Thank you Slau, I shared this with the mag as
well because so many of the users over there struggle with the same issue.
----- Original Message -----
From: <mailto:slauhala...@gmail.com>Slau Halatyn
To: <mailto:ptaccess@googlegroups.com>ptaccess@googlegroups.com
Sent: Friday, January 10, 2014 11:04 AM
Subject: PACE Anti-Piracy's response regarding
iLok License Manager accessibility
I was recently put in touch with the president
and vice-president at PACE anti-Piracy, the
makers of the iLok key and the iLok License
Manager software. Since i made it clear that I
wished to share their response with this
community, I'm pasting it below. In fact, I'm
including my original message as well. I'd
normally not send as lengthy an email to a
developer but, under the circumstances and,
given it's impact, I wanted to give it a little more weight.
You'll notice that the vice-president has
responded and they're clearly aware of the issue
and have indicated their intention to resolve
the problem. You'll notice that in my response I
tried to suggest that the project would surely
not take as much work as Mr. Kirk has estimated
but, even if their estimate turns out to be
correct, the fact that they're still willing to
fix it is good news. Still, I think they'll
ultimately find that it won't be as complicated
as it might appear. I do also suspect that the
scope of the work as described by Mr. Kirk also
includes the necessary work it'll take to
migrate to a newer development platform. That
was something that Avid experienced as well and
is one of the reasons it took so long to get to
the point where Avid could begin work on Pro
Tools accessibility. Anyway, you'll find the
initial message and subsequent responses below.
Best,
Slau
On Jan 6, 2014, at 8:49 AM, Slau Halatyn
<<mailto:s...@besharpstudios.com>s...@besharpstudios.com> wrote:
Dear Mr. Cronce,
My name is Slau Halatyn and I've been an iLok
user since 2002 when I made the switch from an
analog multitrack to Pro Tools HD. I'm a blind
studio owner and trained audio engineer in New
York City. When I witnessed the iLok system at
work, I was impressed and, at the same time,
relieved to not have to deal with
challenge/response and registration code
nightmares. Everything went quite swimmingly
until the iLok License Manager. Please allow me to digress just a bit…
I've been working with many people at avid
including Rich Holmes and ed Gray among others
regarding the accessibility of Pro Tools.
Actually, that work started years before when
David Gibbons was still at Digidesign. There
were various obstacles to overcome while the
company transitioned through several
technologies but, with the new release of Pro
Tools 11.1, we've seen incredible strides in
improved accessibility for blind users. With
this comes many new blind users ranging from
students all the way to professional audio engineers and studio owners.
For a time, while Pro Tools was improving in
accessibility from version 8 through 10, the use
of PACE's <http://ilok.com/>iLok.com site was
very straight-forward and quite accessible since
it was based on html which, if standards were
followed, was very easy to use. Unfortunately
for blind users, the introduction of the new
iLok License Manager saw this accessibility
completely wiped out. The application is
completely unusable for blind users trying to
access the program's features with the built-in
screen reader in OS X known as VoiceOver. there
is no work-around for the problem and the only
way one can deal with licenses is to have a
sighted individual perform the tasks instead.
With the advent of new Pro Tools accessibility
and upgrading to new HDX systems and plug-ins,
this affects people like me on a daily basis. I
know that others in our community have written
for support and have been told that PACE is
aware of the issue and I would imagine that it
has possibly been brought to your attention.
I'm writing to you to ask that this issue be
addressed and resolved as soon as your resources
allow. To blind users of iLoks, not having
access to the iLok License Manager is the
equivalent of sighted users suddenly not having
access to their licenses and I'm sure you're no
stranger to user complaints when things go
wrong. The recent problems that PACE experienced
was, I'm sure, stressful and you're probably
relieved to have that behind you. Stress,
however, is what blind users are experiencing
every time a demo license or upgrade comes up.
The disappointment at the current state of iLok
License Manager accessibility is evident every
time a new blind user learns of the issue.
I offer you a fairly simple solution: Apple has
some basic programming guidelines for making
applications accessible with VoiceOver. Largely,
it's a matter of simply defining UI elements. If
UI elements are undefined or unlabeled, the user
sees nothing in the application apart from the
menu bar. If a button is defined as a button,
the user sees the button. If that button is
unlabeled, well, that's not so great. However,
if it's defined as a button and also labeled,
the user can perform the default action,
interact in whichever way is appropriate and use
the UI controls as intended. In most cases, it's
a matter of typing a few words per control.
