Having a Dialog Spoken

[Richard Gaskin]

Stephen Barncard wrote:

 >> Richard wrote:
 >> My blind customers have had to walk from my wares in favor
 >> of competing products that use normal OS operations. :(
 >
 > surely an external package could be written to use toolbox calls for
 > standard ask, answer, and others like the TEXT/font dialog many apps
 > use. At least for MacOSX.

For all the things about OS X, making the first screen reader available 
only with Tiger put them about 10 years behind Windows.  All programs 
that use standard Win API calls to display windows, menus, and controls 
on Win95 forward can be used with a common screen reader.  Most blind 
users I know prefer Win for its more mature support for the blind.

Externals are good for a great many things, but support for screen 
readers isn't a function that's called as much as a fundamental change 
to how controls are rendered.

Once upon a time all controls were emulated to look like native 
controls, but as emulations they didn't reflect any changes to the 
environment, always keeping our Rev apps looking just a bit odd in a 
context of truly native apps.

In more recent years the Rev engine has undergone significant change to 
use native APIs for rendering controls, so our programs now look fully 
integrated with the OS.

If the method by which Rev draws controls were taken a step forward, 
we'd have no only native appearances, but also more native behaviors. 
Screen reader support would only be a happy by-product....

-- 
  Richard Gaskin
  Fourth World Media Corporation
  ___________________________________________________________
  Ambassador at FourthWorld.com       http://www.FourthWorld.com