Sara Ford - Accessibility and Visual Studio

The Discussion

• 

  You know, I never gave much thought to accesibility until I made a bid for a government contract.  I imagine that most developers don't give this much thought.

• 

  Interesting to hear about the accessibility efforts, but this video highlights one of the major problems I have with a lot of the videos here: no screen shots.
  
  The interviewer asks Sara what VS sounds like with a screen reader, and most of the rest interview ends up being Sara trying to remember what the screen reader would say--when a simple demo would've been more effective.
  
  I understand there's probably issues of confidentiality, but surely something a little more complex than talking heads should be possible?
  

• 

  I'd rather have a sharp fullscreen screenshot as link on the forum here instead of zooming the video into screen. You can see the latter in .NET Show and the video zooming isn't enjoyable. In theory you could incorporate sharp desktop recording into the talks using some desktop capturing program but editing those together would be waste of time and so on.

• 

  In future interviews we'll definitely spend some time on the screen. Last Friday I got demos on tape of the Tablet PC and the SmartPhone. I'll only post them here if they look OK, though.

• 

  Robert,
  
  I think Channel9 has a nice community cable vibe going for it:  it exposes people, even people inside the big house, to some pretty neat technology, people, and happenings.  Sara's video was fine for a brief intro to the topic.  Personally, I'd like to see it covered in more depth, but that's probably a task more suited to the MSDN TV guys (if they weren't so dang busy showing us Longhorn features .
  
  More on topic, there are many people out there who would benefit from better accessibility support in the software they use.  And now, if you want to support Tablet PC users who use voice command to control apps, you have yet another reason to push programming for accessibility.   Just check out the Tablet PC platform sdk.
  
  Curt
  

• 

  In retrospect, maybe having placed a microphone next to one of the speakers (provided there wasn't any feedback) would have allowed people to hear a screen reader navigating the Start - Run Dialog.  I wouldn't make for a very good screen reader. =)
  
  If you're running Windows XP and you're curious what a basic screen reader sounds like, Windows XP comes with a basic screen reader called Narrator.  Just go to Accessories - Accessibility - Narrator.
  
  I mentioned two other screen readers, JAWS and Window-Eyes.  Both have demo versions available on their websites.
  
  JAWS:
  http://www.freedomscientific.com/fs_products/software_jaws5intro.asp
  
  Window Eyes:
  http://www.gwmicro.com/products/
  
  Thanks!
  -sara
  

• 

  doesn't the windowskey-U shortcut bring that stuff up? 

• 

  Frankie Fresh wrote:

  doesn't the windowskey-U shortcut bring that stuff up? 

  
  
  Roger that, homey!

• 

  Hey Sara, I wasn't commenting on your screen reader abilities, they're fine with me
  But you're right, an extra mike would indeed have done the job!
  

• 

  No worriest, mvuijlst.  It's all good.  =)
  
  Yep, WindowsKey+U does the trick too.  For every new keyboard shortcut i learn, i forget an older one.  =)

• 

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• 

  I am a state government IT programmer and currently researching on what more can be done besides setting the only two properties on the .net IDE. This works fine for the simple forms, but ya know the government, complex and dysfunctional is the by design. So, the screen reader does not perform as expected. There really needs to be more of an SDK library that will do more than enlarge text or gurble labels and controls.