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Re: Strikethrough Content with Screen Readers

for

From: Christophe Strobbe
Date: Nov 19, 2010 2:39PM

Hi Bevi,

At 18:05 19/11/2010, Bevi Chagnon | PubCom wrote:
>(...) But I wonder if lack of funding for research and development (R & D) is
>preventing our A.T. developers from putting more power behind their software
>and hardware.

As far as I know, one of the problems for AT developers was the lack
of comprehensive accessibility APIs (at least on Windows), so AT
developers had to use call other APIs (which may be
application-specific), and sometimes even resort to video driver
patching techniques, to build on off-screen model and present
information to the user.
Some APIs (e.g. the application-specific APIs) change when a new
version of an operating system or an application is released, so AT
developers need to waste time adapting to the new APIs. This time is
just spent on catching up instead of making progress.
A few years ago, Microsoft introduced a new accessibility framework
called UI Automation. Hopefully, this will improve the situation...


>Would federal grants help fund these efforts and get better products into
>the hands of our A.T. users?

Don't know. Aren't such funds meant for innovation? Implementing
WAI-ARIA in AT may count as innovation, but plain old HTML elements
and attributes?


>Our U.S. federal government gives major defense contractors billions of
>dollars every year to design faster fighter jets and bigger bombs. I wonder
>if we could divert a couple million of those dollars to our A.T. companies
>who would create products that helped people rather than killed them.

Good idea, since the military creates customers for AT - i.e. by
making people disabled.

Best regards,

Christophe



>Oh wait...I'm sorry.
>
>There I go again, talking politics on a list.
>My apologies, but I do live and work in Washington, D.C. so politics comes
>with my job!
>
>--Bevi Chagnon
>
>: : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : :
>: : : : : : : : : : : : :
>Bevi Chagnon | PubCom | <EMAIL REMOVED> | 301-585-8805
>Government publishing specialists, trainers, consultants | print, press,
>web, Acrobat PDF & 508
>Online at the blog: It's 2010. Where's your career heading?
>www.pubcom.com/newslette


--
Christophe Strobbe
K.U.Leuven - Dept. of Electrical Engineering - SCD
Research Group on Document Architectures
Kasteelpark Arenberg 10 bus 2442
B-3001 Leuven-Heverlee
BELGIUM
tel: +32 16 32 85 51
http://www.docarch.be/
Twitter: @RabelaisA11y
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