Hello all,
Little Snitch is is essentially a tool that allows you to monitor inbound and outbound connections on your Mac and control whether those connections are allowed or not.
You can learn more about Little Snitch at: https://www.obdev.at/products/littlesnitch/index.html.
I have for several years attempted to encourage the developers of Little Snitch to please consider making the app accessible to VOiceOVer users.
With sighted help, you can configure Little Snitch to be more accessible by acting an option used for scripting the UI. The argument by the developers is that enabling the option makes Little Snitch more insecure because someone could, in theory, hack into your machine and take over control of Little Snitch. My counter argument has always been that if the machine is configured correctly this is not a concern. And honestly, if someone has gained control of your machine, it really doesn't matter what they do with Little Snitch at that point.
With all that said, I had an open and honest email conversation with one of the team managers who has tried advocating for VOiceOver accessibility. They could easily implement a mechanism to determine if VOiceOVer is enabled and activate the UI hooks for VOiceOVer users. I'm sure there are other things they can do. The point is, accessibility can be balanced against security.
What I would appreciate is if you have any interest in this app, please reach out to the developers via their support page: https://www.obdev.at/support/index.html?product=LS or via Twitter, @littlesnitch.
Most developers start to pay attention when they realize there is interest from the community. I hope you will take a look at this app and consider sending a note asking for greater support for VOiceOVer users.
Thanks,
Scott
Comments
Handsoff
It's kind of interesting how a company like objective development can make both a very accessible app (Launchbar) and a not very accessible one (LS). While I personally don't use a firewall with my Mac, a friend uses an app called hands off and he's very happy with it. It's fully accessible and has all the features of little snitch.
I concur, but in all fairness
I concur, but in all fairness, I think they truly believe that somehow accessibility in this specific instance would compromise security. Of course, I'm not entirely sure if they are the same team or different teams under the same umbrella. I tried Hands Off, which is mostly accessible. There are a few key areas that are not and repeated attempts to reach out to the developer have not received a response, even via Twitter. At least Johannes at Objective Development does respond and seems really interested in helping. He just needs our help to help him. I'm mostly interested in these types of solutions when I'm on unknown and untrusted networks. They also help control what apps can access the network if I need to tether to my iPhone. DOn't want to chew up bandwidth unnecessarily. :)