Guest post by While some potential users of the iPad may be put off by such things as its lack of multi-tasking, which they might have expected on a device this size, the device may prove highly useful to users with varying disabilities. Ms Ricky Buchanan runs the ATMac website, which is dedicated to accessibility issues with Apple products.
Ricky has recently published two articles on this subject with regard to the iPad. The first, by Ricky herself, suggests that its simplicity compared to a desktop OS may make it easier to learn for both cognitively impaired users and the elderly. On top of that. the availability of external keyboards helps blind users who can touch-type and cannot see the onscreen keypad, and its larger size compared to the existing touch devices will make things easier for those with fine motor issues, particularly on “upsized” iPhone apps.
Also, Paul Natsch, a quadriplegic, offers tips on how to use the touch-screen when you have limited (or no) arm function. It involves the use of the Pogo stylus. “Ultimately the iPad is probably going to be able to do quite a bit more than the iPod Touch but the iPod Touch is still essentially the iPad’s ‘little brother'”, he writes, “So I thought I’d share the methods I use to access my iPod Touch in hopes that these ideas may be useful for people with physical disabilities hoping to get an iPad.”
I guess people will only be able to enjoy the upscaled Iphone apps as long as there are no Ipad versions ..
My guess is that once an app has a Ipad version Apple will make sure the Ipad will get that version with no option to opt out. That is just how the tick.
Unless it’s Apple’s apps, that’s not likely an Apple decision at all: the same code that runs on an iPhone/iPod Touch runs as-is on an iPad, or, depending on what the developer wants to do, they can choose to detect and run with the differences running on the iPad provides for sizes. The iPad’s size opens up more options for developers because the larger size opens up more options for users due to users actually being able to see/manipulate more and larger objects: how a developer uses that won’t change things much, assuming they don’t add functionality for an iPad version which can’t be done on the smaller devices.
Now is the time to make clear to app developers and (if required) Apple: don’t exclude running iPod Touch/iPhone versions of apps on an iPad even if there’s an iPad-enhanced version available! Of course, it may cost more to develop and support apps that run within the confines of the smaller device and also have added functionality on the iPad, too… all comes down to business decisions, doesn’t it?
Very cool. Hadn’t thought about any of these things, to be quite honest, but the more people who can use it the better.
Many non-verbal persons with disabilities use an AAC (Augmentative and Alternative Communication) device such as the Dynavox line (http://www.dynavoxtech.com/products/v/) that go for around $8000 to $10,000. Basically these products let you “speak” by composing phrases from either fragments or symbols.
There have already been some software packages developed for the iPhone to offer similar functionality (http://www.proloquo2go.com/) but the big downside was that the iPhone isn’t large enough for daily use. But the iPad is almost the perfect size, and is a heck of a lot less limited than these devices.
I work with people with disabilities every day, and we’re definitely going to be experimenting with the iPad as soon as we can get our hands on it.
Forget about the iPad. There are better tablets out there. Nothing is accessible on the iPad. It is a big iphone. Nothing is done for accessibility. Standard hardware and windows or gnome or OS X are way more accessible than the iPad. There are a lot more of devices and software for disabled people that are compatible with those.
Dude, you are really showing your ignorance here. Best not to talk about what you don’t understand. The iPad has the same accessibility features as the iPhone. Yes, the touch screen iPhone. Pick one of those up and see how wrong you are on this subject, if you’re willing to actually look past your own views that is.
The iPad is the *only* accessible tablet device right now. Android’s accessibility is getting there but it’s still in its infancy and Google felt no need to perfect it before releasing it. That’s not a bad thing, as it means more people can jump on and test it and maybe shape where it goes, but it does mean that it’s not up to snuff for certain things yet.
Seriously, go pick up an iPhone or an iPod Touch if you actually want to be informed on this topic. Until then, don’t add to the FUD factory.
It’s not about Android vs the iPhone! It’s about the iPad vs standard hardware where you can install standard software. There are several tablets that run linux with GNOME and even Windows. The iPad compares poorly to GNOME or Windows when it comes to accessibility. For web browsing, you are stuck with safari. Firefox is accessible with at-spi. It depends on your handicap, of course, but the iPad does not have the infrastructure to develop accessible software easily and requires hacks.
