[assistivenews] FW: FINALLY, Apple Speaks to the Blind
- From: "Wiley, Bob" <Bob.Wiley@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: <assistivenews@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Thu, 18 Mar 2004 15:02:13 -0600
Bob Wiley (AT Specialist)
Department of Assistive and Rehabilitative Services
Assistive Technology Unit
Email: bob.wiley@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Voice: (512) 377-0309
Fax: (512) 377-0400
NOTE: My old email of "bob.wiley@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx" may no longer be available.
My new email address is: bob.wiley@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
-----Original Message-----
From: Born, Glenda
Sent: Thursday, March 18, 2004 11:52 AM
To: Sellers, Richard; Mize, Jonathan; Wiley, Bob
Subject: FW: FINALLY, Apple Speaks to the Blind
Thought you'll might be interested in this given your upcoming MAC presentation
for TAER.
Bob would you pass this on to the newsgroup.
Glenda Born
Assistive Technology Specialist
Assistive Technology Unit
Department of Assistive Rehabilitation Services
4800 N. Lamar
Austin, Texas 78756
(512) 377-0311
-----Original Message-----
From: Stephens, Geoffrey
Sent: Thursday, March 18, 2004 9:13 AM
To: TCB Adaptive Newsgroup
Subject: FINALLY, Apple Speaks to the Blind
FINALLY, Apple Speaks to the Blind
3/16/2004
From: Business Week Online
By: Alex Salkever
It's building innovative screen-reading technology into OS X. That's essential
for the visually impaired -- and a smart business move.
With its brash marketing campaigns and big brand image, few would accuse Apple
Computer ( AAPL ) of being a silent company. But to the millions of Americans
who are legally blind or seriously visually impaired Apple has seemed silent
and uncaring because it has no screen-reader program of its own. And software
maker ALVA Access Group decided in summer, 2003, to stop making the last such
Mac-compatible program on the market.
This leaves visually impaired Mac users without software that allows them to
navigate a computer desktop and Web pages by vocalizing complex menu trees,
cursor locations, and other key visual cues taken for granted by sighted users.
Apple recognized that ALVA's decision elevated the situation to crisis
proportions and scrambled to tackle the problem. This week at the 19th annual
Technology & Persons with Disabilities Conference in Los Angeles -- the biggest
assistive-technology confab in the country -- Jobs & Co. introduced a nifty
tool to help the blind use Macs again. Apple calls this new technology "Spoken
Interface." The basic concept is to vocalize and make audible everything that
visually happens on a desktop, just like screen-reading software.
UNEQUAL ACCESS. That's big news for a couple of reasons. With no screen reader
available on Macs, any schools wishing to deploy them faced a potential lawsuit
on grounds that the blind would be denied equal access. Even if no one sues,
the prospect of advocacy groups for the visually impaired blaming Apple for
shunting blind kids onto Windows machines and further isolating them from their
sighted classroom peers presented a looming PR nightmare.
Lack of a screen reader could also preclude Apple from winning government
contracts. Government info-tech departments by law must ensure that all their
technology is accessible to the maximum degree possible. If Apple lacked a
screen reader, Windows would be the winner by default.
I suggested in a November, 2003, column that Apple create a screen reader for
Macs and offer it to the open-source community (see BW Online, 11/12/03, "A
Failing for Apple in the Classroom"). After all, that's just what Apple did
with its Safari Web browser, and the result filled a gaping hole in software
offerings for the Mac. Apple Senior Product Manager Chris Bourden told me the
company was aware of the potential problems and was going to work on something
to address them.
BARGAIN BUY. Apparently he meant it. And even better, unlike traditional screen
readers, Apple's technology will be built right into the next version of the OS
X operating system. That will be a big help. For starters, the price is sweet.
Spoken Interface won't cost anything extra because it'll be part of the core
OS. Screen readers for Windows can run up to $1,000, on top of the cost of the
computer itself.
