Snow Leopard is Coming, Are You Ready Or Not?

Apple has announced that the upgraded Snow Leopard operating system (OS X 10.6) will be available from this Friday, 28 August 2009.

Upgrading to Snow Leopard might not make your computer look a lot different, but the hidden guts of the operating system have been extensively worked on. This has big implications for assistive technology users – you’ll need to carefully check that your assistive technology will work with Snow Leopard before you upgrade.

For those using assistive technology hardware, if it came with no drivers or programs needed then it should work under Snow Leopard with no problems. “Smaller” types of assistive technology such as ergonomic keyboards, large trackballs, etc., tend to be in this category. If your assistive technology program came with a driver, an application, a system preference pane, or anything else you had to install from a CD or download from the internet, you’ll need to check the software first.

For those using software-based assistive technology such as on-screen keyboards, upgraded voice software, etc., you should check with the software company before you upgrade to Snow Leopard. It’s quite possible that your software will stop working if it’s not compatible with Snow Leopard!

For companies who write this software, most were guessing that Snow Leopard would be released at the end of September. Like us, they only found out last week that Snow Leopard is to be released on Friday. This means that many companies whose software will need upgrading thought they probably had another 6 weeks to finish their programming, and suddenly found out they only had a week. As you can imagine, this has left many scrambling to catch up.

We already have an announcement from AssistiveWare that the current Infovox iVox voices, version 1.3, will not function with Snow Leopard. David Niemeijer, told ATMac today:

Infovox iVox 2.0 will be required [for Snow Leopard]. Infovox iVox 2.0 required a complete rewrite of the core engine to make it compatible with Snow Leopard. Despite the many months of development work Acapela Group put in to it, Infovox iVox 2.0 will be offered as a free update for Infovox iVox 1.x users to support those users who rely on Infovox iVox to use their computer.

Because of the amount of work involved we do not have a final release for Infovox iVox 2.0 ready yet. Instead, if our current tests are positive we will make Infovox iVox 2.0 available as a public beta by Friday, 28 August. If you rely on Infovox iVox do not upgrade to Snow Leopard until you have upgraded to Infovox iVox 2.0.

Kudos to David for stepping up and offering a public beta for those of us that like to upgrade things quickly.

There is an additional note for InfoVox iVox users who are using the older HD voices:

The change to support 64 bit technology made it impossible to retain the HD voices in Infovox iVox 2.0. For most languages HQ voices are available (several new ones are included in Infovox iVox 2.0). Only Icelandic had to be completely dropped in Infovox iVox 2.0 because there are no HQ voices for that language.

If you aren’t sure if the voice you are using is HQ or HD, open System Preferences and open the Speech pane, then the Text to Speech tab. This is the same tab you open to change the default system voice. Your current system voice is displayed in the drop-down right at the top of the pane, and if you’re using an Infovox iVox voice it will have “HQ” or “HD” at the end of the name. If you click on the box, you can see the other voices you have available and for all the iVox ones the “HD” or “HQ”.

David has told me that there are no known problems with any other AssistiveWare products and Snow Leopard, so users of KeyStrokes, TouchStrokes, LayoutKitchen, SwitchXS, and Proloquo should have no problems. VisioVoice should work fine with Snow Leopard, but an upgrade to VisioVoice 1.2 is expected in time for Snow Leopard too and will be needed for Infovox iVox 2.0 voices.

I don’t have information from any other assistive technology companies about the compatibility of their software yet. I’m trying to compile information on the Snow Leopard compatibility of other OS X based assistive software, and will publish it as soon as possible. If you know about any bits of software, or have a particular piece of assistive tech you’re curious about, please leave a comment or contact me with the information.

- Ricky Buchanan