[mwcampbell]

The real story here is that now we know what Osmeta, the stealth startup Facebook acquired a few years ago, has been up to. Look inside the installation directory for the Messenger app, and you'll find that it's using an iOS compatibility layer. Unfortunately, that's bad news in terms of accessibility for blind users, at least in its current form; this thing isn't firing any focus events. But I'm sure that can be fixed.

Edit: I referred to the Messenger app, but the same applies to the Facebook app. The Messenger app was just the one I looked at first.

[Gorbzel]

It it doing binary compatibility with iOS apps or just some cross-compilation approach?

Don't have access to a Windows machine and if this is the mentality behind getting apps on the platform, not sure there's any reason to change that.

[mwcampbell]

The iOS APIs were reimplemented on Windows. The binaries are DLLs, with a few small EXEs as entry points, but the filenames make it obvious what's going on.

[tluyben2]

I did that for running iOS apps on Android; just recompile with another dll and the app works. It's not perfect but allows fast delivery for those clients who start with iOS and then don't really want to invest in Android (at that time) which, at least here, most of them.

[tyrylu]

Thank you for the explanation of the accessibility breakage. And i also hope that they will fix it.