Re: our place chat client

[Travis Siegel]

I've not used our place chat client, but if it talks to a web applet  
written in java, and displays any text through the applet, it will  
not work with voiceover.  The reason is that over the web, when an  
applet sends a text string, it's not sent as text, it's drawn as a  
graphical representation of the text string.  That makes it  
unreadable by any screen reader, unless the screen reader does some  
gymnastics to get at the original text.  Voice over does not do this  
(obviously) so any program using java applets that display text on  
the web will not work for us.  This explains why mlb.com appears to  
have nothing on the screen once the audio begins playing.  In  
actuallity, there is stats about the game you're listening to.  I.E.  
what inning, score of the game, and so on.
Java does allow overriding of built-in routines though, and it  
*shoould* be possible to replace the misbehaving output routine with  
one that doesn't draw the text as graphics, thereby making the applet  
accessible once again.  I know it's doable, but I don't (yet) know  
how to do this.  If I can figure it out, we'll be able to access  
those same sites that cause so much problem now.
Stay tuned.