I'm going to have to disagree with this quite a lot, your cousin's child is using I control tech running on Windows, not built into Windows.

That I control tech exists for every platform, but there is only OS X that you can take out of the box as a quadriplegic and with minimal help from a Designated Pair of Hands™ be up and running and independently messing around on HN.

Believe me, if I could buy a cheap laptop running Windows or Linux preferably and get the same user experience I get from OS X I would do it in a heartbeat. But in the past decade of trying, nothing comes close to OS X at the moment and even then OS X has only been this accessible for the past two or three additions.

All Microsoft did in this instance you're talking about is make sure that the drivers worked, and I trackers are essentially just mice as far as the computer is concerned, all of the clever stuff is done inside the eye tracker itself.

Just my two pence worth. But you know, It's 2 pence that I've earned through a decade of being a quadriplegic geek getting very annoyed at not being able to use my computer like everybody else.

I long for the day that I could use voice dictation software on Linux, any Linux distribution would be fine, then I could switch to some nice open source software and I would be a very happy pussycat. But none exists as far as I'm aware.

Edited to add: for clarity and excuse the odd grammatical mistake, Dragon doesn't make spelling mistakes but it does put the wrong word in the wrong place sometimes.

Microsoft has good built in automation capabilities. Almost any UI element can be accessed via winapi ( SetWindowsHookEx https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms644990(VS.85).asp... etc )

This is much better for overall scriptability IMHO than AppleScript

Then StickyKeys etc are valiant attempts at a complex area with so many different user types

You and I have different definitions of 'built in'. MS has chosen to have 3rd party deal with much of the accessibility functionality which is a reasonable choice for them, but it's not directly a windows feature. Want a screen reader use Jaws, etc etc.

OS X has the same APIs (Accessibility). AppleScript doesn't use them, but VoiceOver and Xcode's UI testing do.

AppleScript can and does use the accessibility APIs to drive UIs, it's just not very well documented (like much of AppleScript in general :( ).

Pretty much anything used to drive a UI on OS X is going through the accessibility APIs to do so.

AppleScript has been the absolute saviour for me on multiple occasions, the amount of scripts I have that trigger at the click of one button is getting to be a bit outrageous.

So for instance I will have a button on my switch control on-screen keyboard, and when it's pressed it sends a request To If This Than That, which communicates with my LIFX lightbulbs and flashes all of them in the house blue notifying my carer that I need assistance. That's just one of many. I love AppleScript.

To be clear I control my computer with my right index finger which gives me left mouse click, a small reflective doton my glasses which gives the cursor movement and voice dictation software which enables you to leave comments on Hacker News.

Thanks for sharing your setup. It's been a pleasure to discuss the issue with you. You've inspired me to check out AppleScript a bit more in detail.

On Windows, Autohotkey is my goto for automation

We just hired a 100% visually impaired student and he said that most MS apps provide enough metadata cleanly to play with screen reader apps like JAWS, and that the real bane of his existence was GTK-based applications on Windows.

I think GTK+ apps on Windows are the bane of everybody's existence. What a crappy windowing framework.

> We just hired a 100% visually impaired student and he said that most MS apps provide enough metadata cleanly to play with screen reader apps like JAWS, and that the real bane of his existence was GTK-based applications on Windows.

Not just GTK. Qt, Java, Electron-based... on Windows at least, the only way to create a truly screen reader accessible app is to use native controls. And I mean native controls, via the Windows API, not just ones which look native. Qt has some academic accessibility support but it's practically unusable.

Ironically, given the article I'm commenting on, the situation is worse on OS X.

I guess thank the ADA. Both Apple and MS don't want to be left outside of places because of it

"The ADA? What on earth could the ADA have to do with a PC making a beep? Well it turns out that at some point in the intervening 25 years, the Win32 Beep() was used for assistive technologies – in particular the sounds made when you enable the assistive technologies like StickyKeys were generated using the Beep() API. There are about 6 different assistive technology (AT) sounds built into windows, their implementation is plumbed fairly deep inside the win32k.sys driver.

But why does that matter? Well it turns out that many enterprises (both governments and corporations) have requirements that prevent them from purchasing equipment that lacks accessible technologies and that meant that you couldn’t sell computers that didn’t have beep hardware to those enterprises."

Source: https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/larryosterman/2010/01/04/wh... (search for ADA)

I read that text too and that's what I was thinking when I made that comment