Aug 02 2018 04:31 AM
I thought I'd start this conversation while the topic at hand is fresh, and still within testing parameters. I understand from reading about it that MSIX shares many a property with App-V, which I've never actually had the opportunity to mess with, and then again, I've honestly never tried, considering from what I've heard rumored from some who have, app-V is very unfriendly towards screen readers and other assistive tech types. My favourite screen reader is the NVDA project from NVAccess, though I do use JAWS for Windows, as well.
The main issue that causes App-V type applications sometimes not to play nice with the locals is due to system guard, and if components of the screen reading software are not excluded from it, then it oftentimes won't work at all. Does MSIX have system guard or something like it? If so, then I would like to be the point of feedback for helping to get applications installed via this new format completely screen reader accessible with no need for modifications on either end-user or administrator's sides. Containerize all the things, but not at the expense of those with different needs. Thanks for listening, and some guidance on how to test this would be great. Anything already deployed this way that I could perhaps test in my dev environment? Thanks
Aug 07 2018 12:15 PM
Hi Katherine,
We'd love to get your perspective and feedback any time, so we'll be happy to have you be our POF for screen reader installable MSIX.
In general, MSIX has text-to-speech support.
Regarding installation - installation can be done from the store or from a share. When installing from the store - an MSIX app gets treated like any other app and has the same text-to-speech support.
When installing from a share - the MSIX apps get installed with the help of the App Installer app which provides a UI and messaging that is supported on text-to-speech tools. I verified with NVDA and all messages from the UI get read out.
Finally, apps can be installed through powershell, and from my experiments it appears to read messages thoroughly using NVDA.
If you want to play with MSIX now, you can convert an existing app using the MS Packaging tool (here is a blog explaining more: https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/MSIX-Blog/MSIX-Packaging-Tool-Preview-is-now-available-from-t... ) to convert an existing app into an MSIX.
Aug 07 2018 12:58 PM
Hello,
MSIX does support virtualization, mainly for VFS and VReg. Screen reader should work with MSIX. If not, please file feedback and we will take a look. Appv supports significantly more “isolation” than MSIX, so issues regarding isolation should be less.
Thank you,
Dian
Aug 07 2018 06:17 PM
Ah. Now that makes a bit more sense. I've been following this one in particular because I'm looking at stuff in .NET, so just trying to look at all of the new stuff as it happens. Thanks for the feedback, though. I'll definitely follow up with my experiences as they happen s well.
Jan 24 2022 08:08 PM
Hi @Dian Hartono ,
I have an application that I'm trying to convert to MSIX and I can see the application tries to access the dsound.dll but it does not have access to it.
Is there something I can try ?
All the best,
Dan