You seriously have no idea what you are talking about. You really don’t, and you obviously do not want to.
Yes, you may be stuck with Safari on the iPad. Guess what? Everybody’s stuck with Safari on the iPad. And you know what? It actually works pretty damn good.
Everything written in standard Cocoa is accessible. Simple as that. For things that aren’t, it’s usually as simple as the developers adding role and tag information to their controls, very much like the way at-spi operates. It’s the same as with OS X, the tools for accessibility are right there.
Now, if you have motor impairments I could see how the iPad wouldn’t work for you, but if that’s the case, why the heck use a capacitive touch screen-based device in the first place?
I know you’re anti-Apple, but when discussing things like this you really should attempt to at least be informed. You don’t like the way Apple did it, that’s one thing. You being deliberately ignorant and spreading completely wrong information, that’s another ball game and I for one won’t stand for it. There’s too much misinformation and disinformation about accessibility and related topics as it is.
Is there any at-spi bridge for cocoa? I think not. Are there tools to replace gok, dasher and opengazer for cocoa? I don’t think so.
For heaven’s sake, have you been reading anything I’ve been trying to tell you? You don’t need at-spi for Cocoa. Cocoa has an at-spi of its own, on both the iPad and OS X. More specifically, Cocoa interacts with the native accessibility framework of these platforms which has similar principals to at-spi in how it works. I don’t see you bitching that there’s no at-spi on Windows, and MSAA is a joke by comparison to at-spi or the Apple accessibility frameworks.
Not for the iPad as the whole damn keyboard is on-screen. Duh. For os x:
http://assistiveware.com/keystrokes.php
Not free though, I’ll give you that. It’s the only part you got right in this entire blind anti-Apple hate rant of yours.
Dasher has an OS X version already. It’s in Macports too so easy enough to get. Something you could have found out if you’d wanted to. None for the iPad yet that I know of, but there are several for the iPhone already and those should work. Read the dasher web page for more info, I assume you can find it at least?
Opengazer works on OS X already. Again, something you could have found out with a little reading of the opengazer web page yourself. It took me less than five seconds to find that out. Irrelevant on the iPad of course since the thing has no camera.
Any more ignorance I have to deal with? You’re really looking ridiculous. I don’t much like Apple either, but that’s no excuse to be an idiot and ignore what they’ve done and what their devices and platforms can provide. Relax the hate, it’s clouding your brain.
Yes, it’s like atk and MSAA. It’s a widget toolkit with some kind of accessibility that is not portable and not supported by big applications like openoffice, gtk, QT, java or firefox. It’s not bad as it is, but it needs an at-spi bridge to be useful, or developer support who are ready to support it in addition to at-spi. at-spi is more advanced and it has many bridges to other widget toolkits and supported by many accessibility applications. What I was trying to say is that on the iPad, cocoa accessibility is pretty useless and very hard to make use of. Doing multi-tasking on the iPad or iPhone requires hack, so dealing with accessibility software is a pain when compared to regular tablets with at-spi supported OS.
This is not like gok! Gok is much more than an onscreen keyboard! Gok can be used with simple switches and can access any widget on the desktop, can move windows, resize them, everything … with one switch! Coupled with opengazer, you can run your desktop with just your eyes. There is nothing like that that I’m aware of on the OS X, let alone the iPad.
But can you use it to input text in cocoa applications? As far as I know, it runs on Mac OS X, but only to write text in dasher. You can’t use it in cocoa.
AFAIK, the iPad does not have any USB port, but you can buy a very expensive plug to use a USB camera. Not as good as a proper USB port, but I believe it should work. Anyway, Opengazer is pretty useless without applications. Opengazer + dasher is really nice to input text at decent speed.
You are right about that. I may be too quick to bash Apple. All the articles about the iThings are getting on my nerves. I would like a better balance of coverage of the industry, but the buzz in only on Apple products. Sorry for sounding so hateful, I’ll try to relax a bit.
