Reallife AT Examples: Part I

1
Real-life AT Examples  Part I

• Eric Damery
• VP Product Management
• Glen Gordon
• Chief Technical Officer
• Freedom Scientific, Inc

2
Blindness AT industry

• Worldwide revenue of 150 million per year
• Screen readers, braille displays, scanning and
  reading, and embossers
• Small companies with specialized expertise
  focused on assistive technology for those that
  are blind
• Freedom Scientific is the largest player
• Has 38 blind or low vision employees
• Most other companies are smaller and have less
  than 30 employees

3
Techniques Used by AT

• Take advantage of all available information to
  create flexible and powerful products for our
  users
• Accessibility APIs such as MSAA, Java Access
  Bridge, IAccessible2, and UI Automation
• Application APIs not specifically designed for AT
  such as the Microsoft Word Document Object Model
• System level APIs
• Once we get the information, our real work begins
• Reorganize the information to maximize
  productivity
• Develop a user interface that is based on
  keyboard input with speech and braille output

4
APIs are Only a Starting Point

• An API is only as good as the understanding the
  person has who implements it for a particular
  application
• Application developers do not always understand
  what AT needs and why
• Difficult or impossible for them to test without
  special training
• Freedom Scientific worked with IBM on
  IAccessible2 API
• Result IBM products that support the API are
  accessible with JAWS
• Microsoft considered AT early in the development
  process of Vista
• Result Freedom Scientific and other AT products
  support Microsoft Vista at launch

5
Product Demonstration