Scott Hanselman

I was installing the RC of Visual Studio 2010 yesterday and while the setup program ran I noticed the words CHECKED and UNCHECKED appearing in the Tree View.

I was thinking I'd found some cool bug, like I was peering into some background world where checkboxes announce their state with text or something. I dunno, it was late, don't judge! ;)

I asked a few people and someone said to to see if I was running a Screen Reader. Screen Readers are what the visually impaired use to find their way around interfaces. It's no at bug at all, it's helping me.

I ran a little program based on this chunk of code found here. I started using the structures found at PInvoke.NET but they were overkill. I didn't need six pages of constants.

[DllImport("user32.dll")]
static extern bool SystemParametersInfo(int iAction, int iParam, out bool bActive, int iUpdate);
   
public static bool IsScreenReaderActive()
{
    int iAction = 70; // SPI_GETSCREENREADER constant;
    int iParam = 0;
    int iUpdate = 0;
    bool bActive = false;
    bool bReturn = SystemParametersInfo(iAction, iParam, out bActive, iUpdate);
    return bReturn && bActive;
} 

static void Main(string[] args)
{
    bool retVal = IsScreenReaderActive();
}

Scandalously, the result was true. What? I am running a screen reader? Um, no.

Well, actually, yes. I give lots of presentations, sometimes just to one person looking over my shoulder so I run the Windows 7 Magnifier via the WinKey and PLUS hotkey. When the Windows Magnifier is running, I'm running a Screen Reader in that I'm running an accessibility assistant.

Interesting stuff. I like it when applications are paying attention and helping with accessibility.

About Scott

Scott Hanselman is a former professor, former Chief Architect in finance, now speaker, consultant, father, diabetic, and Microsoft employee. I am a failed stand-up comic, a cornrower, and a book author.

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