Re: Custom accessibility worth it?
Re: Custom accessibility worth it?
- Subject: Re: Custom accessibility worth it?
- From: Bill Cheeseman <email@hidden>
- Date: Wed, 06 Sep 2006 19:33:20 -0400
- Thread-topic: Custom accessibility worth it?
on 2006-09-06 5:08 PM, Ricky Sharp at email@hidden wrote:
> Do others have apps with their own UI that you've successfully added
> accessibility to? Or, is everyone here making their Aqua apps
> accessible? If I'm the only one doing custom stuff, I may choose to
> do the bare minimum at this point, and wait to add the rest when
> Leopard ships; assuming of course APIs, feature requests, better docs
> come in by then.
Here are a few thoughts after a long day at the office. They are just my
impressions, and I'm kind of tired, and I could certainly be wrong.
For apps that use standard Carbon or Cocoa UI widgets, accessibility is
automatically included and works pretty well. Most apps fall in this
category, so your experience is by definition relatively uncommon. My own
apps use strictly standard UI widget code, so I've never had to add any
accessibility features of my own (except for the stuff you can add easily in
Interface Builder).
I haven't done any systematic review of apps that use custom UI widgets, but
I have a couple of observations derived from my long use of GUI Scripting
(which depends upon the accessibility implementation in targeted
applications) and from my development and testing of PreFab UI Browser:
1. Many of the major apps that have been around for a long time, such as
several Microsoft, Adobe and (formerly) Macromedia apps, have been very slow
to become properly accessible. I assume that this is because they contain a
lot of legacy UI widget code that does not have accessibility built in.
2. Many of Apple's apps (including but not limited to FileMaker Pro) have
accessibility holes. I assume this is because they contain a lot of custom
UI widgets to which Apple has not added custom accessibility code.
One might conclude from these observations that the developers of these apps
have felt that implementing custom accessibility is too hard, or too
unimportant, or some combination of those two factors. For whatever reason,
implementing accessibility in custom UI widgets has apparently been
relatively low on their priority lists.
I believe that AppleScript support has suffered a similar fate over the
years, for similar reasons: it is difficult to implement and many developers
have not foreseen a market payoff sufficient to justify the expense. It has
always seemed remarkable to me that AppleScript support is as widespread as
it is. I suspect that this is due to a combination of successful promotion
of AppleScript by Apple and the fact that it is in fact useful to important
blocks of users (i.e., customers).
Accessibility may not have as much going for it in terms of market pull --
unless and until the federal government gets serious about enforcing the
statute requiring that software purchased for use by the government or by
schools be accessible.
On the other hand, I have seen lots of signs that accessibility is rising in
importance at these companies. I expect to see the laggards achieve good
accessibility compliance pretty soon now.
--
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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