Edited 2010-02-10 18:15 UTC
Supposedly, Opengazer and Dasher work in Cocoa apps. But I can’t confirm this, having no vision. Also, btw, OpenOffice *does* support Cocoa accessibility and has done so since version 3.0. That one I do know for sure, I’ve got it installed here. Again, this is what I’m talking about. You don’t do any research before posting wrong information. A quick google would’ve told you Openoffice supports Cocoa accessibility. I’ll grant that GTK doesn’t, but GTK only supports atk and via atk only at-spi, so it’s not portable either. GTK is inaccessible on any non-at-spi platform which, right now, only includes GNOME as the platform where GTK is accessible. I’m not bashing at-spi or GNOME, in fact I’m using GNOME and Firefox with Orca right now to write this. I like GNOME and at-spi, but they’re not the only good solution that you seem determined to show them. And to be perfectly frank, until very recently, at-spi and the related technologies didn’t even get close to what Apple had almost five years ago in the framework and screen reading situations with the release of OS X Tiger. It took forever for at-spi to get where it is now, and I just hope it wasn’t all for nothing in the end.
Now, what’s this about an at-spi enabled tablet? I don’t personally have any use for a tablet–I’ve got a phone, a laptop, and a desktop already–but you’ve got me curious now. I hope you mean more than a standard x86-based tablet running GNOME, as in that case you might as well buy a netbook for 1/4 of the price of an x86 tablet.
I’ve done research a while back for my friend who have sclerosis. Back then, OpenOffice didn’t support Cocoa. But anyway, Cocoa is a widget toolkit with support for accessibility. at-spi is an accessibility toolkit. Many toolkits link to at-spi via bridges and this is the way to go. With Cocoa, you are stuck to use cocoa applications with cocoa accessibility software. With at-spi, you can use accessibility software with any application that use a toolkit with a bridge like QT, gtk, java, XUL and even .NET it seems. While cocoa does not have a bridge, it will stay behind.
Now about the tablet, my friend does have one because her desease is evolutive. When her arms could still move, she could use the virtual keyboard if the keys are big enough. Now she can’t anymore and she uses opengazer. This is one case and is not representative. Many people don’t have a use for a tablet. What I meant to say is that if you need a tablet for accessibility purpose, what does the iPad have that can’t be done in any tablet? Why is this article talking about accessibility on the iPad? I don’t know. It looks more like an advert for the iPad than anything else.
It all really depends on your disability I suppose. E.g. if I did want a tablet the iPad would be the only option really, unless I wanted to pay $2000-$3000 for a more standard x86-based tablet with a keyboard. There’d be no point in doing that, if I wanted something like that I’d just go for a netbook. But a standard GNOME touchscreen tablet would be of no use to me anyway, the required multi-touch needed to interact with a touch screen effectively in the case of a screen reader is not present. Some accessibility software for PDAs has gotten around this, e.g. for Windows Mobile, by completely changing the interface and touch gestures but that’s not an effective way to handle touch as it takes away one of the main advantages of touch, i.e. the ability to activate an item when you know right where it is.
In the case of a tablet for me, the iPad would be it right now. I hope Android’s accessibility continues to progress, I don’t want to see Apple unchallenged here. But it’s either the iPad or a netbook right now if you have no vision, as the expensive X86 tablets aren’t even worth considering in this case.
My friend paid €999 for her x86 15′ tablet about 2 years and a half ago and it was not the cheapest one in the shop.
Android and the iPhone OS are dumbed down OS for constrained mobile platform with very small screen. I really don’t understand why you want that on a 10′ tablet when you can have one with a general purpose OS. The iPhone does not even support multi-tasking so I wonder how you can use a screen reader AND a web browser on such an OS. I try not to bash the iPad too much, so I will say that the iPhone OS is beautiful and fun to use. I can see how you can use one to travel and watch movies or surf the net with a nice organic interface. If you are blind, I don’t see what the iPad does have though. Multitouch maybe? I don’t know for what, but maybe you can explain what multitouch can do for you?
Happy to explain, actually.
