[macvoiceover] Patching software

  • From: Greg Kearney <gkearney@xxxxxxxxx>
  • To: voiceoverleopard <voiceoverleopard@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>, macvoiceover <macvoiceover@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>, General discussions on all topics relating to the use of Mac OS X by the blind <discuss@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>, Mary Beth Janes <mjanes@xxxxxxxxx>
  • Date: Thu, 3 May 2007 13:54:46 -0600

Some of you may recall discussions a while back here about my work at taking existing programs and adding VoiceOver accessibility to them. I was able to do this to Skype and a program called iStopMotion. (Used to make stop motion animations.)


The problem was I didn't feel right about giving out my modified versions as these are commercial programs. Now however I have found software that lets me make patch files that will modify and make a copy of the program. There are still issues here as I still must copy parts of the program, called nib files, for this to work.

My first attempt, trying to make a patch application for Skype resulted in failure as the new program failed to launch when the patch was applied. However iStopMotion can be patched and that seems to work well. What you do is to point the patch application at the original file and then run it you get back an application called in this case iStopMotion_VO which will have accessible controls where none existed in the original program.

It should be stressed that this is not a panacea for accessibility issues. But for some Cocoa based program where the authors simply forgot to put in the accessibility tag in the interface it does work.


Greg Kearney
gkearney@xxxxxxxxx





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