Third Of Five - just another voice in the Collective : Accessibility

After the work: impressions on Accessibility (in the context of Access 2007)

ThirdOfFive — Thu, 30 Mar 2006 19:00:00 GMT

After I spent the last couple of weeks talking about the specifics of the accessibility work done in Access, I thought I had to relate my impressions on how the process went.

It was particularly interesting to see how most people have no idea what MSAA entails (implementation-wise) and is about (concept). In my experience, it takes a while for people to understand that there is this tree of objects that needs to be correct and follow a bunch of rules and that simply because the window itself is drawing correctly it doesn't mean anything accessibility-wise. This is particularly painful as owner-drawn or other teams' controls are introduced and there needs to be a follow-up work to make sure it is all sound.

Perhaps what helped the most in our organization was having the Test group deciding that they were going to rely almost solely on accessibility to do their testing automation. (Of course I say almost solely because it takes time to get things up and running, so some improvisation and workaround work is always necessary - at least in the short term).

By having the entire Test team relying on this made it so that all of a sudden there is an army of accessibility testers that consider proper MSAA implementation as a mandatory requirement to do their job (how could they automate otherwise?).

Accessibility in other revamped and new UI in Access 2007

ThirdOfFive — Tue, 21 Mar 2006 19:00:00 GMT

For Access 2007, we are adding a lot of new UI (e.g. a DBC replacement, new wizards), rewriting the UI from scratch while keeping some infrastructure (e.g. SUI, Field List) or revamping it to a lesser extent (e.g. Query Designer, Relationship Window).

The good news is that even for UI that we are "just" revamping (vs. introducing or rewriting), we're improving its accessibility. For example, Query Designers are now accessible since the bottom half is a grid - all grid windows (class "OGrid") are now exposed in MSAA, as we previously talked about - and the top half now has the table boxes exposed in MSAA. This also goes for the relationship window, where all the table boxes are now visible in MSAA.

For new and rewritten UI, they are all created accessible and that is considered a key (and required) feature in all of them. The SUI and all new wizards are accessible. Likewise, the Navigation Pane (NavPane) is exposed to MSAA, including "advanced" (as in, a lot of real-world implementations leave this out) functionality like selecting, extending selection and more. This is a major win for us in Access 2007.

Finally, we also did a lot of changed with regards to high contrast. Access 2007 should be able to provide a great experience for high contrast users. And this experience not only extends to the product itself, but to all of our templates, which should give a leg up for database developers to start right off the bet with solutions that are accessible and high contrast-friendly.

Accessibility and Grids in Access: Tables, Queries, Designers and much more

ThirdOfFive — Tue, 14 Mar 2006 19:00:00 GMT

Perhaps the major Accessibility investment we made in Access 2007 has been implementing a highly flexible MSAA tree for grids.

Most people don't realize how far and wide Access uses grids in the product. A quick way to figure that out is look out for windows with class name "OGrid". You will see that this includes: All datasheet modes (Tables/Queries), Macro and Table Designers, the bottom grid of the Query Designer, Property sheet, the window that contains all the data when you drop down a combo box, and much more.

In case you're wondering, we were very careful not to reinvent the wheel here. We implemented grids using the recommended MSAA pattern called "Exposing Data Tables through Microsoft Active Accessibility". Another grid control that also follows this implementation is the SharePoint Datasheet List Control.

Particularly in the implementation for Access, we have gone out of our way to have a very performant solution that scales to millions of rows. The way we have done this is through a very dynamic structure that will only create MSAA objects as you request for them. If you ask for row #30, for example, we will only create that object. As you navigate and do operations on the tree, we will create and destroy objects appropriately to keep a minimal set of data. Sounds simple, but not so much when it comes to making it bulletproof :).

Accessibility Improvements in Forms

ThirdOfFive — Tue, 07 Mar 2006 20:00:00 GMT

As I mentioned last week, forms in Access 2007 will see some accessibility improvements. At first glance, the MSAA for forms might appear to be the same as it ever was, but we've actually made a lot of improvements here.

Besides making sure all new controls we introduced this time around are accessible (such as attachments and the complex data combo box) and have a complete MSAA implementation, we also did a major cleanup of the interfaces for controls and the form proper. Most of it might seem cosmetic (such as which errors we return for some conditions), but it has the nice effect that we are now consistent across the product.

But perhaps the biggest improvement here is that we now expose all the controls that can be used in a form to MSAA. This includes lines, rectangles, grouping boxes, OCX/OLE information (instead of being opaque) and more. There isn't a single control that isn't exposed in MSAA - and we're very proud of that.

Next week I'll talk about some of the accessibility work we did around tables and other grids in Access 2007.

Accessibility Improvements in Reports

ThirdOfFive — Tue, 28 Feb 2006 20:00:00 GMT

As Erik hinted, in Access 2007 we will allows a new mode for Reports called "Report Browse". By "mode" imagine something like forms which have a Browse vs. Print Preview mode. This mode allows cut & paste, sorting & filtering and much more.

Of course, this "Report Browse" functionality is very interesting by itself, and by allowing all this form-like interaction with reports, we expose all the MSAA functionality for report data like we do for forms in Browse mode. This means that all reports in report browse mode will be as accessible as forms.

As an added bonus, if you compare the accessibility for form in Access 2007 vs. Access 2003, you will be positively suprised - there are improvements there as well. I'll talk about that next week.

Accessibility and Access

ThirdOfFive — Tue, 21 Feb 2006 20:00:00 GMT

Perhaps one of the less sung additions to Access 2007 is the all-around improvement on Accessibility we've been able to deliver. The improvements range from "small" things (such as supporting returning the OM interface of Access from the main window when we get the OBJID_NATIVEOM flag) to "big" things (like exposing objects/surfaces that were hidden altogether).

In the coming weeks, I'll try to talk about the specifics of what we did and all the places that we touched and improved on Accessibility. If you have any suggestions/questions on this topic, feel free to drop a comment and I'll try to throw my 2 cents in.

Here's what I plan to discuss:

Accessibility improvements to forms;
Accessibility improvement for reports;
Accessibility and Grids in Access: Tables, Queries, Designers and much more ;
Accessibility in other revamped and new UI in Access 12.

I Hope you enjoy!