WebAIM - Web Accessibility In Mind

E-mail List Archives

Re: accessible chat clients

for

From: Birkir Gunnarsson
Date: Mar 19, 2010 10:48AM

I know various versions of MSN and Windows messengers are accessible to one
degree or another, the problem is the latest versions generally requires the
most up-to-date screen readers to work with them.
Users are also playing with the Miranda software, which has the advantage
that you can integrate msn, aim and yahoo (I think) messengers into one.
It is pretty useless for you to have AIM if all your friends have msn
messenger, and aim has been on the losing side of the popular messengers
lately.
It is just something to keep in mind.
I wish messengers in general were more accessible, and I take that to mean
chat is accessible, one should be able to click on a link sent in an instant
message, one needs to be able to open an attachment or file sent through a
messenger, a video or voice chat should be accessible, the users details as
well as adding and removing contacts need to be accessible, all via simple
keyboard shortcuts.
These are what I consider requirements, but this is just speaking as a blind
messenger user, not based on any scientific formulation or systematic
thinking.
I may add I have yet to see messenger software that I feel fulfils all of
these things.
Cheers and be well
-Birkir


-----Original Message-----
From: <EMAIL REMOVED>
[mailto: <EMAIL REMOVED> ] On Behalf Of Despain, Dallas
Sent: Thursday, March 18, 2010 6:21 PM
To: WebAIM Discussion List
Subject: Re: [WebAIM] accessible chat clients

Thank you very much Mike. Do you know of any resources out there that talk
about what's desirable in an accessible chat client and techniques for
making chat accessible?

-----Original Message-----
From: <EMAIL REMOVED>
[mailto: <EMAIL REMOVED> ] On Behalf Of Moore,Michael
(DARS)
Sent: Thursday, March 18, 2010 3:21 PM
To: WebAIM Discussion List
Subject: Re: [WebAIM] accessible chat clients

We tested AIM last fall and found it to work well with screen readers and
magnifiers. We did not do full compliance testing and concentrated on the
most common functionality that our users would need to send and receive
messages.

Mike Moore

-----Original Message-----
From: <EMAIL REMOVED>
[mailto: <EMAIL REMOVED> ] On Behalf Of Despain, Dallas
Sent: Thursday, March 18, 2010 3:57 PM
To: <EMAIL REMOVED>
Subject: [WebAIM] accessible chat clients

Does anyone have any updated resources on accessible chat clients be they
Web, desktop or mobile? I found
http://www.webaim.org/articles/archives/chats/ which is apparently slightly
out of date.

It doesn't seem like any of the big chat clients such as Yahoo messenger,
live person etc are doing much with it.

The best client I've used so far i is the desktop version of MSN messenger
which notifies the screen reader with a typing sound when a person starts
typing and notifies the person when a message comes in.

I'm mostly interested in web because we want to do in accessible chat client
both for Web and mobile web.

Thanks,
Dallas