Sara Ford's Weblog

Friday was the last full day of the CSUN conference. Although my first meeting wasn’t until 10am, implying that I could sleep for the longest consecutive period of time since I arrived in LA, the cold I had been fighting for weeks got the best of me that...

With the presentation behind me, I looked forward to celebrating my birthday.  Starting off the day, I attended a continental breakfast hosted by Freedom Scientific. After the breakfast, I attended a few sessions by Sun Microsystems. Thursday was...

Sorry to keep ya’ll in suspense how the presentation went. I didn’t get back to my hotel room until after midnight last night. The bottom line: the presentation rocked. Although the alarm clock is set for 7:30am, I’m wide awake (not by choice) at 6am...

Microsoft Accessibility http://www.microsoft.com/enable Accessibility Information for Developers http://msdn.microsoft.com/nhp/default.asp?contentid=28000544 Microsoft Visual Studio Homepage http://msdn.microsoft.com/vstudio FIX: DataGrid Made Compliant...

During my rehearsal presentation, I stopped dead in my tracks when I said “The Visual Studio Environment…” I had this mental image of the sign language interpreters signing something like “the Visual Studio rainforest.” After my presentation, the interpreters...

The security guy screening my bags keeps looking at me, as if he were trying to figure me out.  I’m thinking, “there’s just a camera, a mouse, and a cell phone in the bag.  Why is he looking at me?”  Finally, he decides to let me know what...

I’ve finished rehearsing my demos for today. It seems that there’s always one more little tweak to do to a demo before the presentation. But for tonight, my demos are completed. Weather.com is reporting temperatures in the low 70s this week for LAX, where...

There is a book out on the market for Accessibility called Accessibility For Everybody: Understanding the Section 508 Accessibility Requirements , a 500 page book written by John Paul Mueller and published by APress in 2003. Introduction A few months...

Last week, Aaron , our Accessibility Program Manager, and I did an informal usability study with a Visual Studio .Net 2003 user who has low vision. I shouldn’t say it was a usability study, since a usability study implies asking the user to perform certain...

The more I study UI Consistency and improving the user experience, and the more feedback I hear from customers who use accessibility features, I’m really starting to wonder if Usability and Accessibility are really just two sides of the same coin? Yes...

<i’m moving this post to the new karate category> Last night, I had my first karate class in about eight years.  Back in the day, I was a 1st kyu brown belt (the next rank is black) who had participated in regional and national competitions...

<i’m moving this post to the new karate category> Last night, I had my first karate class in about eight years.  Back in the day, I was a 1st kyu brown belt (the next rank is black) who had participated in regional and national competitions...

I’m often asked “What’s the correct name for this control?” There are many variations to this question, for example: Does this control need an AA name? Do we change the AA name if a control’s caption or label changes? Do we add the AA description to the...

Last night, MSNBC reported on a Tennessee protest about a disabled man who was forced to crawl up the courthouse stairs for his court appearence, because the courthouse did not have a ramp or elevator. When the man refused to crawl up the stairs for his...

These postings are provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no rights. The content of this site are my own personal opinions and do not represent my employer's view in anyway. In addition, my thoughts and opinions often change, and as a weblog...

If you’re using Visual Studio and Accessibility Features and/or Assistive Technologies, please share with me your experiences.  Feel free to leave comments here with any issues, concerns, or bugs you’ve encountered.  This request has always...

As I’ve mentioned in my previous post, I’ve decided to use this blog to talk about topics besides Accessibility.  I’ve just recently taken ownership of window docking in Visual Studio, including tool windows and files opened in the editor space....

I’ve finally made up my mind to blog here about other VS features, instead of just Accessibility.  Note that I’m not calling Accessibility a feature by any means.  Accessibility is just like Localization, Security, Logo, and so forth – it is...

I’m often asked about the relationship among Normal (same as Visible), Unavailable, and Offscreen, and Invisible AA States. Here’s my best guess at an explanation. What the docs say Starting with the MSAA Docs on Object State Constants , the following...

I attended a few get-togethers with some Assistive Technology vendors a while back when they were on campus for an Accessibility conference. While eating dinner with one particular AT vendor, I had asked him what we, Visual Studio , could do to improve...

What s the Accessibility Lab? The Accessibility Technology Group on campus has a lab with numerous licensed-versions of Assistive Technologies (ATs), including Motion Trackers, Screen Readers, Screen Magnifiers, Braille Displays, Speech Recognition, and...

Consider this my testament as an Accessibility Tester. I am a Software Designer Engineer in Test on the Visual Studio Core Team. My team owns the critical aspects of the integrated shell, and I am responsible for the quality of the shell's Accessibility...