Hi. I totally agree with Jamal's accessment of silverlight. My company asked me to check if silverlight could be used to develop a client's website. Having gone through it's access features which is almost non-existent, i persuaded my boss to abandon her scheme for the time being, which brings me to the question of how far are major companies such as microsoft willing to go to make their premier products truly accessible. Look at VS, for example. Accessible on the surface, but when it comes to other bells and whistle stuff such as the resource dditor of the c++ class browser, accessibility is so often pushed to the background. And the tollbox? Why is it so easy to use with cSharp and vb, but so useless when it comes to developing in traditional c++? Cheers! ----- Original Message ----- From: "Jamal Mazrui" <empower@xxxxxxxxx>
To: <programmingblind@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> Sent: Friday, June 26, 2009 5:24 AM Subject: Re: Silverlight Demos
I found this article Accessibility Support Documentation for Silverlight http://www.w3.org/WAI/GL/WCAG20/implementation-report/Silverlight_accessibility_support_statement It claims that Silverlight2 is mostly accessible with JAWS 9 if a JAWS ini file, about which I had never heard, is tinkered with. One also has to toggle off the virtual cursor. IronPython is being promoted as a particularly good language for Silverlight apps. I tried beginner samples, but could not get any to work with JAWS9, 10, or Window-Eyes 7.1 public beta. I was not willing to tinker with the ini file, figuring that at least the latest JAWS 10 should recognize the Silverlight plug-in. I would love to find out otherwise, but my present conclusion is that Silverlight is essentially inaccessible to users of Windows screen readers. This is surprising and disappointing given that Microsoft has developed accessibility APIs that supposedly give us access to such rich media applications. Adobe AIR, by the way, is even worse. With Silverlight, I got the title of the sample in Internet Explorer. With Adobe AIR samples, I get no speech whatsoever. All of these trials have been after downloading the very latest plug-ins for both users and developers. Unfortunately, I think that blind consumer groups with the ability to influence Microsoft and Adobe have been lulled into a mistaken sense that new platforms would be designed with accessibility so as not to repeat the GUI accessibility problems of the 1990s. Major software publishers like them and others have mastered the art of doing just enough incrementally so that they appear to be acting on accessibility as an integral design principle, and that any current problems are just temporary snags, with full access around the corner. They know the right buzz phrases for government and consumer audiences. In truth, however, I fear we are going to lose significant ground again if we do not turn up the pressure! Jamal __________ View the list's information and change your settings at //www.freelists.org/list/programmingblind
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