Re: Lack of AX support in Pages 2 and Keynote 3
Re: Lack of AX support in Pages 2 and Keynote 3
- Subject: Re: Lack of AX support in Pages 2 and Keynote 3
- From: Bill Cheeseman <email@hidden>
- Date: Tue, 31 Jan 2006 18:50:13 -0500
- Thread-topic: Lack of AX support in Pages 2 and Keynote 3
on 2006-01-31 3:49 PM, David Niemeijer at email@hidden wrote:
> I wish some of the iWorks engineers would also glance at this list
> every once in a while because I am really disappointed that almost a
> year after Apple introduced VoiceOver neither Pages nor Keynote
> provide access to the contents of their main documents windows
> through the AX API....
I'm afraid these special-purpose lists (like applescript-implementors and
accessibility-dev) are the wrong place to complain about these very
important issues. The special-purpose lists are frequented by the champions
of the technology, so you're "preaching to the choir," as we say over here.
Your best strategy is to find a way to let the application engineers know
about your problems, and to do it in a way that makes clear why their
failure to meet these requirements is detrimental to their products'
success. It's hard to figure out how to do this, but I suspect that
individual applications or application groups are profit centers within
Apple, at least in a metaphorical sense. So you have to figure out where the
people who care about the product are located, and talk to them directly.
The special-technology folks (e.g., accessibility, AppleScript) are
generally every bit as upset as you are that the application folks aren't
paying attention. (And they find it just as hard to communicate with the
people in charge of the applications as you do.)
At the same time, I have to say that it may be mostly a matter of resources.
I was delighted to discover that Pages 2 is AppleScriptable, and on first
glance very correctly done. It may be that the accessibility issues in Pages
are mostly a result of using custom UI elements, and all you need to do is
let somebody on the iWork team know that it's really easy to add the few
lines of code that make a custom UI element accessible.
--
Bill Cheeseman - email@hidden
Quechee Software, Quechee, Vermont, USA
http://www.quecheesoftware.com
PreFab Software - http://www.prefab.com/scripting.html
The AppleScript Sourcebook - http://www.AppleScriptSourcebook.com
Vermont Recipes - http://www.stepwise.com/Articles/VermontRecipes
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