History of keyboard access in Windows

This is a response to a posting on the Windows Off-Topic Tech mailing list concerning keyboard access to the taskbar...

If you go back in time far enough, it doesn't. 

When the NT4 team first had the 95 shell forced on them, keyboard access to the systray was a detail that fell through the cracks... I forget how many SPs it took for them to get that fixed.

This was part of the infamous stress between the Win95-era shell team and the NT team...  NT has always had a higher bar for accessibility, as part of reliability (thinking: if your user accidentally cuts his mouse cable, he'd still better have a way to shut down the nuclear reactor, or whatever).

In terms of functionality, Windows NT 4.0 shipped essentially the same shell as Windows 95, albeit with changes to support NT features and security infrastructure.  The only keyboard access to the notification icons in NT4 was via the MouseKeys feature which emulated a mouse pointer.

The real shell changes occurred in "Nashville" which started out as the next version of Windows 95, but became part of IE4 that was called "Windows Desktop Update."  This was a re-write of the much of the shell, introducing Coolbars and Active Desktop.

The Windows Desktop Update was part of Windows 98 and eventually Windows 2000.

The reason Windows has good keyboard access is two-fold.  First, when Windows came out in 1986, mice were rare on PC's.  Apple shipped a mouse with the Macintosh, but you couldn't depend on the PC having one.  Thus, Windows 1.0 was fully keyboard accessible.

Secondly, in the early 1990's, people inside and outside of Microsoft were recognizing the importance of keyboard access in a GUI world for people with physical and sensory disabilities.  As a corporate leader, Microsoft was expected to set standards and set an example for accessibility.  One of the Windows 3.x and Cairo Program Managers, Greg Lowney, started working on disability access fulltime and others, including myself, joined in shortly afterwards.  This was the beginning of what's now called the Accessible Technology Group.

I wouldn't characterize NT as having "a higher bar for accessibility" necessarily.  After all a keyboard is more prone to failure than a mouse IMHO.

However, Windows NT/2000/XP is sold in large quantities to organizations that often demand accessibility for people with disabilities.  In the United States, the Federal Government mandates that software purposed by the government be accessible.  That ensures effort is put into accessibility in various forms when it would be easier for software companies to drop it.

Of course, there are many good reasons to provide accessibility in software - not to mention it's the right thing to do.  Just today, Microsoft announced broad plans to help employers with an aging workforce benefit from the accessibility features in Windows.  After all, do you know anyone over 55 years old who can read default fonts at 1280 x 1024?  Aging is a disability we will all acquire.