[nfbcs] FW: compiling iPhone apps to Android apps

Mon Mar 30 01:34:32 UTC 2015

The school situation is alright, at least on the Mac side.
Can't speak for the job since I haven't worked yet in any serious capacity.

Jorge

On 3/29/15, Nicole Torcolini via nfbcs <nfbcs at nfbnet.org> wrote:
> To address two things brought up in this thread:
>
> 1. Not all employers, especially those working on computers, use
> Windows/Office.
> 2. Often, companies require their employees to use certain software for
> security reasons.
> 3. In regards to screen readers, the best thing for a website to do is to
> follow the ARIA standards. It is true that some of the screen readers do
> not
> follow the ARIA standards. As users, we can contact the makers and file
> bugs. On occasion, the problem is with the browser. For example, in
> response
> to an accessibility event from a screen reader, Internet Explorer only
> sends
> a click whereas Firefox and Chrome send mousedown, mouse, click.
>
> Nicole
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: nfbcs [mailto:nfbcs-bounces at nfbnet.org] On Behalf Of Larry Wayland
> via
> nfbcs
> Sent: Sunday, March 29, 2015 3:23 PM
> To: 'Steve Jacobson'; 'NFB in Computer Science Mailing List'
> Subject: Re: [nfbcs] FW: compiling iPhone apps to Android apps
>
> So true. I have long wondered when we were going to get the same
> consideration for the job and education as we get for home and
> entertainment.  This is something I have brought up when talking to groups,
> especially developers.
> It seems we have been mostly left out in these two areas.  Don't get me
> wrong, I think it's great we have the access we have in home and
> entertainment, but it would make things so much better if we had better
> access to computers at work and school.  Honestly is it really that
> difficult?
>
> Larry
>
>
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: nfbcs [mailto:nfbcs-bounces at nfbnet.org] On Behalf Of Steve Jacobson
> via nfbcs
> Sent: Sunday, March 29, 2015 12:44 PM
> To: NFB in Computer Science Mailing List
> Subject: Re: [nfbcs] FW: compiling iPhone apps to Android apps
>
> Joe,
>
> Thank you for this response, I appreciate your comments.  Understanding as
> much as we can about the strengths and weaknesses of all of the
> alternatives
> that we have is very useful.  Your description of what works and what
> doesn't is very useful.  While I have also disabled speech on my iPhone, I
> generally am able to figure out what I did.  I definitely had occasions
> with
> my Windows Mobile phone when I had no idea how I got to a given state.
>
> Just for clarity, by "more open systems," I was thinking of systems like
> Windows where Microsoft has less control over development as well as open
> source.  Microsoft has some control, of course, by upgrading their
> operating
> systems and requiring that software be changed to work within their
> changes,
> and I think things are probably more closed now than they once were.
>
> What troubles me a great deal is that all that we are discussing and
> describing works pretty well in the entertainment and leisure market.  If
> Apple really falls down on the job or if Android really pulls out in front
> and accessibility is good, I can switch.  We can play the market, so to
> speak.  However, we often don't have the same flexibility when dealing with
> software on the job site.  We have to use what our employers adopt.  That
> is
> still mostly Microsoft, although more software is web-based now.  Still,
> one
> sees cases where software is developed that is just not at all accessible
> or
> marginally accessible and we are not able to just switch platforms in those
> cases.  As I said, too often it seems as though we have to fight the same
> battles over and over again as well.  For example, after twenty years of
> accessibility at Microsoft, in Office 2013, the dialog that let's you
> design
> your email signature in Outlook and the one that lets you address envelopes
> in Word is not accessible to any screen reader that I am aware of.  So who
> addresses envelopes any more?  The point is that these are basically text
> controls and they are not accessible, but probably will be with the next
> major release whenever that is.  How can we be at a point where a text
> control is not accessible?
>
> I had to use a reader recently to get credit for a required course on
> diversity from my employer.  It was flash-based and was designed in such a
> way that it appeared to be very scrambled with Window-Eyes, JAWS, and NVDA.
> This is the case even though Adobe has been writing white papers on FLASH
> accessibility for a decade or more.  We get all excited that we have WCAG
> guidelines.  However, while these are pretty good, they are not simple if
