M Cubed Pledges Software Accessibility

Martin Pilkington of M Cubed Software has made a blog post entitled The Accessible Mac. In the post he discusses the challenges and difficulties involved in making OS X software accessible, pointing out some common and easily fixed accessibility problems.

Martin pledges that by the end of 2009 all software he produces will be fully accessible, challenging fellow developers to do the same. He defines “fully accessible” to include the following points:

• The UI available to VoiceOver users should be as user friendly as the visual UI
• All UI elements should have titles and/or descriptions
• All custom controls should provide full keyboard access
• There should be a clear and logical order to navigating UI fields with the keyboard
• Every part of my application should be reachable without the mouse

These are fantastic goals, and will be a huge help to keyboard-only users, voice input users, and switch users as well as to VoiceOver users. I applaud Martin and M Cubed software in their challenge and will help them in their pledge in any way I can.

There are, of course, an almost endless list of things which improve accessibility for those with varying disabilities. As well as the points listed above, examples include:

• Allow changes in text size and text/background colours to help those with low vision.
• Indicate status changes with changes in icon shape as well as colour for those who are colourblind.
• Offer visual as well as auditory notifications (using Growl for this is a common method) to help those with problems in one of those areas.
• List all commands in menu items as well as any other locations (such as context menus, “gear icon” menus, etc.)

Extra points aside, the ones that Martin lists are probably those with the best effort-reward ratio in terms of assisting both people with disabilities and people who don’t like taking their hands off the keyboard. They will also be of assistance to those who want to record Automator actions, use programs like Quicksilver, and more.

I’ll be eager to see how this challenge develops, and will report here as things change.

Website: The Accessible Mac

- Ricky Buchanan
ETA:
Simon Wolf of Otter Software has already accepted the challenge. Will you be next?