Hi Michael, I see. All I can say is I wouldn't be too hard on your instructor. When it comes to accessibility and accessibility related technologies everyone is often in the dark because it is not a core requirement anywhere in the world to know about such things or to teach it for that matter. Often times most programmers have to learn about such things outside of university and on their own time. Since accessibility is not a part of the standard training course material most developers are clueless about accessibility issues. So I'm frankly not surprised you don't know much about this topic yourself even though you apparently had some IT training.
Anyway, I hope what you have learned from all this is there are no easy answers to your questions. Accessibility is a cooperative venture and when application developers and screen reader developers don't work together accessibility is often less than it could be or non-existent. The only bright light here is that accessibility is slowly but surely becoming a standard in programming toolkits. The Gnome Foundation has made sure that GTK+ is largely accessible and that accessibility is a high priority so that any Unix-like operating system such as FreeBSD, BSD, Linux, Solaris, whatever will have a high degree of accessibility for blind users out of the box. Similar accessibility standards are under development at Apple with their Cocoa graphics toolkit for iOS and Mac OS which is largely suppose to work with VoiceOver. Interesting enough it is Windows that is lagging behind now days in accessibility standards simply because Microsoft has been late in adopting standards, and just now are introducing UI Automation etc into Windows 8 and Windows 10 which will improve things long term for Windows applications. So I think there is a light at the end of the tunnel even though it seems like it is very far away right now. Cheers! On 1/11/15, Michael Gauler <michael.gau...@gmx.de> wrote: > Hi Thomas, > this is actually sad. > And I don't mean you explaining to me how certain things work. > But since you don't know me personally, I can tell you that I was supposed > to know such things. > In my country Germany, there are two ways to learn about software > development. > The first way is to go to university and study relevant subjects there. > And there is the other way, where you are trained by either a company or by > > a school for the blind. > In this case your training would take three years. > Half that time would be working either in a real company or in one created > for training but with realistic simulations of the things you would do in a > > real company. > The second half is to go to school learning all the theory you need. > At the end of your three years you would have to take a certain written exam > > which is the same for everyone who wants to go this route in Germany and to > > which blind aspiring software developers also have to follow the same > rules. > The sad fact however is that we had one blind teacher who did not teach us > enough in regards to how software, the operating system or Windows work > against each other or with each other. > My so called training was practically a waste of time, allthough it was > formally correct by the educational standards under which it is governed. > I know a visually impaired friend who also wants to be a software > developer. > He is looking for a job but hasn't found anything good yet. > I fully believe that one half of his problem is because many companies might > > not want a visually impaired worker in their ranks. > But lately I have come to think that it is more due to the messed up > education in ghis field when you don't want to go the university route... > I won't go more into detail here, since it is really off-topic. > > Originally I wanted to know why such programs like Dosbox are not accessible > > (Flash, too). > Now I know that their developers did not consider accessibility when > designing them. > On the other hand, I also wondered why the screen reader developers did not > > atempt to create solutions on their own, since I know that the moment the > internet became easy to use for everyone, multimedia technologies were > developed and deployed. > But since it was mainstream at that time, it was strange to not see major > screen reader developers atempting to make their own solutions until a form > > of communication might have been established with the technology developers > > or until there were more worldwhide accepted standards or guidelines to > follow. > > > --- > Gamers mailing list __ Gamers@audyssey.org > If you want to leave the list, send E-mail to > gamers-unsubscr...@audyssey.org. > You can make changes or update your subscription via the web, at > http://audyssey.org/mailman/listinfo/gamers_audyssey.org. > All messages are archived and can be searched and read at > http://www.mail-archive.com/gamers@audyssey.org. > If you have any questions or concerns regarding the management of the list, > please send E-mail to gamers-ow...@audyssey.org. > --- Gamers mailing list __ Gamers@audyssey.org If you want to leave the list, send E-mail to gamers-unsubscr...@audyssey.org. You can make changes or update your subscription via the web, at http://audyssey.org/mailman/listinfo/gamers_audyssey.org. All messages are archived and can be searched and read at http://www.mail-archive.com/gamers@audyssey.org. If you have any questions or concerns regarding the management of the list, please send E-mail to gamers-ow...@audyssey.org.
