Action item: Techniques for addressing cross-platform accessibility solutions

Ok here it is:

If you are to write a cross-platform solution you should follow these steps
for writing it.

Your user agent should be written based on the accessibility standards for
the GUI environent on which you are to write the user agent.which can best
support your application.

For example, if your user agent were written in 100% Java it should support
the Java accessibility API, the DOM, and conform to any operating systems
specific accessibility requirement on which your application will run.
These operating system-specific requirements would be response to system
high contrast settings, keyboard response modifications, etc. If you were
able to run the same Java application on Gnome it should responsd to Gnome
high contrast settings, etc.

If your application were written in 100% Windows it should support MSAA,
the DOM, and all operating system Windows-specific features.

If you wrote a Java application that had a very thin Java layer with all
platform specific GUI components you may have your choice of supporting
either the Java accessibility standard or the GUI accessibility standard
for each platform you were to run your application on. You would also be
required to support the DOM API.

If your application is platform independent writtent to a GUI API that has
no recognized accessibility standard then you are required to support the
accessibility API standard for each platform your application runs as well
as support for the DOM API. Your user agent must also respond to system
accessibility settings such as high contrast and keyboard response changes
for accessibility on that platform.

Rich


Rich Schwerdtfeger
Senior Technical Staff Member
IBM Accessibility Center
Research Division
EMail/web: schwer@us.ibm.com

"Two roads diverged in a wood, and I -
I took the one less traveled by, and that has made all the difference.",
Frost

Received on Monday, 16 July 2001 10:17:23 UTC