Hi, Good points but I am afraid you are twisting facts a bit here.
First, the two news items about Nokia's tactile feedback and indoor navigation project are only research ideas. I met with the team who were working on the indoor navigation project a couple of months ago. It is an excellent idea but we will never know if any of these efforts see the light of the day. And anyway, I fail to understand how these projects will help a disabled person use a mobile phone effectively without paying extra money to do so. The fact of the matter is Nokia doesn't care enough about Accessibility and if you have proof to the contrary, I will be glad to see it. There will always be perceived security vulnerabilities when someone is trying to develop a screen reader for an environment which doesn't have a platform accessibility API as they have to resort to a number of unconventional techniques to get access the kernel. As I understand it, this is what is happening with the Speakup discussions you pointed me to. And again, Similar objections will be raised with any application which has to have global read-write access to certain system files. You may not see such issues coming up with Orka because Gnome has a couple of ways to expose accessibility information although they need a complete overhall. If you worked with the Blackberry platform, you will realise that each and every component, user setting and anything else under the universe can be controlled at an enterprise level. For example, an organisation can decide that all its Blackberry users can only use a single font type and size and they can make this happen at the server side. Users will have no option to change to a different font type or size if they wanted to. Similarly, an organisation can decide what applications their users are allowed to use. In other words, the organisation has absolute control. This can obviously impact those users who may have to use assistive technology. So, this security bulletin that you pointed me to is explaining how to let these users have access to assistive technology software and the text to speech API at the same time retaining other security settings. Further, Research in Motion controls who has access to the Text to Speech API and at the moment, this is restricted to only a couple of vendors as far as I know. Oratio is one of them. You would know this fact if you read the security bulletin carefully. This restriction is not because of security concerns but purely commercial reasons. Finally, secured PDF. This is easy as I happen to find myself working for the company who are blamed for inventing the format in the first place <smile>. The highest security setting in PDF was introduced at one point because certain technical content publishers were getting text to speech and audio books mixed up. They thought that listening to a document with a screen reader is akin to listening to an audio book. This issue was quickly corrected through the trusted assistive technology programme. I am sure you will be aware of this. Unfortunately, there are still a few secured PDF files floating around which were created with older authoring tools which can't tell the difference between an assistive technology trying to access the PDF DOM from any other application. Most secured PDF files can now be read by screen readers who are part of the above mentioned programme. Last but not least, the idea is not to blame any individual or team at Google or any other organisation. Accessibility has to be an organisation-wide initiative. But the best point of contact for any accessibility related issue is obviously its accessibility team. Regards, Kiran -----Original Message----- From: accessindia-boun...@accessindia.org.in [mailto:accessindia-boun...@accessindia.org.in] On Behalf Of Roopakshi Pathania Sent: 17 December 2010 18:01 To: accessindia@accessindia.org.in Subject: Re: [AI] What is Google up to? Hi, Kiran Kaja <kirankaj...@gmail.com> wrote:> > KK: if history is any indication, Nokia hasn't done much to > promote accessibility of its devices. We have solutions now > for Symbian because of couple of excellent developers who > figured out means to get into the operating system. Symbian > has *no* accessibility API while every other mobile platform > except Windows Phone 7 has it. And I haven't seen any > indication of an accessibility API in Meego. Sure, which is why I said that the third party screen reader developers would have to innovate. The recent example of Code Factory improving accessibility of Ovi Maps is a perfect example of this. Nokia has plans for improving the cell phone experience which is not specifically for the blind, but which is going to benefit the community all the same. Things like: Tactile feedback http://www.engadget.com/2008/07/08/nokias-haptikos-tactile-feedback-tech-revealed-in-patent- applic/ and indoor location http://www.allaboutsymbian.com/features/item/12145_Indoor_Location-Future_tech_fr.php Symbian was trying to get an accessibility API, but I haven’t been keeping track of what happened their. > KK: Wrong information. A properly implemented Accessibility > API doesn't lead to any security or stability issues. In the > early part of this decade, OS developers did have a > misconception that some accessibility features lead to > security leaks but I haven't seen any such issues for more > than 6 years of accessibility related work experience. Developers have a number of reasons for leaving out accessibility frameworks, obviously they are not valid all the time. stability and security issues is just one of them. I always check my facts and if you are looking for documented evidence, then here it is. Over at the Speakup list, we are having a discussion after a developer raised an issue that world writable files for Speakup (files used for changing user configurations) is a security risk. http://speech.braille.uwo.ca/pipermail/speakup/2010-December/051463.html and http://speech.braille.uwo.ca/pipermail/speakup/2010-December/051478.html Here is BlackBerry asking users not to run text-to-speech applications again for security reasons. http://docs.blackberry.com/en/admin/deliverables/14557/Text-To-Speech_API-Security_Note--1048931-0319124239-001-5.0-US.pdf And if text-to-speech poses no security risks, then I wonder why do secured PDF documents prevent text-to-speech from running? Yes, efforts should be made to encorporate accessibility right from the start. The company should be held responsible and not a specific section. Something like what this open letter does. http://blind.wikia.com/wiki/Open_Letter_Initiative Regards To unsubscribe send a message to accessindia-requ...@accessindia.org.in with the subject unsubscribe. To change your subscription to digest mode or make any other changes, please visit the list home page at http://accessindia.org.in/mailman/listinfo/accessindia_accessindia.org.in To unsubscribe send a message to accessindia-requ...@accessindia.org.in with the subject unsubscribe. To change your subscription to digest mode or make any other changes, please visit the list home page at http://accessindia.org.in/mailman/listinfo/accessindia_accessindia.org.in