Ok, picture this situation. You’ve a menu of options and it’s quite large. Now, on desktop oses this isn’t a problem you can either press the shortcut letter (as in GNOME or Windows) or start typing out the item name you want (as in OS X). However, mobile platforms don’t have this luxury. So, on Symbian and Windows Mobile, if you want an option that’s, say, ten rows down in the menu what I have to do is down arrow, listen, down arrow, listen… you get the idea. This is aggravated on Windows Mobile where menus such as the start menu can change order, but that’s a platform-specific annoyance. Nevertheless, it’s not the most efficient way to interact especially with menus that often change. Now, contrast this with the multi-touch approach I can utilize on the iPhone. I simply slide my finger down until I hear what I want, then put a second finger down to activate it. Not on that screen, no problem just scroll and slide again. The response being about as close to instantaneous as you can get, I can go through long lists much faster. On top of that, on screens that generally don’t change, you get a feel for exactly where something you use frequently is located and can immediately jump to it. You know how many times you need to scroll and where it will appear when you get there. Now, the reason multi-touch is needed in a screen reading situation is because you don’t want to touch something and have it activate right away. You do need to be able to hear what you’re touching and decide whether you wish to activate it or not. As I’ve said, some access software for Windows mobile has taken a different approach, but they’ve essentially just duplicated a keyboard-based interface with touch gestures which removes all the advantages from an accessible touch-based interface. A further advantage to touch is that with it I, just like anyone else who can see the screen, can drag items around to where I want them. I can optimize the screen’s layout, when dragging and dropping is supported, to be what I prefer rather than being stuck with the defaults. That may seem trivial to most, and it is since they’ve been able to do it for ages, but to be honest it’s new to those like me.
This is easier to demo than to explain, but I hope I’ve explained a little.
As for a tablet at Eur 999, wow you guys get tablets a bit cheaper than we do here in the US.
€999 is a high end tablet. You can get one for less than €300, even in the US. You can even get multi-touch tablets that are not iPads. But I didn’t quite get why you need multitouch. I understand why you need a touch screen, but can’t you use touch to read and double touch to activate?
Edited 2010-02-11 16:21 UTC
You can, but double-tap has a few issues. First, activating items is only one thing you need. You need gestures to start and stop speech, to move between items in sequence, and to control a few other aspects of the experience. Multi-touch is best suited for situations such as this. Further, double-tap while typing on an on-screen keyboard is a royal pain in the arse, much simpler to just slide your finger around to the letters you need and tap down with a second finger. It’s much faster over all if you do not need to lift your finger from the screen while moving around on the device. Further, when double-tapping there’s always the possibility and, yes it’s happened to me, that you accidentally don’t tap quite quick enough and instead touch a different item which moves the focus to the wrong item.
Personally, I’d be more apt to design a touch system where by the release of your finger on an item signifies your wish to activate it. That could eliminate the need for multi-touch and leave a few gestures open and, if you want to cancel an action just move to a blank part of the screen and release. So far I seem to be the only one interested in a system that works that way though and I’d be the first to admit it might confuse people in the beginning.
Think you could point me to one of these not-so-expensive x86 tablets in the US? I do not mean a netbook with a touch screen. It’d be nice to find a cheap one where it is fully Linux compatible and get some touch screen screen access in GNOME developed. It wouldn’t necessarily be too useful in GNOME but more as a concept to get it integrated into at-spi and the technologies that are available for future interfaces. I’ve seen cheap tablets, but not cheap x86 tablets and the cheap tablets I’ve seen have been locked down with some variant of Win CE.
Sure, search for “archos 9 tablet PC” on google. My google will only point me to french sites. It’s a tablet that comes with linux so it is compatible. You can install debian or anything on it. Here is costs from €450 to €500 depending on the shop.
Wow I didn’t realize Archos were even still around. The last time I had one of their products it was an hd based mp3 player and it was junk. That was about 5 or 6 years ago now. I’ll look into these.
It’s very popular in France. The smaller models cost less than €300. I see a lot of them in the train and the subway.
We meet again darknexus.
The iPad is built on the iPhone OS, but claiming its the only accessible tablet is incorrect. It isn’t even the released! Have you used it? Has Apple released what accessibility is built in? I used a Windows XP Tablet PC with screen magnification. Not to mention Windows 7’s magnifier actually has support for touch so you can move around the screen with a stylus or touch. The PC Tablet is built on the same Windows kernel and thus many of the accessibilty products I’ve tried (including screen readers) work well with tablets with keyboards. Your claim that the iPad is the only accessible Tablet is immature and flat out wrong. Just because PC tablets didn’t work well for you with a screen reader, doesn’t mean it didn’t work for the rest of us who use a different type of accessibility.
