Early Skype versions were less accessible than 3.x. As far as I know, most of 3.x evolved out of 1.x and 2.x. Accessibility for those versions evolved along with Skype itself and of course became better with time because of this.
Skype 4.0, though, is by the company's own statements a complete rewrite. At the time they started writing 4.0, they were beginning to learn about accessibility but had not yet incorporated it into their early development process. They now know enough to do better at this, but of course by now, they are having to add accessibility to 4.0 largely from scratch, since 4.0 itself was written that way as well. So I don't think we can draw a trend from the changes in accessibility from Skype 1.0 through Skype 4.0. I do think, though, that our voices over the years, having in effect taught Skype the means and importance of including accessibility, should set a trend for the future--a trend of including accessibility at design time rather than tacking it on closer to release time. Whether that trend has indeed begun remains to be seen, but I for one think the future holds promise. On Fri, Feb 13, 2009 at 08:14:45AM -0500, Jack wrote: When it comes to computers and the internet, I'm pretty computer savvy. My concern is that with each upgrade of Skype, it becomes less user friendly for blind people than the previous one. And while some improvements are going to happen, my thinking is that if it's not broken, don't fix it. It seems that the Skype software is slowly becoming more and more unfriendly to screen readers. And while all the credit in the world goes out to Doug for keeping the Jaws scripts as current as possible, my fear is that one day the program will just become too complicated for the average Jaws user to navigate. And from the looks of the posts to this group, I'd say that we're heading in that direction. Thanks for posting to the skype english list. To access scripts for the latest version of skype go to http://www.dlee.org/skype To access tutorials and other goodies go to http://www.marrie.org/skype/skype.html thanks and have a wonderful day. _______________________________________________ Skypeenglish mailing list Skypeenglish at emissives.com http://emissives.com/mailman/listinfo/skypeenglish_emissives.com -- Doug Lee dgl at dlee.org http://www.dlee.org SSB BART Group doug.lee at ssbbartgroup.com http://www.ssbbartgroup.com "All these years, the people said, 'He's acting like a kid.' He did not know he could not fly, so he did." --Guy Clark, "The Cape" (Dublin Blues)
