‘Technical’ Archives

Mozilla makers of the well utilised Firefox web browser have been promising accessibility on the mac for VoiceOver users for years. Many had given up hope, but it looks like the project is finally moving forward. An announcement was made by an employee and tester for Mozilla at the beginning of January, stating that although [...]

The popular Cloud service Dropbox is a great way to back up important files, and keep those files in sync across multiple devices.  Unfortunately, installing the Dropbox client on the Mac using VoiceOver has been problematic at best.  When you open the Dropbox application, VoiceOver either sees nothing at all, or it sees Dropbox with [...]

Earlier this month, Wired took a sneak peek at some of the upcoming features in beta 3 of iPhone OS 4.0. Some of these, such as a screen orientation lock and possibly file sharing seem to be making their way over to the iPhone from the iPad. The article also shares a bit of detail [...]

Today, Apple posted its thoughts on Adobe Flash, and the reasons why it has not been included on the company’s line of mobile de ices, such as the iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad. The piece is well reasoned and clearly presented, although it is interesting that the biggest reason to VoiceOver users not wanting Flash [...]

The Acapela Group has announced an update to their high-quality text-to-speech engine software development kit for iPhone OS, with support for iPhone OS v3.2 and the iPad. Acapela TTS for iPhone SDK has been used in a wide array of talking apps available on the Apple AppStore, adding spoken feedback to rich content and inspiring [...]

UK tech publication The Register recently published a piece reporting on something quite important which has unfortunately garnered so little attention that it slipped under our notice. Information Society and Media Commissioner Viviane Reding discussed the possibility of a "European Disability Act" to compel EU nations to adopt web accessibility rules resulting in all European [...]

Today, Apple issued a press release detailing their plans for the World Wide Developers’ Conference (WWDC) keynote on 08/June. Specifically, they mention improvements to Snow Leopard that will be shown at the conference, including accessibility. Here’s an excerpt: Snow Leopard and Mac technical sessions will showcase hundreds of refinements to the operating system and dive [...]

Today, M Cubed Software published a lengthy post on their company blog entitled "The Accessible Mac." In this piece, the man behind M Cubed, Martin Pilkington, discusses the challenges, difficulties, and practices involved in developing more accessible Mac software. As a challenge to his fellow developers, Mr. Pilkington pledges "By the end of 2009, all [...]

Today in Cupertino, Apple announced significant changes to its line of notebook computers, a new Apple Cinema display model, and new pricing for these products. The new MacBook and MacBook Pros employ a new manufacturing process which results in smaller, lighter, and more durable machines. These new MacBooks are made from a block of aluminum [...]

As we reported earlier, Apple teamed up with GW Micro to make iTunes 8 accessible with Window-Eyes 7. This was accomplished by fully implementing MSAA (Microsoft Active Accessibility) in the iTunes software. What that means, ultimately, is that other screen readers can also take advantage of the new accessibility features in iTunes 8 if they [...]

Lioncourt.com just spent a few minutes speaking with Apple’s Mike Shebanek about the new accessibility features announced in Apple’s products today. We’ve learned a bit about how the iPod Nano 4G’s speaking menus work. Understandably, a device as small and compact as the iPod Nano hardly has the processing power to generate text-to-speech (TTS) on [...]

The BBC is reporting on a new technology being developed by a team of Japanese researchers which uses focused ultrasonic waves to produce the illusion of solid objects in mid-air to the sense of touch. While still in its infancy, the researchers believe the technique could be used in video games to provide a more [...]