When you talk about Microsoft’s frameworks, please mention the one that has been implemented since Vista, UI Automation (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UI_Automation). You’re still claiming MSAA is competing with Apple and Linux frameowrks, when for 8 years, UIA has been implemented in both Windows and the .NET frameworks. It also has been implemented in Linux thanks to Microsft and Novell implementing a bridge to at-spi for managed Mono code on Linux. IBM and Microsoft work together in the AIA as well as many other vendors to try to have a better cross platform framework on the operating systems. Even after I sent you this information in our previous posts, you continue to preach how bad MSAA is. If there are specific pieces left out of the UIA architecture that Linux and Apple have, I would love to know what they are.
Most people will mark you up since they don’t know about accessibility, but every time you post, you misrepresent Microsoft and PC vendor solutions. Opinions are fine, but you leave out criticial details that most people won’t understand. If you post some articles that make its way on to OSNews, be ready to have someone ready to review and rebuttle so those of us who don’t have such a narrow and incorrect view of the entire accessibility ecosystem are not misrepresented.
Edited 2010-02-10 20:12 UTC
We meet again? I don’t recall ever seeing your name around here. I do not count UI automation right now, as very few products actually use it. Perhaps I’m only thinking about myself–I’ve been accused of that before–but I have absolute no use for a magnifier. None. Further, I’m not including tablets with keyboards as that is a no brainer. Also, I prefer to focus on platforms where I don’t have to pay the blind tax of tripple digits or higher. Microsoft does the bare minimum and nothing more, unfortunately. You recall that I said the only accessible out-of-the-box tablet, not the only accessible tablet. This is still true, and given that it has the same Voiceover as the iPhone (yes, it does, I’ve checked the tech specs) I already know exactly how it will work and how accessible it will be.
Still you have me at a disadvantage. What’s this about meeting again?
Original Quote
What you’re saying now
You can sit here and tell me a product that isn’t even on the market that you haven’t used is the only accessible tablet device? Can you point to the spec where it says VoiceOver is included?
Screen Reading does not equal accessibility. Windows 7 featurse a full screen magnfier and full featured On-Screen-Keyboard. Narrator works with the most important parts of the Windows shell and does decently with applications that adhere to the MSAA or UI Automation standard.
I think you are doing a disservice to the thousands of accessibility products on a PC. Just because JAWS and other major AT’s are hundreds of dollars doesn’t mean every accessibility product is that much.
http://www.microsoft.com/enable/at/matvplist.aspx.
Canoical/Ubuntu Accessibility team has this as a major goal for Ubuntu. Windows PC’s include features that are accessible out of the box and sufficient for some user with disabilties. Just because the built in screen reader Narrator isn’t sufficient for you, doesn’t mean the rest of us can’t use it out-of-the box.
My friend has a learning disability and can’t process the text from Safari. He uses Kurzweil on the Mac to have the text read out. Apple isn’t giving him a solution out-of-the-box, but he’s paid for vendor software to make it work for him. Again, don’t make claims that Apple does everything for everyone that is innacurate.
That’s a ridiculous claim. Take a look at the list of screen readers available.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_screen_readers
Again, you seem to forget other users exist in the world that have different opinions. I have quite a few friends who are enjoying their netbooks with NVDA installed. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NonVisual_Desktop_Access That’s a $300 x86 PC using a free screen reader.
It is very saddenning to see such a narrow view on accessibility. Many satisfied users exist on PC’s, Linux, and Apple.
That, right there, tells me you have never used Narrator for anything serious. Ever. If you had, you would know how laughable that statement truly is. I challenge you to shut your eyes, fire up narrator, and read the content on a web page. I do not mean tab around the links, I mean *read* the content. Next, try formatting a document with it–not just writing it out, but formatting it effectively. All from the keyboard, with Narrator, eyes shut the whole time.