> you look at all of them, and for most web developers or people developing
> web-based software for a large company, the number of people affected by
> following them is probably in the single digits.  While I am biased because
> I was negatively impacted, I'm not sure what made it necessary for that
> particular course to use FLASH.  It was primarily a series of windows of
> information with questions with checkboxes.  But I paid a reader to help me
> so that a software developer somewhere could feel he or she was
> artistically
> fulfilled.  <smile>  I think a lot of our employability as blind people is
> being undermined by software that is not accessible, mostly because someone
> has made development choices that do not take us into account.  This is
> mostly done because people just don't know the impact they might be having
> on us, but sometimes it is strictly because we are a small market and
> really
> don't affect the bottom line in a way that makes up for the additional
> costs
> of accessibility added after the fact.
>
> On the other hand, how is a company supposed to make their web site
> accessible when they find that it is accessible with Internet Explorer and
> Chrome and not with FireFox, or it is with JAWS but not with Window-Eyes or
> NVDA, or in the case of Wells Fargo, it worked with NVDA and Window-Eyes
> but
> not with JAWS?  And these examples apply only to Windows.  I have not even
> touched upon what works with Chrome under Android, or Chrome under IOS
> versus Safari under IOS?  In other words, I don't think developers have it
> easy either.
>
> Don't get me wrong, we have a lot to be thankful for and we've made a good
> deal of progress.  At the outset, no smart phones were accessible at all,
> and when a new version of an operating system came out, we would have to
> wait months or years before it would be accessible.  Still, I really
> thought
> twenty years ago at the Microsoft Summit that by 2015 more of this would be
> automatic.  Getting the perspective of developers is, in my opinion, key to
> our understanding of what might be done to make this process more
> consistent.
>
> Best regards,
>
> Steve Jacobson
>
> On Sat, 28 Mar 2015 22:14:21 -0600, Joseph C. Lininger wrote:
>
>>Hi Steve,
>>You wrote,
>
>>> What I've really liked about the iPhone compared to my previous
>>> experience is the stability. It just seems to work. There are
>>> occasional glitches, but nothing  substantial. I've heard a few
>>> stories of people working with Android tablets indicating that may
>>> not have always been true, but would you comment on that?
>
>>I don't have a modern Android tablet, and the one I did have wasn't all
>>that useful from an accessibility standpoint. I can comment on the
>>stability of the phone though. I use a Samsung Galaxy S4. It happened
>>to come with Talkback, so I had no issues there. There's a shortcut you
>>can use without sight to turn it on. When you first set it up, you do
>>have to answer some questions dealing with whether you have a google
>>account and that sort of thing. Other than that, provided you like the
>>default settings, it works out of the box. There are some things I
>>recommend people change to make the device more useable by the blind,
>>but if you choose not to change those things the device still works.
>
>>The couple of times I've had to reset the device have been because of
>>my errors, not those of the device. It doesn't generally crash or
>>anything like that. I had to reset it once because I some how disabled
>>the screen reader, and I got it into a state where you couldn't
>>reenable it. Don't ask me how I did that; I look at it as a hazard of
>>needing to use access software. Most of the time, though, the device
>>just does what it's supposed to without too much bother. I've had apps
>>that don't work right, but I ascribe that to the app not to Android.
>>For instance, I was screwing around with one of those remote control
>>apps, trying to use it to control my TV. The "-" button on the virtual
>>remote didn't work. It was there but disabled. I considered that the
>>app developer's fault, not something in Android.
>
>>There are two major accessibility issues I have with the device. First,
>>I'm not a big fan of the dialer like I said in a previous message. I
>>have not played much with the iPhone, but it looks from the bit I saw
>>of it that maybe the dialer works more like what I'd want. Second, it
>>looks like if you purposely disable Talkback once it's been enabled,
>>the shortcut you used to turn it on initially cannot be used to
>>reenable
> it.
>>I don't turn it off, but still. They really ought to make it so that if
>>you, for instance, lend your phone to someone who switches that off, it
>>can be reenabled easily. It could be that there is a way and I just
