Real-life AT Examples:  Part I
Eric Damery
VP Product Management
&
Glen Gordon
Chief Technical Officer

Freedom Scientific, Inc

Blindness AT industry
•	Worldwide revenue of $150 million per year
•	Screen readers, braille displays, scanning and reading, and embossers

•	Small companies with specialized expertise focused on assistive technology for those that are blind

•	Freedom Scientific is the largest player
•	Has 38 blind or low vision employees

•	Most other companies are smaller and have less than 30 employees

Techniques Used by AT
•	Take advantage of all available information to create flexible and powerful products for our users
•	Accessibility APIs such as MSAA, Java Access Bridge, IAccessible2, and UI Automation
•	Application APIs not specifically designed for AT such as the Microsoft Word Document Object Model
•	System level APIs

•	Once we get the information, our real work begins
•	Reorganize the information to maximize productivity
•	Develop a user interface that is based on keyboard input with speech and braille output

APIs are Only a Starting Point
•	An API is only as good as the understanding the person has who implements it for a particular application
•	Application developers do not always understand what AT needs and why
•	Difficult or impossible for them to test without special training

•	Freedom Scientific worked with IBM on IAccessible2 API
•	Result: IBM products that support the API are accessible with JAWS

•	Microsoft considered AT early in the development process of Vista
•	Result: Freedom Scientific and other AT products support Microsoft Vista at launch

Product Demonstration