
> and
> Berkeley systems got together with Intuit software. For those who don't
> know, Intuit is the maker of Quickbooks, and Quicken, which was a very
> popular software package for many years both in DOS and Windows. During
> this time, Intuit was willing to work with assistive tech developers to
> try
> to make their software more accessible. I know there will be some on this
> list that were around during those times and they may say that I am
> leaving
> a lot of stuff out, but I am just trying to lay some things out here. A
> bit
> later, some of the Intuit folks for various reasons were not as willing to
> work with AT developers, which made the process of accessibility of such
> products slow and sometimes impossible. I am not sure what Intuit's
> feelings on accessibility are at this point and time, but I can state with
> almost 100 Percent certainty that Freedom Scientific, and their
> competition
> are working to make these software packages as accessible as they can,
> given
> the tools they have available.
>
>
>
> When I say tools available, I am referring mostly to the cooperation that
> they get from software developers. Bringing up the Intuit example again,
> one real bone of contention many years ago was the way that Intuit
> developers decided to draw controls such as buttons and lists on the
> screen.
> Although they looked like the above mentioned controls to the sighted
> user,
> the screen readers could not decide if it was a button, list, or glob of
> dust on the screen. Granted, there are tools out there for reclassing
> custom controls, but even that has its ups and downs.
>
>
>
> All of this is true as well in the world of recording software. Trust me
> folks, companies like Freedom Scientific and others are totally aware of
> the
> fact that a lot of us are musicians, producers, and musical hobbyists.
> Again, a lot of things come down to how a program is written from the
> absolute ground up, that will dictate what a screen reader can do with the
> interface.
>
>
>
> I do realize that Jaws and other screen readers have scripting
> capabilities,
> but we must remember that scripting languages will not answer all
> accessibility questions. While scripts are a fantastic tool for a lot of
> programs that would otherwise either be difficult to use if not
> impossible,
> they can't solve everything.
>
>
>
> What I am saying here is that it is a give and take between AT developers
> and mainstream software companies. This sounds a bit simple I know, but
> all
> of us, be it users of products, developers of products, or developers of
> accessible technology need to work together to bridge the accessibility
> gap.
>
>
>
> In reading some of these posts, I get the impression that some folks feel
> that it is completely up to the makers of Jaws to answer accessibility
> questions. I get the feeling that there are some who feel that no work
> is
> being done on various types of software, and while it may be true in some
> cases, there is a lot more going on behind the scenes that a lot of your
> everyday users are just unaware of.
>
>
>
> Also, I have run into people who say a certain software package is not
> accessible, when in reality they just need to use the tools available to
> them in their screen readers, such as their jaws cursor. Yeah I know, the
> Jaws cursor doesn't solve all problems, but I can't tell you how many
> people
> I run into daily who had no idea how to practically use the jaws cursor.
> It
> is sad to me that more don't take advantage of tools like frame manager,
> jaws cursor, or hot spot clicker and other such programs.
>
>
>
> All of this was not meant to berate anyone, but I think some of us, myself
> included will post to lists like this without thinking sometimes. Let's
> face it folks, we have no idea who in the assistive technology field are
> either looking at this list daily, or browsing the list archives on
> freelists. If a developer sees posts from people that are unintelligible
> or
> otherwise unreadable, they will shake their heads and say, lists like this
> are not worth our time. Do I think that companies like Freedom Scientific
> are doing everything I would like to see? No I don't and I think every
> company has room for improvement.
>
>
>
> Ok, rant over. grin
>
>
>
> Jeremy Hartley
>
>
>
> --
> JFW related links:
> JFW homepage: http://www.freedomscientific.com/
> Scripting mailing list:
> http://lists.the-jdh.com/listinfo.cgi/scriptography-the-jdh.com
> JFW List instructions:
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>
> If you have any concerns about the list, post received from the list, or
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> contact the list owner at jfw-admins@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx
>
--
JFW related links:
JFW homepage: http://www.freedomscientific.com/
Scripting mailing list:
http://lists.the-jdh.com/listinfo.cgi/scriptography-the-jdh.com
JFW List instructions:
To post a message to the list, send it to jfw@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
To unsubscribe from this mailing list, send a message to
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Archives located at: //www.freelists.org/archives/jfw
If you have any concerns about the list, post received from the list, or the
way the list is being run, do not post them to the list. Rather contact the
list owner at jfw-admins@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx
--
JFW related links:
JFW homepage: http://www.freedomscientific.com/
Scripting mailing list:
http://lists.the-jdh.com/listinfo.cgi/scriptography-the-jdh.com
JFW List instructions:
To post a message to the list, send it to jfw@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
To unsubscribe from this mailing list, send a message to
jfw-request@xxxxxxxxxxxxx with the word unsubscribe in the subject line.
Archives located at: //www.freelists.org/archives/jfw
If you have any concerns about the list, post received from the list, or the
way the list is being run, do not post them to the list. Rather contact the
list owner at jfw-admins@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx
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