>>havne't found it. I'm mostly self taught where Android is concerned
>>after all.
>
>>You wrote,
>
>>> As a developer who has stated you prefer more open systems, do you
>>> have thoughts on how we get accessibility more into the core of such
>>> systems  sooner?
>
>>First, when I say I prefer more open systems, that doesn't necessarily
>>mean I insist on open source. You could consider Windows a closed
>>system, as an example, and people use that. My main problem with
>>Apple's version of a closed system is that they've gone so far as to
>>tell people which programs are even allowed to exist that can run on
>>the devices they create. Google has done that to an extent as well, but
>>there are two differences. First, they're less likely to do that.
>>Second, you have the option of installing software from a source other
>>than google play if you really want to.
>
>>Now, let me answer the question you asked. To an extent, it's actually
>>the same problem whether it's a closed system or an open system.
>>Specifically by open system now I mean open source since I think that's
>>what you were refering to. The problem being, someone has to write
>>accessibility support in. In the case of a closed system, it either
>>have to be a third party developer like Freedom Scientific or GWMicro,
>>or else a manufacturer like Apple. It could be a private developer like
>>in the case of NVDA, but that's not as likely.
>
>>With an open system, in theory anyone who has the know-how could do it.
>>In practice, the difficulty is that features in open source projects
>>are driven largely by what interests people and by what the developers
>>want to work on. That means you have to either do it yourself or find
>>someone else who is willing to do it. Then you have to get your changes
>>accepted into the project. It is possible someone could develop a
>>propriatary screen reader for an open source system, but those don't
>>tend to be as well received in that environment. You also have a much
>>larger risk that things will change rather quickly and unexpectedly.
>
>>Android is an interesting case in that it is perhaps the first open
>>source system to gain the type of popularity it has and to capture a
>>major portion of a particular market. Specifically what I'm getting at
>>here is that Android is one of the only (if not the only) open source
>>project I am aware of where marketing and consumer demand play a major
>>roll in what gets included and what doesn't. Probably the next closest
>>example you could come up with would be one of the Linux offerings from
>>Red Hat, but those are not nearly as mainstream as the Android
>>operating system has become. So it uses a largely open source model,
>>but is found in places where you previously only saw closed source
>>platforms. That has some interesting ramifications for standards
>>setting in general, and for accessibility in particular.
>
>>You wrote,
>
>>> What degree of governing or guidelines would be acceptable to
>>> developers without restricting their need to have flexibility?
>
>>Depends what you mean by governing or guidelines. If you mean how
>>closed or open a platform is, I would argue developers will accept or
>>reject that sort of thing without considering accessibility in the
> slightest.
>>If you're talking about development guidelines in order to make systems
>>more accessible, I don't think developers have a problem with that in a
>>general sense. Ideally, the best situation would be one in which there
>>are standard controls and such which just work if they're included in
>>an app. For the most part, that's what I've been seeing happen with my
>>Galaxy S4. I don't know if that's the case with Apple, but I gather it
>>is. The difficulty comes when someone wants to use a non-standard
>>control, or they want to redesign a standard control to have it work in
>>a non-standard way. I can't see developers being willing to give up
>>that flexability, even though I wish everyone would just use standard
>>controls and make it easier on all of us.
>
>>You don't see the custom control thing in the mobile market as often as
>>you do on regular computers. I'm not sure if that's a function of how
>>the systems are built (APIs provide more functionality so developers
>>don't have to resort to custom controls), the fact the platforms are
>>limited and so they can't support as much of it, or if it's a
>>combination of the two. It could even be something completely different.
>>Do Apple or Google perhaps tell developers they can't do that, or do
>>they perhaps discourage it?
>>Joe
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
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-- 
Thank you.

Jorge A. Paez

LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/in/jorgeapaez

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