After that experience, try saying Narrator is decent with a straight face again. You won’t be able to do so, I can guarantee you that.
Please read what I write, the Windows Shell does not include IE or Office. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_Shell
My friends fall back to Narrator and use it if their third party AT breaks. Microsoft has never claimed their screen reader works with IE or Office.
I never once said it had to be done in Office. That was your assumption. Wordpad, part of Windows, would have been enough to show you what I meant. As for IE, it is compliant with both MSAA and UIA, and what you said was it works decent with any app that supports MSAA or UIA. Please read what you yourself write. Better yet, know what you are talking about before you make claims. Realize that I use these things day in and day out and have done so on various platforms for twenty years. I know exactly what works and what doesn’t when it comes to screen readers. You, quite clearly, do not.
We’re doing accessibility pieces on osnews now? Cool. I’ve had a few articles in mind comparing the various accessible oses and devices, but didn’t think there’d be much interest for them here. Being one who requires a screen reader as I’m totally blind (yes, my visual field is a big fat zero) I’ve used every accessible os out there. At the same time it makes me wish I could play with more oses as well, as there are few accessible ones relative to the number of oses around.
This would be a very interesting piece, do please write it. A lot of us would find any notes from experience about what works and does not in the area of disability very valuable. Also whatever you’ve found about the limits and features of various possible solutions.
Have to say that articles on disability and the iPad strike me about as interesting as articles about Web browsing and OSX, or email and Windows. What is interesting is not the Apple part or iPad connection, but the subject proper.
Sometimes this stuff reminds you of a small time newspaper in which every story seems to be about Nether Wallop, and so we have headlines like ‘Global Warming, why it will not hurt Nether Wallop’, ‘World War II as seen from Nether Wallop’, ‘Michael Jackson dies outside Nether Wallop’, or ‘Nuclear War in the Middle East but not in Nether Wallop’. Stop it with this Nether Wallop stuff for goodness’ sake!
I’ve been to Nether Wallop. It’s a small village in England with an army base.
I know this site isn’t mainly focussed on accessibility issues, but computers and the internet are a lifeline for people with disabilities and many of them need adaptations. Some people can’t use a normal computer for one reason or another. I am not disabled myself and have no intention of buying an iPad as I would expect a device this size to run something meatier than a mobile phone OS and have multi-tasking, but clearly it will answer a lot of people’s needs even if not mine or yours.
I agree completely about the importance of accessibility, and the interest of more articles about it, particularly from an experienced user point of view. The better informed we are, the more accessible we can make the systems we’re responsible for, probably with little extra effort, just a bit more understanding and information.
I was being a bit snarky about the idea of this subject being treated as a feature of the wretched iPad, when its so important in its own right.
I’d indeed *love* to have more on this topic, but the problem – as usual – is that I know nothing about this subject. I don’t have a disability (other than my crippling obsession with Fiona Apple, that is), nor do I know anyone who does. As such, it simply goes over my head.
This item was written by a reader (not by me or the staff). I’m hoping we get more of this.
Thom, I can help with that.
Seriously, if you want more stories or editorials like this I can provide them or write them. Maybe we could bring this topic on the podcast some time, too?
podcasts are not accessible!!! Text please!
Edited 2010-02-10 10:55 UTC
I can’t tell if that was a joke or an actual stab at the need for accessibility.
Technically, text can be converted to the appropriate format for accessibility purposes. Be it text to braille(for the deaf and blind), text to speech(for the blind) or just plain display of text(for the deaf).
While that’s true, those who cannot read text, usually prefer human voices over the synthesised ones of screen readers. I’d suggest pod cast, recorded as per usual + transcripts. Unfortunately, creating transcripts is a pain. Maybe they could send it through a voice to text program and then just skim the result making corrections as necessary? I don’t know how well those actually work.
I would also really enjoy hearing more about accessibility of products I have a few friends with disabilities that often ask me about various tech products, and I usually have to respond that I simply don’t know.
Plus, making a product more accessible often opens up new avenues of use, that we may not have thought about previously. In general a more accessible product is a better over all product, because it means the designers have had to think about how everything is works on a deeper level.
