Accessibility of Spark

We have an employee who is blind and uses a screen reader (Windows Eyes). The only IM client that works well with windows eyes is MSN. I’m wanting to move our company to openfire/spark, but we need to make sure that it will meet our accessibility needs. I was curious how accessible spark for Windoes is, and, if there is anything you need to do to make it more so.

Thanks,

John

We were able to install the software and a java program that allows compatibility between java programs and Windows Eyes (http://www.gwmicro.com/App_Central/Apps/App_Details/?scriptid=1222). He can login and everything fine, but the screen reader can’t see the messages from other users. It seems that the messages are not clickable objects (or something), and so when tabbing through the controls, the screen reader will not make the mouse stop on the messages in the window, so the screen reader will never read the text to him. The rest seems to work ok, as far as we can tell. If someone could work on this, we would greatly appreciate it!!

John

Well, i have filed this SPARK-1468 (did my best to describe it). But i really don’t think this will be done anytime soon, unless you find a java programmer who will make a patch and provide it to us. Windows Eyes is a commercial software, so it makes even more difficult to work on this.