Socialite does not work well for blind people using voiceover.
I am trying to access Socialite with Voiceover, which is a screen reading package included with the OSX operating system. Unfortunately, it appears to be impossible to do much with the program using only the keyboard.
You can see this for yourself, since Voiceover visually indicates where it's reading cursor is currently located. Press command-F5 to load Voiceover. Move around in the application with command-option-left and right arrows. It seems to be unable to locate the area where the actual events are shown. It can find the table where you can choose which content to view, such as mentions or retweets but it can't see the posts themselves.
Next, bring up the preferences window. Move around this window the same way and note that very little is spoken. Find the toolbar and interact with it by pressing control-option-shift-down. This is how a blind user normally selects a different group of preferences in an application. In the case of Socialite, the toolbar appears to be completely empty when you move around on it.
Finally, when adding a twitter account, there is a relatively minor bug. Once you press the button to enter the pin, you are are in the right place to type it. However, once you move the Voiceover cursor away from that space you can not get back to it.
I hope that accessibility can be improved in a later version. I would be very likely to purchase Socialite if I could use it. I would also recommend it to other blind users, many who are frustrated with the interface of the facebook site and would be glad for an alternative. The Apple web site contains information on making applications accessible.
Thanks for your time,
Justin Ekis
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Support Staff 2 Posted by Nik Fletcher on 26 Aug, 2010 08:08 AM
HI Justin
Thanks for your message. As the event view is a custom one, it's not been optimised for VoiceOver. We're going to be continuing to work on improving the compatibility with VoiceOver in coming releases, however I can't offer any ETA for full compatibility I'm afraid!
Please let me know if I can be of any further assistance.
Kind regards,
Nik
-- Nik Fletcher
Support & QA Manager, Realmac Software
Our support team are in the office between 9am and 5pm UK time, Monday to Friday, and we aim to answer all requests within one business day.
Nik Fletcher closed this discussion on 01 Sep, 2010 10:52 AM.