I would like to offer a suggestion in addressing this issue with developers. First, I agree with David. It's the developers who need to make the change and directing our attentions to them will facilitate the greatest response. I have found over the years that one of the best ways to address concerns is first to highlight the positive things a developer has done to contribute to the accessibility of a product. Let's look at Adium as an excellent example. During the creation of this program as people utilizing voiceover discovered, it was barely usable. The contacts list if we were lucky would read the status of the contact being available or not available but not the contact's name or info. The only way to do this was by highlighting a contact and pressing command-i to find out the name and other information on the individual. ONce this was ascertained and we started exchanging messages it was discovered that the message area was identified by VoiceOver as a scroll area that could not be interacted with. Hence incoming messages were not readable. To the developers credit they did build in to Adium the ability to make use of speech and this included the reading of an incoming message. Although VoiceOVer users could not review the message they now had a way to at least use the program. In a letter that I wrote to them through there feedback form I first made sure to highlight what they had done so far to make the program usable by the blind and visually impaired community. AFter doing this I shared with them what was not working and encouraged them to correct this problem. I received a message back with in 10 minutes stating that they were not aware of this and did desire to make there product compliant with VoiceOver. I do know that others have also communicated with them and due to this effort the present version is now accessible. The contacts view now displays the name and status of the contact and the message history has been converted to an HTML view that can be interacted with. Although not all developers are as responsive highlighting the good and presenting the problem in a positive light goes a long way. I have written to the skype developers as well and have never received a response however as the community of VoiceOVer users grow they will eventually take notice and perhaps give us what we need. So, make those contacts and write those letters. Let's shower them with our needs, requests and suggestions always keeping an encouraging tone and a positive perspective in our communications with these developers.
On Feb 5, 2008, at 9:08 AM, David Poehlman wrote:
you need to contact the developers, not support and I suggest you lightenyour tone.Click on the link below to go to our homepage. http://www.icanworkthisthing.comManage your subscription by using the web interface on the link below.//www.freelists.org/list/macvoiceover Users can subscribe to this list by sending email to macvoiceover-request@xxxxxxxxxxxxx with 'subscribe' in the Subject field OR by logging into the Web interface at //www.freelists.org/list/macvoiceover
John W. Hess & Barclay the WonderLab
Click on the link below to go to our homepage. http://www.icanworkthisthing.com Manage your subscription by using the web interface on the link below. //www.freelists.org/list/macvoiceoverUsers can subscribe to this list by sending email to macvoiceover-request@xxxxxxxxxxxxx with 'subscribe' in the Subject field OR by logging into the Web interface at //www.freelists.org/list/macvoiceover
