Sinter is an innovative platform for remote access that supports screen readers and other assistive software. Sinter is portable across operating systems (currently Mac and Windows). For example, a Mac user can connect to a Windows remote desktop and read remote Windows apps using VoiceOver (the default screen reader for Mac OS X).
A large problem for users with visual impairments has been the ability to access programs remotely. Traditional screen readers are unable to process the elements on the remote application over protocols like RDP and VNC.
Sinter works by extracting the UI graph from the remote system (e.g., buttons, windows, menus, text boxes), and creating a client application, using similar, but native widgets, that mirrors the remote application. The client application's events (e.g., mouse clicks and keystrokes) are replayed to the remote application. The client application in sinter does not look identical to the remote, but is indistinguishable to the screen reader from a local application.
Our EuroSys '16 paper provides a deeper explanation of how Sinter works.
The alpha release is coming soon! For now, if you are particularly adventurous, you can compile the code from source at https://github.com/oscarlab/sinter. Be aware that the software is still a work in progress and bugs may be present in the application.
We will be adding documentation to this page over time.. You can also report an issue here: https://github.com/oscarlab/sinter/issues.
View a list of publications about Sinter here.
Sinter is the work of several contributors, including:
We are always looking for help! Contribute code to the project and see your name on this list!
This work is supported in part by the National Institutes of Health, grant R01 EY026621; National Science Foundation Grants IIS-1218570, IIS-1447549, CNS-1149229, CNS-1161541, CNS-1228839, CNS-1405641, CNS-1408695, and CNS-1526707; and VMware.
Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Institutes of Health, the National Science Foundation, or VMware.