Gearing up for Sappy 0.5 alpha

From: Andreas Stefik <stefika@xxxxxxxxx>
To: programmingblind@xxxxxxxxxxxxx, Sodbeans <sodbeans-developer@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: Wed, 17 Feb 2010 12:43:24 -0600
Hi folks,

Our team is gearing up, and on schedule, for our first release of the Sappy
project - 0.5 alpha. If you are unfamiliar with what we are doing, part of
our research team is working on tools to, generally, make the NetBeans
programming environment more accessible. Currently, our release schedule
says that we will be releasing the first, alpha version, of Sappy on
3/10/2010, so in a few weeks.

Once we've released, we will send out a link to where you can download both
the source code, if you want, and the binary. As many individuals in this
community have had difficulty with the NetBeans installer, Sappy will be
released installer free, meaning that you can just download it and open the
executable, with no installation required.

As part of our release gear up, we have two other pieces we want to let the
community know about. First, we have setup a Trac server to help the
community track our progress and get involved in both the documentation and
bug reporting for both the Sappy and Sodbeans project. If find any problems
with our tools, please feel free to create tickets (a free sourceforge
account is required) here:

https://sourceforge.net/apps/trac/sodbeans/wiki


Also, the NetBeans environment has a huge number of hotkeys and other
features which, we think, make accessibility difficult at first. We have
setup a wiki that we hope will help people make articles about how to use
sappy/netbeans. We are still building the pages, and would encourage members
of the community to help. Our wiki can be found here:

https://sourceforge.net/apps/trac/sodbeans/wiki

And finally, here is a basic list of features:

1. NetBeans should now be largely accessible in windows (XP, vista, 7, 32
bit or 64 bit), with or without the java access bridge.
2. Compatible with JAWS.
3. Still blind accessible with no screen reader installed at all using our
text-to-speech engine. Useful for those with low vision that do not want to
buy a screen reader.

There are a few things that did not make it into this release:

1. Not compatible with windows eyes (yet)
2. Limited Mac OS X support. Specifically, there are bugs related to how mac
uses its system menus (bugs in Apple voice over, actually) that will not be
fixed before this release. Many pieces of Sappy are accessible on mac, but
not all.
3. Some windows in the netbeans environment have no labels or send incorrect
output, both to our tool and any screen reader (Jaws has the same bug, for
example). We are working daily with developers at Oracle to get these issues
fixed.

Once we release, we would love to get feedback, on trac, from the community,
on what features would help folks program more effectively. So, if you are
at all interested in using netbeans, please feel free to get involved!

Stefik
Gearing up for Sappy 0.5 alpha

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