MSAA (MicroSoft Active Accessibility) is MicroSoft's support for
accessing Windows. I would say it has 3 major components:

Features for handling graphics. This is the part that requires the
most effort by developers of mainstream applications. Also, here
"graphics" is a fairly generic term--including everything on the
screen except for the general organization of the screen into
Windows windows and text. Also, applications are to notify
screen readers when the focus moves. This portion of MSAA
provides a screen reader information about a graphic: how to use
it, a description of what it looks like, current setting, etc.

Support for retrieving text. There's a hook that should facilitate
retrieving text from a Windows screen and track the insertion
bar.

I/O Support. Provides functions for simulating mouse and keyboard
input. Also, there's a standard API for driving a synthesizer.

Glen



On Mon, 2 Jun 1997, Franklin Johnson wrote:

> I have recently joined this list and this is the first I have seen of
> MSAA.  What is it and what does it do?
>
> to keep from clogging up the list you may post me personally if you so
> desire.
>
> Franklin Johnson
> RRTC Center On Blindness
> Mississippi State University
>