Often, Apple's underlying framework takes over
at that point and browsing dialogs is already
accessible by default. Combo box lists are
navigable just as they are anywhere else in the
OS. I assure you that a program such as Pro
Tools, with its thousands of custom UI elements,
is far more complex to make accessible than the
iLok License Manager. I've sat at an office in
Daly City while a programmer typed a few words,
recompiled a Pro Tools beta and, within moments,
a new UI element was made accessible. This is
not a complicated process by any means and I'm
sure that the License Manager could be made
accessible within a short amount of time.
Apple's guidelines can be found on their developer site here:
<https://developer.apple.com/library/mac/documentation/Accessibility/Conceptual/AccessibilityMacOSX/OSXAXModel/OSXAXmodel.html>https://developer.apple.com/library/mac/documentation/Accessibility/Conceptual/AccessibilityMacOSX/OSXAXModel/OSXAXmodel.html
There's a pdf document there which spells out
the procedure. This is the only document used by
Avid and others when making applications
accessible. I urge you to have your
programmer(s) take a look at these guidelines
and make a plan to incorporate the necessary
descriptions into the code of the iLok License
Manager so that blind users can access the
software alongside our sighted counterparts.
Please feel free to discuss this issue with Rich
and Ed. If you have any questions, I'd be happy
to help in any way I can. When you do have a
chance to look into it and reply, I'd love to
share your response with our community online
through our email lists as well as the PT Access blog.
Thanks for taking the time to address this issue
which means so much to so many people. It would
be greatly appreciated when it can be resolved.
best regards,
Slau Halatyn
BeSharp
Audio recording & Music Production
30-80 33rd Street
Astoria NY 11102
718-932-3660
On Jan 9, 2014, at 7:59 PM, Andrew Kirk
<<mailto:and...@paceap.com>and...@paceap.com> wrote:
Hi Slau,
Thank you for your email.
I wanted to let you know that we have received
your emails and understand the situation. We too
are frustrated that the development tools we are
working with do not fully support these things
out of the box. We had our engineering spend
time to research this last Autumn and it is
going to be a big project to upgrade all of the
tools and deal with. Unfortunately it would
break some key components by moving forward to
that version and cause us to have to rewrite
more code. If it was a few days or a week - it
would have been done already but it will be at
least a few months of work (when it can be
scheduled) and a complete regressive test of the application and all
features.
I hope you understand that
<http://ilok.com/>iLok.com as it was could not
be supported. The weekly, sometimes daily,
changes in browsers made it nearly impossible
for us to keep up. In addition there features
and security issues that could not be solved in
the browser, hence we moved to the client side
model. Largely feedback has been extremely positive.
For a site that is free to users our resources
are, unfortunately, somewhat limited. We will
be looking to when we can move to the newest
version of the tools and then take advantage of
the features that allow better access. The
code is not and Xcode project it is a cross
platform development toolset that is used worldwide.
This topic is discussed at all meetings about
iLok License Manager and when we can make such
improvements. Once we are able to make such
improvements we will certainly contact you so
that you can assist us in being sure that these features fit your needs.
Again, thank you for your email.
Very Best Regards,
Andrew
--
Andrew Kirk
Vice President
PACE Anti-Piracy, Inc
1860 South Bascom Avenue
Campbell, CA 95008
Voice: (408) 377-9774 Ext 653
web: <http://www.paceap.com/>www.paceap.com and <http://ilok.com/>iLok.com
On Jan 10, 2014, at 10:03 AM, Slau Halatyn
<<mailto:s...@besharpstudios.com>s...@besharpstudios.com> wrote:
Hi Andrew,
Thanks for your response. It's good to know that
the issue is on your radar. Being that the
license manager is cross-platform, you face very
much the same situation Avid did. I look forward
to assisting with testing when you do eventually
get to that point. Frankly, I believe that the
estimate of "months" of work is grossly
miscalculated and I hope that doesn't deter your
team too long. I'm confident that, once the work
does begin, you'll find that it's not at all as
complex as you might think. I've witnessed it
myself with Avid and I'm sure your experience
will be much the same. Thanks again for taking
the time to reply and I look forward to working with you.
Best,
Slau
Slau Halatyn
On January 10, 2014, Andrew Kirk wrote:
Hi Slau,
iLok License Manager is made with a tool called
Qt
(<http://qt-project.org/>http://qt-project.org)
and we must switch to a newer version that came
out just when we went to release ILM. There have
been some major changes so this is not just one
feature but effects the entire application. I
think 2 months is actually an aggressive
estimate. We already spent a man week just
looking at it and trying to get a short cut
similar to your initial suggestion for allowing
voiceover etc.. In our case this is not just
using Xcode and Visual Studio - if that were the
case - this would be already done.
This is high on our list and we will be in touch. I appreciate your
support.
Thank you.
Andrew
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