Issue: 2008 - Vol. 5 - Issue 4 - Windows Accessibility Focus

  • Accessible technology eliminates barriers for people with disabilities and it enables individuals to take full advantage of their capabilities."-Bill Gates, Chairman, Microsoft CorporationAccessible technology eliminates barriers for people with disabilities and it enables individuals to take full advantage of their capabilities."-Bill Gates, Chairman, Microsoft Corporation
  • Creating a natural user interface requires designers, testers, and developers working in concert to develop the right support that makes multi-modal access to an operating system and applications possible.To assist in this work through the Accessibility Interoperability Alliance (AIA), Microsoft® released its UI Automation Specifications with a Community Promise and released testing tools as open source projects via CodePlex. Microsoft is committed to interoperable accessibility.
  • We know what you’re thinking: Why should I read an article about the fundamentals of accessibility?Well, if you already know the percentage of computer users who have disabilities, can name at least ten different categories of assistive technologies, and can describe the key concepts involved in designing an accessible application, then you can probably skip to the next article. However, if you’re unsure what accessible technology is, then take a few minutes and keep rea...See More
  • While general accessibility requirements (such as font colors in UI rendering) are important, programmatic access to the graphical user interface (GUI) is a crucial element to improving accessibility.On the Windows® operating system, Microsoft® Active Accessibility® and User Interface (UI) Automation support this programmatic access. This article provides a quick overview of Windows Automation API 3.0 featured in Windows 7.While general accessibility requirements (such a...See More
  • Windows® 7 offers end-to-end accessibility with better performance, seamless interoperability, and improved framework design.
  • If you haven't heard, accessibility is one of the most important aspects of a Web site experience.By using the accessibility features in Silverlight™ 2, you can provide the best experience for all users. Building a rich Internet experience can be a daunting task when you have to balance a cool visual design with usability.
  • While custom controls are introduced every day, not all of them are easily accessible.This article provides a quick summary of Microsoft® technologies that help make Win32-based custom controls programmatically accessible. Techniques range from implementing UI Automation, to creating or overriding properties with Dynamic Annotation, to using the new IAccessibleEx interface to close the gap between UI Automation and Microsoft Active Accessibility®.
  • Close your eyes, ignore your mouse, navigate with your keyboard, and rely on your ears alone. Now try to use an application you’ve built or tested. Can you?The few informal tests described in this article can expose a plethora of usability and accessibility shortcomings, oversights, and other issues in your application. But how do you test, assess, and rectify them?
  • Windows® Internet Explorer® 8 has a lot of cool new features that make Web page browsing more accessible.I’m going to cover Caret Browsing, Zoom Version 2, High DPI, Accessibility Rich Internet Applications (ARIA) support and User Interface Automation (UI Automation) support. Caret Browsing is particularly helpful for low-mobility users. Zoom 2 and High DPI support targets low-vision users, and the new ARIA and UI Automation support targets screen-reader users. Low-mobi...See More
  • As is often the case, applications are not typically designed with accessibility in mind.Usually, applications are designed to satisfy business requirements. If those business requirements do not include accessibility, more likely than not, the application as a whole will be inaccessible to important segments of users. There are, however, steps you can take to mitigate this common lack of foresight in requirements analysis.
  • Do you have a complex custom control that you want to make programmatically accessible, but you aren’t sure how? Custom controls, by their nature, tend to be very diverse: each is typically written for a specific purpose, making it difficult to generalize implementation details. How do you know what to implement? You should consider supporting accessibility for any custom control that performs its own rendering and input management-routing mouse and keyboard input-within the HWND that it owns.
  • Sometimes an application needs to interact with the user interface (UI) of a second application.The first application might be a test application that drives the UI of the target to run through some automated tests. It might describe the UI out loud, as an aid to users that are blind. It might be a speech application that allows users to give vocal commands. In each of these cases, the application needs a way to inspect and interact with the UI of the system and other running applications.