The majority of visually impaired Americans are unemployed (businesses haven't
a great job of adapting the workplace to their needs). So the cost of a
computer alone can be a heavy burden. Add on screen-reader software, and the
price soars out of reach. Worse, state and federal disabilities benefits don't
cover the purchase of these programs.
That makes owning a Mac a bargain for the visually disabled. True, most Apple
computers remain more expensive than comparable Windows boxes on a pure price
basis. But subtract the cost of typical Windows screen-reader software, and
Apple has effectively slashed the cost of computing for blind and visually
impaired by $500 or more. That's not chump change.
EASIER FIT. Apple's decision to build Spoken Interface into OS X also hints at
all sorts of promising possibilities. Jobs & Co. plans to freely offer
"application program interfaces" (APIs) for its screen-reading modules to
software developers. APIs are tools, rules, and protocols that guide a
programmer in ensuring that new software works well with a specific operating
system.
Using open APIs (meaning anyone can look at them) should give Mac developers a
relatively easy way to make their software work well with Spoken Interface.
Compare that to the Windows world, where software developers have to submit
their code to engineers at the two major screen-reader software makers -- then
wait until those engineers tell them how to adjust the code to work with the
screen readers. It's often an expensive and time-consuming process.
Apple's aid to programmers goes even further. Bourden says if developers use
Apple's Cocoa programming environment in writing their programs, they'll
already have built in over 90% of the information required by Spoken Interface
to make the program fully accessible. Already, he says, a lot of Cocoa-based
software works with Spoken Interface without any adjustments to the underlying
program code at all.
"BETTER AND BETTER." Apple tested a well-known Cocoa-based shareware
application, MacJournal, to see how it did with Spoken Interface with no
modifications. "It was really neat. It worked pretty well right off the bat,"
says Bourden.
So far, the reaction from the folks in the assistive-technology community who
worked with Apple on Spoken Interface has been largely positive. "I think
they're doing phenomenal work. I wouldn't say [that] it's better than [leading
Windows screen reader] JAWS yet, but it could be. Each time they show me a new
version, it gets better and better," says Larry Goldberg, director of the
National Center for Accessible Media, a Boston (Mass.) nonprofit that develops
assistive-media technologies and advises companies on how to make their
products friendlier to people with disabilities.
Ultimately, this is a case of doing well by doing good. Apple still garners 25%
of revenues from education sales. And the folks at One Infinite Loop surely
recognize that visual impairment will strike millions of baby boomers in the
next few decades. That makes screen-reading technology essential if Apple wants
to hang onto aging customers.
READY TO TALK. What's more, the open-source community is building its own
screen readers and accessibility software suites. If Apple had elected not to
respond, it would have been the only major operating system not to offer
accessibility tools for the visually impaired.
Instead, Apple has taken a big leap -- and one that could pay off in
unsuspected ways. In the long term, Spoken Interface could become a key part of
how all sorts of people use computers. Many visionaries have predicted a time
when interactions with computers will employ the most efficient and natural
communication system people have: the voice.
When Spoken Interface will actually roll out in a production version of OS X
remains unclear. Apple says it'll probably go into the next upgrade, but Spoken
Interface hasn't even entered the "beta" stage of development.
COMMUNITY EFFORT. Still, the decision to go to the assistive-technology
community for feedback is tremendous. Apple has traditionally put secrecy among
its top priorities. In this case, that would have hindered rather than helped
the effort. The only way to figure out whether a piece of software works for
visually impaired users is to ask them at every step of the development
process.
I'm hopeful that Spoken Interface will prove the first step in the long process
of winning back the visually impaired community's confidence, which had largely
abandoned Apple a decade ago in favor of Windows machines with better
screen-reading software. Hats off to Apple for doing the right thing and
finding a solution relatively quickly that feels good and makes financial
sense.
The department of Assistive and Rehabilitative services does not endorse any
products or views expressed in messages to this list. The ideas expressed are
solely the ideas of the sender, and do not reflect in any way the ideas or
philosophy of the Department of Assistive and Rehabilitative services.
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