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I am sorry to announce that the BBC iPlayer Radio program no longer works and will not work again ever.

It was probably the most popular WebbIE program: you could run it and get a plain-text list of programmes from the last seven days, and press return, and it would play it, and you could press keys to jump around the program. Super-accessible to screenreader users – a nice, simple, keyboard-based native Windows application.

Sadly, commercial concerns have shut it off permanently. Licensing, rights, money, regional limitations – all conspire against the free and open BBC of twenty years ago. As the official BBC FAQ states:

We also must ensure that third parties are able to meet BBC requirements including prominence, which helps listeners to find content we’ve made for them, and sharing of data, which helps us understand what people are listening to, which in turn helps us improve our content and services. At the same time, it’s important we make sure that third parties do not use our streams without permission in non-compliant ways, like serving advertisements around our on demand content, for example.

So you have to use the BBC Sounds website where you can be denied access if you come from outside the UK and your usage can be tracked and, most importantly, you have to use the complicated web interface instead of just cursoring around. Sorry!

A bit of history. I first did a BBC radio program back in about 2004, when streaming media was just getting started. Back then it was all RealPlayer, running in Internet Explorer, which was easy enough to control and put an accessible user interface on. After a year or two I started getting help from the BBC: an engineer or manager would appear, announce some new paperwork or title or policy, give me some new URLs, and then go away again for a couple of years. Thanks to all those BBC employees who helped blind people and screenreader users find their way to all the great BBC radio programmes over their years, and thanks for all the kind words!

“The BBC site is accessible enough but it is a bit of a faff to use.”

“You get my vote, BBC is a  pain, demanding far too much technical and manual dexterity.”

“Your program is unbeatable when accessing particular segments of programmes accurately and quickly.  As far as I know, this can’t be done using Sounds.”

“Have used your software  for years, thanks a lot… I am visually impaired and use NVDA for my access.”

“It is a joy to use the simple interface.”

“I would like to thank you for such good programs.”

“Thanks so much, it’s my top Xmas present.”

The BBC Radio iPlayer program is broken at present: you’ll get an error message including “410 Gone”.

You will be unsurprised to hear that this is the BBC server that has gone missing. However, I’ve contacted them and they have been helpful so far, so I’m hoping that, first, they’ll update me on what I need to change in the code to work with whatever their new set-up is, and second, I can get it done.

Wish me luck!

My work finds me in Orlando this week for ATIA 2019. I’m doing my Claro Software work, but if you’re in town and into any of the WebbIE programs, do find me at the Claro Software booth 316 or give me a call on 00 44 7983 244 131!

An unannounced update to the actual WebbIE Web Browser over Christmas: Version 5 fixes problems with the web search feature not working.

This is a super-simple feature: you press Control and W, then type your search term, and hit return. Wait a bit and the Google results appear in a list – you just cursor up and down. Hit return when you get one you want and WebbIE opens it. So much faster and less frustrating than trying to, you know, use Google…

It’s Version 5 despite not being a big update because (1) the fashion is to ramp up the main version number (2) it’s way way easier to ask “what version?” and get back “5” or “4” or “6” than “4.1.23”!

Get WebbIE 5 Now: https://www.webbie.org.uk/webbrowser

I can now announce the end of Thunder, the first free Windows screenreader. Thunder will no longer be actively maintained, supported or developed, but you can still download installers from the WebbIE site.

Thunder was launched in April 2006 and was the first fully-functional free screenreader: Windows Narrator had launched in Windows 2000, but had never been given the features needed to make it a true alternative to the dominant commercial players. Thunder had all of:

• Worked with Microsoft Word, Excel and Outlook, so you could use standard business applications.
• An offscreen model, so more applications spoke, even when they didn’t comply with accessibility APIs (MSAA)
• Scripting, so you could write application-specific support, including hotkeys and spoken messages and access to all the accessibility and offscreen model information provided by the screenreader.
• A reading toolbar, magnifying the current text to display in large, high-contrast at the top of the screen.
• Integration with UAC, so you could do admin functions on your machine and log in and out without sighted help.
• Full support and translations for many languages, including Arabic, Bulgarian, Czech, German, Greek, English, Spanish, Estonian, French, Italian, Polish, Slovak and Turkish.

Technically, Thunder used a combination of the MSAA API (and UIA through the MSAA bridge), an offscreen model that hooked Windows messages, and specific COM APIs. At the time of its launch the accessibility APIs like MSAA and UIA were not as mature so the offscreen model and COM APIs were required. Other screenreaders still take this approach. Thunder also relied on WebbIE for web browsing, though we wrote in support for direct use of Internet Explorer at one point (using the MSHTML DOM).

Thunder was not open-source/free software, though it was zero cost. This allowed closed-source components to be used in Thunder, such as the powerful third-party offscreen model, and some code that could not be publicly distributed and was provided by application and operating system vendors.

Sounds great! So why end it?

Thunder was never a commercial proposition, though versions were sold with additional features or add-on voices. The aim was to make a real screenreader available to end users for nothing, compared to the very expensive commercial alternatives. But there are now three strong free (zero-cost) alternatives:

• The great NVDA launched in 2007, and provides a free and open-source screenreader for download. It’s written by blind developers (unlike Thunder) and has attracted a loyal following (as it should).
• Microsoft licensed WindowEyes for free with anyone with Microsoft Office. Which is pretty much anyone. So you can get a fully-fledged commercial solution.
• Windows 8 finally improved Windows Narrator enormously, and the MSAA/UIA interfaces on which it depends have increased in utility hugely (for example, they are now available in Microsoft Office and Internet Explorer), so you can probably often get away with the onboard assistive technology much more than you could.

In parallel, we’ve seen fewer innovations in Windows GUI toolkits – XAML was nine years ago, for example, and most toolkits provide UIA and/or MSAA interfaces. So there is perhaps less need to update your copy of JAWS regularly than there was ten years ago.

And finally the huge change: blind users may not be on Windows at all any more. The iPhone and iPad with VoiceOver built in, touch interfaces, and rigorously-controlled walled-garden apps have provided a more accessible and productive environment for many blind people than the free-for-all mouse-and-keyboard world of Windows.

So new, free alternatives, and changes in the marketplace, have meant that the need for Thunder has simply reduced over time. All great news for blind users, which is the important thing. Thunder is dead, long live free screenreaders!

This week the BBC turned off their Windows Media streams. In English this means that the particular way the BBC provided their live radio stations over the Internet changed. This broke the BBC Live Radio 2 program.

However, the BBC provide a different way to access the radio stations, so this weekend I’ve switched the BBC Live Radio program to using this new mechanism for the stations that broke, and it all seems to work. This doesn’t require a new version of the program, since which stream to use is controlled from the WebbIE site.

It also means that you gain BBC Radio 5 Sports Extra and the World Service is working again, which is good.

I notice that the local stations kept working, so I’ve left them alone: it’s entirely likely they’ll break at some point and I’ll have to amend them. But there you go. It would be great if the BBC told me about changes, so do lobby them! Mail the BBC Trust.

• BBC posting about the changes