Comments on: Mac OS X accessibility: A success story

By: Chris

Chris — Thu, 18 Dec 2008 22:42:01 +0000

I think the reason that Microsoft gave me when I suggested that they include audio support in WinPE (the Windows Preinstallation Environment) was that there would need to be support for scads and scads of audio drivers–which, it occurs to me, could be worked around, could it not? Video, they’re claiming, is more easily handled with a generic VGA driver. I’ve thought about throwing together something not as involved as the Windows Automated Installation Kit, but with the ability to generate an answer file with a simpler interface (at least with Vista and the upcoming Windows 7). Microsoft has gone away from Windows XP internally, which might make it difficult for me to get at a build to support that–but I’m wondering what the demand would be for an answer file generator tool to at least marginally improve the installation accessibility story on Windows which seems to be the worst of the three, and this from a Microsoft employee.

By: Jake

Jake — Wed, 26 Nov 2008 11:21:15 +0000

I must say it is nice to finally have OS X be known for the accessible system it is. The amount of FUD out there about it is staggering, and it’s nice to see favorable articles now and then.

By: Jake

Jake — Wed, 26 Nov 2008 11:17:48 +0000

@Siddharth Agarwal
Oh, you’d be surprised just how many people install Windows eventually, blind or not. Eventually, it becomes easier to simply reinstall the system rather than clean out the myriad of excess files, registry keys, etc that add up.
The problem with an accessible Windows install is two fold. The first being that yes, part of the Windows installer does still run in text mode or does not actually run in Windows itself. The partitioning screen of the Windows Vista installer is a good example, as it does run a GUI but it is not running a live copy of Vista. Rather, it’s a scaled down installer GUI that has one purpose, and one purpose only: to get Windows installed to the hard disk. It does not run most of the Windows services, and it does not load any Drivers, including those for Audio cards. So, in addition to having difficulties in making a screen reader for this portion of the installer, your audio card wouldn’t even work, whether Vista has a driver for it by default or not. No, I’m not making excuses for Microsoft, far from it. It is well overdue for them to address this issue head on.
The second issue has nothing at all to do with Microsoft, however, and everything to do with OEMs. Many of them provide, not a Windows install CD, but a system restore disk. These can be anything from a customized Windows installation disk to little more than a copy of Norton Ghost with a partition image that gets restored to your hard drive after you answer a few questions in text mode. Microsoft may eventually make the Windows install accessible, I hope they do. But that assumes that you’re going to have a standard install CD or DVD, and that is usually not the case with the major OEMs.

By: Jake

Jake — Wed, 26 Nov 2008 11:05:35 +0000

I wouldn’t hold my breath on Neo Office support for a couple of reasons. The first being that it is written in a java toolkit with no accessibility features whatsoever, regardless of platform. The second being that, as Neo Office was basically an Aqua port of Openoffice–which now has its own native version–I don’t necessarily see the focus being on Neo Office anymore. Rather, the focus is likely to move to Openoffice, as it now runs native on the three major platforms.

By: Eddie

Eddie — Fri, 21 Nov 2008 18:24:07 +0000

Considering that iWork isn’t fully accessible and Openoffice is more robust this is great news. However I would like to see Neo Office be accessible. As far as Mozilla goes it would be nice to see Camino support with Voice Over. For the record Opera has some support for voice over but not to the extent as safari.

By: Siddharth Agarwal

Siddharth Agarwal — Wed, 19 Nov 2008 17:14:59 +0000

Oh, and by the way, the voice on Vista is “Microsoft Anna”.

By: Siddharth Agarwal

Siddharth Agarwal — Wed, 19 Nov 2008 15:38:51 +0000

The only part of the Vista installer that’s text mode doesn’t require user interaction, I think. It’s just the “loading files” part.

I’m also not convinced that that many people actually install Windows at all. Most sales are pre-installed, and boot to a somewhat (though not very) usable desktop.

By: Marco

Marco — Wed, 19 Nov 2008 12:29:37 +0000

The only knowledge I have of this Vista installer is from sighted people I sat next to when they installed Vista. And one of the things said was that even for Vista, this first part still looked like text mode. If that’s not the case, and that person simply didn’t look closely enough, I’d correct that statement of course.

By: MattW

MattW — Wed, 19 Nov 2008 12:25:11 +0000

Whenever I’ve installed Vista, no part of the installation has run in text mode, and partitioning etc. is all done in a GUI.

I must admit I wasn’t paying attention to accessibility features at that point though.