- From: Jane Lee <applegoddess@gmail.com>
- Date: Mon, 10 Sep 2007 15:13:56 -0700
- To: "Maurice Carey" <maurice@thymeonline.com>
- Cc: "HTML Working Group" <public-html@w3.org>
Might I note the existence of voiceover, which is Apple's response to the lack of screenreaders for OS X? Apple's accessibility folks have done a pretty good job with all the universal access tools built into OS X for both users and developers (e.g. http://developer.apple.com/reference/Cocoa/idxAccessibility-date.html and http://developer.apple.com/ue/) - something Windows and any combination of software for it, including Jaws, can't provide. Voiceover is even available on the OS X install disk...visually impaired Windows users I know were shocked at the idea of having a screenreader-assisted install process without any hackery..they're all used to asking a sighted person to install Windows for them, or to get an unattended install version. There are a couple open source tools out there, but they're not perfect either..two that come to mind are Firevox for firefox (http://www.firevox.clcworld.net/) and Speakup for Linux (http://www.linux-speakup.org/). But they definitely exist, because there's a good demand for them. So, who says 3rd parties have to solve the current issues? Apple's doing a splendid job for their OS, and best of all it's free and improving constantly. I wish Microsoft would step up and do something about it. cheers, jane On 9/10/07, Maurice Carey <maurice@thymeonline.com> wrote: > > http://ln.hixie.ch/?start=1188895731&count=1 > " What might make my experiences with JAWS even more worrying is that I'm > told JAWS is amongst the best of the available screen reader software. It > certainly isn't worth its ridiculous $895 price tag (let alone the $1095 > price tag for the "professional" version I got). There is a big market > opportunity here for someone to make a usable and affordable native speech > Web browser or screen reader. Accessibility advocates could do more for > accessibility by writing test suites for screen readers to check their basic > HTML support (like supporting the p element) than they ever will by trying > to educate Web authors." > > How much money do you think it would take to pay some open source coders > (preferably people who are already hacking on firefox, konqueror) to come up > with a better <strike>Screen</strike> Web Page Reader. > > What are the odds someone in the large and dedicated community of people who > fight for the rights of the disabled could get a good fund raiser going to > pay these programmers to build a reader? > > > > I say web page reader because 90% of the people I know only read the Web > Page part of the screen.
Received on Tuesday, 11 September 2007 11:38:09 UTC