Accessible IRC Clients
I have recently been asked what IRC programs can be recommended for VoiceOver users. There are some options, but the news is not as good as it could be at the moment.
For those who haven’t used IRC before, it’s a text-based group chat program that has been around since the early 1990s. I remember using it when I was at Uni in 1993 and it was already about 5 years old then!
The only standard graphical OS X IRC client that’s accessible for VoiceOver users is XChat Aqua. It’s a free program, but it hasn’t been updated for 18 months or so. There’s nobody in charge of programming at the moment so I wouldn’t suggest expecting any updates in the near future. As far as I can tell, it still works fine under both Tiger and Leopard at the moment though.
If you’re geeky enough to be comfortable with command line programs in Terminal, there are a bunch of different IRC programs you can choose from - anything that is OK with standard Unix will work under OS X. Unfortunately you’ll have to compile your own and doing this is way outside the scope of an article here, but if anybody does it and documents what they do I’d be pleased to link to the article so others can follow in your pioneering footsteps!
- Ricky Buchanan
heyas!
Have you checked out using macports/fink and other similar setups for installing irssi easily? Or the gui frontends for irssi?
I’d be tempted to suggest Colloquy being a big fan of the application, but I’m afraid it’s not very VO-friendly. I was tempted to improve on it for Google summer of code but Colloquy is not participating this year (probably doesn’t qualify..) and it’s a huge challenge.
There are many other IRC clients like Linkinus and limechat, if you haven’t checked them out yet. Haven’t tried with VO unfortunately.
@Jane: I know it’s possible to use Macports or Fink to install command line stuff but it’s still somewhat on the geeky side - that’s what I meant by hoping somebody else would do the hard work of writing up the steps for me
I use Colloquy myself although it sucks for low vision users which I am. I don’t use VoiceOver so I can’t check programs out myself - I’m just going on other people’s recommendations here… I probably should have noted that.
Have you applied for any SoC projects? I know Adium is almost completely VO accessible and that’s accepting applications - not an IRC thing but it’s chat related! Keep me posted if you’d like, I love cheering people on
- Ricky
Ahhh yeah. If I remember correctly macports and fink have .pkg installers though? And then it’s a simple “sudo port install irssi” (macports) in terminal and then actually running irssi after it’s done…not sure if there are any good guides for OS X though.
Hmm, how does it suck? The one thing I love about Colloquy is how all the “look” of the chat can be customized with CSS, because it is webkit based. I could imagine that a lot could be customized to your liking…
Yeah, but none I’m actually expecting will be accepted.
Plus I make more money freelancing, and SoC is more of an excuse to contribute to projects I like while getting paid to do so. And even then, I’m not much of a Mac dev…a lot more interested in contributing to other projects (like Joomla, nmap and others). 
@Jane: Mostly Colloquy sucks because you can’t set the default font above 32point and I need 60+ point to read comfortably.
I haven’t used fink or macports recently, so I’m not sure about that.
- Ricky
Colloquy sucks in about all cases. Bad interface and very bad HCI. I would love a better IRC client.