Date: Wed, 3 Dec 1997 23:35:19 -0800 (PST)
From: Kelly Ford <[log in to unmask]>

Hi All,

If you are subscribed to other lists that cover screen readers, this is
probably not news to you given the message traffic of the day.  However,
it would appear that the latest release of Internet Explorer that
Microsoft trumpeted yesterday still does not work with screen readers.

As I understand things, this release of IE uses Active Accessibility 1.1
and all the screen readers out there support 1.0 of this technology.
Microsoft gave URLs to download the latest version of Active Accessibility
but even with this installed, IE does not appear to work with the two
screen readers I tried which were JFW and Winvision.

In the messages I've seen from Microsoft staff on the topic, they've been
quite vague about exactly what combination works.  Given that I've also
seen e-mail traffic from users of several screen readers that say it, IE
4.01, doesn't work for them, I'm not sure there's a working combination
out there yet.

I'll skip my opinions on Microsoft's lack of clear and timely information
about this entire process just now.  suffice it to say I'm disappointed.
Clearly they've known that people were interested in this release and they
did nothing to suggest that once IE was updated there'd be any trouble
running it with the current versions of screen readers.  This marks the
second time I've downloaded and installed IE 4.0 only to have it not work.
There has to be a better way.  This is ridiculous.

The long and short of the matter in my opinion is to regrettably wait until
some of the screen reading vendors or Microsoft can come out with more
detailed information on what exactly works.

If someone has had different experiences with IE 4.01 and screen readers
or knows more about the compatibility issues, please let the list know.

Kelly Ford
[log in to unmask]
See my home page at http://www.teleport.com/~kford/index.html