Juce Accessibility

HI ReFX. Also tried to message you privately but got a mail can’t
be sent message. I am also interested to help, both from the
programming side and as a tester. Cheers!

HI. A little more than 3 years ago, I initiated a discussion on Juce Accessibility on this forum. I have since then flitted back and forth, eager to hear what the Juce developers thought about my proposal. Needless to say, their response is far from encouraging. To realize that Accessibility would eventually be incorporated into juce, well, to paraphrase the Moderator: between some time later and the end of time, allows for zero hope. I am encouraged though by the reaction of the independent developers using Juce, their backing and indeed, the willingness of some of them to take the plunge in initiating some sort of built-in accessibility into their products. And to learn that Michael, a student has been actually working on a Juce-based accessibility software for us was a real shot in the arm for me. I must also mention my Blind colleagues from countries all over the world who have stepped forward to support Mikes Initiative. Things are now moving along, and I am indeed grateful. While the Juce developers didn’t give much support and by doing so left me more than a little discouraged, individuals who are basically customers and users of this product have taken the responsibility to help us carry the accessibility flag, and for this, I thank you -, and especially you Michael. But you know, a piece of software is only as great as it is usable and useful. If there are communities or parties who Realize the potential use of a product but can’t use it because of some hindrance that are not of their making, and if the developers of that product won’t even attempt to help, then that product’s usability and usefulness remains a potential and not a fact. I realized Juce’s potential when I explored and read about it, but I couldn’t use it, and there my interest in the product ended. Now that someone has taken up the baton, I hope that the Juce team can and will help in whatever way is possible. For all their faults, we have representatives from Windows and apple in our Windows and Apple accessibility Mailing lists. A staff representative is on the Blind Programmers mailing list to ensure the continued accessibility of Visual Studio. A bit of advice and encouragement from the Juce team would not hurt but would be very much appreciated by us all. And, if nothing else, just think of the potential customers that you could attract if a little of this was thought out. I will repeat myself. Juce is a great product. But let it not just be a potential but more importantly, let it be a fact. Cheers!

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No, sorry. :frowning:

It was my main project between completing university and starting my job between May and July 2018, and I was just starting to write some test tools when I simply ran out of time. Unfortunately since then I haven’t had an opportunity to touch JUCE at all after using it every day for about 2 1/2 years, so I’m a little rusty now…

I’m still determined to make it happen because I figured out how to do it as a non invasive JUCE module such that it’s very clean and easy to integrate into any JUCE project. I just need to work through writing the test tools and wading through the OS API documentation, which takes a lot of time I don’t have.

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But that’s exactly why our project (reFX Access) is doing. It’s a very simply library that creates standard system widgets so screen-readers can speak them with no difficulty. It doesn’t use JUCE itself (so it can be used in other projects as well) but it will be available as a JUCE module too.

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We would very interested in this!

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