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From:
Tom Kingston <tom.kingston@charter.net>Subject:
Re: an idea, but how to go about it when I get there?Date:
Sun, Dec 11, 2011 2:55:52 amRegarding custom controls? Slow down for a minute and think about what a
screen reader is and what a custom control is. How is any screen-reader
supposed to figure out what kind of control that you and every other
programmer on the planet decides to put together? And believe me, I've
been at this for years. Many IDEs on steroids like Visual Studio create
custom controls by default and the programmer isn't even aware of it.
It's part of the, don't worry about it, I'll do lots of the work for you
philosophy of these rapid development cycle machines and why you pay so
much for them.
And lastly, out of curiosity, several years ago I created a few windows,
particularly dialogs, with all kinds of controls to mimic an
inaccessible one in a program, after I figured out what they were. I
used standard controls and simply matched the colors. So Window-Eyes
recognized everything in those windows. Then I asked my sighted wife to
compare the two and tell me what was so custom and flashy about the
inaccessible ones I had mimicked. She was very hard pressed to see much
of a difference at all. I mean she was literally just guessing and
saying something like, eh, well, I guess that one's a little kind of
sort of different. But it really just looks like the same thing to me.
This is because a lot of these IDEs alter standard controls just enough
to give it their own look and they're the only ones who know the
difference. It's part of the crazy world of Windows; they're going
against one of the core concepts of what Windows was supposed to be. And
Microsoft has long been one of the biggest offenders; they write the
standards and then ignore their own standards. So 90% of the time these
custom controls have no impact. Ask your sighted friends how many of
them visually audition a program before purchasing it, and how many
times it has been the deciding factor on which program they purchased.
Regards,
Tom
On 12/10/2011 10:41 PM, Katherine Moss wrote:
> I
screen reader is and what a custom control is. How is any screen-reader
supposed to figure out what kind of control that you and every other
programmer on the planet decides to put together? And believe me, I've
been at this for years. Many IDEs on steroids like Visual Studio create
custom controls by default and the programmer isn't even aware of it.
It's part of the, don't worry about it, I'll do lots of the work for you
philosophy of these rapid development cycle machines and why you pay so
much for them.
And lastly, out of curiosity, several years ago I created a few windows,
particularly dialogs, with all kinds of controls to mimic an
inaccessible one in a program, after I figured out what they were. I
used standard controls and simply matched the colors. So Window-Eyes
recognized everything in those windows. Then I asked my sighted wife to
compare the two and tell me what was so custom and flashy about the
inaccessible ones I had mimicked. She was very hard pressed to see much
of a difference at all. I mean she was literally just guessing and
saying something like, eh, well, I guess that one's a little kind of
sort of different. But it really just looks like the same thing to me.
This is because a lot of these IDEs alter standard controls just enough
to give it their own look and they're the only ones who know the
difference. It's part of the crazy world of Windows; they're going
against one of the core concepts of what Windows was supposed to be. And
Microsoft has long been one of the biggest offenders; they write the
standards and then ignore their own standards. So 90% of the time these
custom controls have no impact. Ask your sighted friends how many of
them visually audition a program before purchasing it, and how many
times it has been the deciding factor on which program they purchased.
Regards,
Tom
On 12/10/2011 10:41 PM, Katherine Moss wrote:
> I