I believe GNOME is a very accessible desktop, thanks to at-spi. I’ve made a friend with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis use it with dasher and opengazer. GNOME comes with Orca and gok. Gok is great, although it is not pretty. If you can use a pointer device, florence is a pretty onscreen keyboards. For speaking, donnerlaparole (java, so works on any desktop) is great, although I’ve only used if in french and I don’t know how it works in english. There are some great tools for Windows but they are very expensive. KDE is not there yet, although it is improving support for at-spi with QT4.
Edited 2010-02-10 10:39 UTC
Yes, it is at least for now. There may be trouble coming however, seeing as how Oracle has completely pulled out of Sun’s commitment to GNOME accessibility and they were a huge driving force behind it. The GNOME accessibility team and project leads have been let go, and this is right in the middle of not only the CORBA -> DBUS switch but also in a major API shift to GNOME 3.0. Those of us in the community are trying to do what we can to salvage the situation, but unless we can get Canonical or someone else with a vested interest in keeping it going the situation could be very rocky in a few months time. I specifically think of Canonical because if they mean what they say about Ubuntu being fully accessible to everybody they’ll have to either take up the slack themselves or put some effort forth… if they’re serious about what they say, that is.
If GNOME’s accessibility falls by the wayside, it would leave OS X as the only other environment that is fully accessible out of the box without paying more than the computer is worth. Not good. I like and use OS X but I’ve never liked having only one option.
Nokia/Trolltech has made QT switch to at-spi over dbus. I suspect we are going to see QT applications that take advantage of it in the future. As I said, KDE is not yet on par with GNOME but it as improving a lot these days.
That won’t matter if Orca falls by the wayside, or at-spi itself. The big driving force behind it all was Sun, and that force is gone. QT using at-spi over dbus won’t mean a thing if at-spi itself dies.
But for now, at-spi has the most advanced tools. Maybe Cocoa will replace it one day, I don’t know. Maybe the demise of Sun means the end of at-spi, I don’t know. What I know is that for now it is the best tool and it is free, so whatever happen to Sun, it is there to stay, even if it does not improve anymore. Other tools may surpass it in the future, I don’t know.
If you find the time and are willing to, I’d really appreciate if you could put an article together about the subject to be posted on OSNews. It is one thing to know about the accessibility issues and measures taken to work around them and it is another thing to listen to the opinion of a person who needs and uses such features on a daily basis. I am pretty sure that it will be an awesome read!
Edited 2010-02-10 14:55 UTC
I might be new around here but I’d be really interested in content like this too. Please write your article!
I don’t know what is wrong with the media today. We are going to hear about the iPad for months, at the rate of 2 or 3 stories a day, like it was the only tablet around. I know disabled people who have been using tablet PC for years with GNOME.
A braille keyboard can be plugged to the iPad? WTF? any computer with usb support can support a braille keyboard!
Edited 2010-02-10 14:45 UTC
Its funny how hard people are trying to make it out again to be something special. This is almost as bad as Sarah Palin touting her child with disabilities to the public in an attempt to win sympathy. (yes I read the original articles but the title of this one and comments are guilty). Pathetic. Why not buy a cheaper, more versatile, with more applications which are already enabled for access by those with disabilities? Oh, yah I forgot, its made by apple. Sorry, but people are trying WAY too hard to make this thing out to be anything more than an overpriced, laptop/tablet missing tons of features but with total hardware lock in. Let the thumbs down begin as you know you want to because its all about being in the apple tribe. Not what actually makes sense. (Im referring to this write up on osnews) This has NOTHING to do with people with disabilities. It has EVERYTHING to do with Mac Heads trying to promote an obviously stupid product from their god corporation. Ill give it this. Its kind of entertaining. Its like watching a car sales man make crap up about why you should buy this-> car.
Simple question for you then: Name one other device (not a standard PC mind you) that is accessible out of the box but not specially designed for the disabled. Go on. Name one. Actually, I’ll make it easier for you. Name one other company doing what Apple is currently doing: i.e. making devices accessible to everyone they can without forcing extra cost and not designing specialized devices.
I’m not an Apple fanboy, and I have no use for the iPad. But they’re setting a very important precedent here and that has to be acknowledged.