Partner-TV: telling it like it is

It's really funny,  You must think that if you talk about it enough, and get your one Visible Blind employee to say how good your product is that the thousands of other blind users who are shouting about the unfair prices they need to pay for screen readers to use your operating system will be quitened.  Sorry, but life isn't that easy.  And, furthermore, from reading a number of responses on other blogs, it seems that more and more customers are catching on to your practise of trying to apeas the masses with empty promises and uneducated decisions.  I wonder what would happen to Saqib's job in MS if he decided not to agree to do that interview?  What about inviting someone unconnected with MS onto one of these interviews to get a more realistic idea of the problems facing blind and visually impaired Vista users?

Lots of cool new Partner TV videos from Christian and the team this week - including a first interview

Hi Bob and others

First off, I'd like to make it clear that I did the interview of my own choosing.  Maybe I sound more positive about Vista than you expect, but this is because I honestly haven't found anything about Vista which is less accessible than XP.

I totally appreciate your comments about the price of assistive technology - I remember saving money for many months, and applying to charities, in order to buy my first screen reader.  Nevertheless, Microsoft has no right to influence the pricing models of its partners, regardless of which industry they are in.

Finally, I think it's a great idea to interview someone unconnected to Microsoft about their experiences with Vista.  I'm sure that in the upcoming weeks and months there'll also be a number of independant reviews of Vista from blind users.

a11y ... Que désigne ce nom de code étrange? a11y est un acronyme pour accessibility ( accessibilité

A developer at Devweek asked me yesterday how WPF handles accesibility and I wasn't 100% on the answer,

What I don't understand is that although 5+ years have passed since XP, Narrator and Magnifier have not substancially improved. I have not actually used them but three issues arise out of reading their help pages on microsoft.com.

1. Where is the virtual cursor that we have all being waiting for? In the help pages it says that now in the Vista Narrator you can read the application without leaving the Narrator menus. What does that mean? Seriously! Does it make any sense at all?

Question: Have you added a virtual cursor mode to Narrator? I.E. can I now navigate around a window using a virtual cursor and read as well as interact with controls. Can I read web pages without having to buy an expensive screen-reader product. If not why not?

And please be honest: If Apple in the MacOsX operating system can incorporate a screen-reader with so many useful shortcuts, which can read webpages and which has a virtual cursor, why not Microsoft?

2. Can I install Vista without any sighted assistance? Please answer and put the answer on your Vista pages please. I can't find the answer anywhere. Why, please tell me why, I can install Redhat Linux without sighted assistance but after all these years, after all those years, still Windows setup is not accessible. Or is it this time around?

3. Why is Magnifier the same as in XP? Where are the improvements. If on other OSes I have full-screen magnification that come pre-installed with the OS, why not on Windows? Why still window-only magnification?

Please think more about your users and stop subsitizing screen-reader companies by cripling the in-build Windows accessibility aids. In my view Vista is just XP rebranded regarding its accessibility aids. And don't tell me that there is improvement X or improvement Y. Where are the substancial improvements is what I am asking for. Not the little fixes here and there.

But please think about this for a second: Windows used to be the most accessible OS. Now I can boot Linux with an in-built screen-reader, even from a self-voicing cd-rom. Mac OSX similarly has a screen-reader which will in 3-4 months even support Braille output. Do you hear that? And yet Windows is still subsitizing the screen-reader companies.

Please stop doing that.

Where is the talking Vista installer?