History
Active Accessibility was initially referred to as OLE Accessibility and this heritage is reflected in the naming of its binary components such as oleacc.dll and the header file oleacc.h which contains definitions and declarations. As part of Microsoft's ActiveX branding push in March 1996, OLE Accessibility was renamed ActiveX Accessibility (sometimes referred to as AXA) and presented as such at the Microsoft Professional Developers Conference in San Francisco, March 1996. Later, the ActiveX branding was reserved for internet-specific technologies, and ActiveX Accessibility became Active Accessibility and frequently shortened to MSAA.
MSAA was originally made available in April 1997 as part of the Microsoft Active Accessibility Software Developers Kit (SDK) version 1.0. The SDK packaged included documentation, programming libraries, sample source code, and a Re-Distributable Kit (RDK) for accessible technology vendors to include with their products. The RDK included updated operating system components for Microsoft Windows 95. Since Windows 98 and Windows NT 4.0 Service Pack 4, MSAA has been built-into all versions of the Windows platform, and has received periodic upgrades and patches over time.
Programmatic exposure for assistive technology applications on Windows has historically been provided through MSAA. However newer applications are now using Microsoft UI Automation (UIA), which was introduced in Windows Vista and the .NET Framework 3.0.
Read more about this topic: Microsoft Active Accessibility
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