[nvda] Re: Debra's Flash application [was Audacity problem]

The underlying codeing to know for all accessibility in Windows be it VB, C++ 
Python or even Flash is MSAA.  Microsoft Active Accessibility is the 
information that all screen readers, screen magnifiers and accessibility 
products will use to get information to the user.  Some accessibility products 
may take it a step farther by using their own methods of getting screen 
information but they still will have to rely on MSAA in some form or fashion.  
Flash also sends its information to a screen reader via MSAA according to what 
that pdf document stated.  Also for voice recognition I would do a bit of 
research into another Microsoft technology called SAPI 5.1.  What that is is a 
set of functions that enable programs to use text to speech for screen readers 
and also includes the Microsoft Speech Recognition Engine.  Also if creating an 
accessible web site is your other goal you may also want to check out some 
documentation from the World Wide Consortium at www.w3c.org.  Screen readers 
and other accessibility software do a bit more than just read the text on the 
screen.  The developers of the screen readers and the application developers 
must both understand how each interacts with one another.  As I said before, if 
you are creating a web page and you have a .gif as a link and on the graphic is 
printed "click here", a screen reader still needs an alt tag on that graphic in 
order for it to know what the graphic says.  The screen reader is not able to 
look at that picture and automatically say it says click here.  It is still up 
to the web site developer to place the alt tag information in their html code.  
Applications including flash applications work in much the same way.  You can 
have a play button on an mp3 player that just has a standard picture of the 
arrow pointing to the right.  To most people that have eyesight that means 
play, but a screen reader has no idea what that image says.  So, the developer 
has to place underlying code that tells the screen reader the arrow image is 
the play button.  Screen readers are not really that limited as you stated, 
they are only limited by the information that they are given.
  ----- Original Message ----- 
  From: Debra Riese 
  To: nvda@xxxxxxxxxxxxx 
  Sent: Wednesday, September 26, 2007 1:40 PM
  Subject: [nvda] Re: Debra's Flash application [was Audacity problem]



  You are correct about VB, great program, and flash tabbing function is called 
tabindex and can be controlled within flash, Flash's scripting  is based on a 
version ECMA Javascript, called actionscript, which is NOT the same as other 
scripting languages used in VB, JAWS or NVDA.   

   Applications are written in several programming languages each with their 
own set of conventions, it's finding the convention that works to produce 
similar results which makes prgramming tricky, NVDA uses Python, Flash uses 
Actionscript, JAWS can read text based scripts, I don't know JAWS development 
platform, as I won't use it because it not opensource or free, so I won't 
bother with it.  VB is is the original BASIC computer program, only now called 
VB because it can create a GUI interface or Graphical User Interface, and 
whether you see it or not does have a text overlay which is basically what the 
screen readers are reading to identify the text.  Not all programs have encoded 
conventions Accessible Name tho with each upgrade of the program language more 
and more functionality is being incorporated, patience is needed. 

  I as a web developer/coder just now realized the need for 
accessibility,through meeting Kevin Brown, and learning of the limitations, 
which spurred me to to attempt to create an accessible experience for the 
visually impaired.  It is also double duty for me, not to get off topic,  as I 
would like to make it work for clients who need to talk into a microphone and 
understand what is being said for speech recognition, I work with lawyers who 
wish to dictate and have their documents typed as they speak, and read back to 
them. 

  Flash has come a long way, and can create stand alone programs since version 
6, I can turn the MP3 player into a desktop application, and with Adobe's newer 
Flash platform called AIR you will begin to see Flash as a richer accessiblity 
coding platform, for Adobe has recognized the need for greater accessibility.  
We need the rest to get on board. 

  So continue to email and send requeste to developers of all the programs you 
wish to use, this way they get on the bandwagon.

  Deb


   
  On 9/26/07, John Greer <jpgreer17@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote: 
    Understood but it does seem very similar to the way that it is done in 
Visual Basic 2005.  In that programming environment you select the control you 
want to make accessible and it has a series of properties layed out in a series 
of edit boxes.  These are things like Accessible Name and Accessible role and 
you simply type in what the text should be for the object then for the 
accessible role you tell it whether it is a button, combo box, slider, etc.  
Other properties you can control are things like the tab order and whether a 
control is active or not.  It does seem to me after reading that document that 
Dreamweaver or whatever they call it these days, grin, is much the same way. 
      ----- Original Message ----- 
      From: Debra Riese 
      To: nvda@xxxxxxxxxxxxx 
      Sent: Wednesday, September 26, 2007 11:10 AM
      Subject: [nvda] Re: Debra's Flash application [was Audacity problem]

       
      This document does describe what I said in my earlier email, the 
developer has to assign the text in some manner.


      On 9/26/07, John Greer <jpgreer17@xxxxxxxxxxx > wrote: 
        Sorry for the long web address but I think this bit of info can help 
with
        flash accessibility.
        If the address below doesn't work people can just type creating an 
        accessible flash application into a google search and look through the
        results.
        
http://64.233.169.104/search?q=cache:Rv3TprXLi-oJ:www.adobe.com/resources/accessibility/best_practices/best_practices_acc_flash.pdf+creating+an+accessible+flash+application&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=2&gl=us

        ----- Original Message -----
        From: "James Teh" <jamie@xxxxxxxxxxx>
        To: < nvda@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
        Sent: Wednesday, September 26, 2007 7:48 AM 
        Subject: [nvda] Debra's Flash application [was Audacity problem]


        > Debra Riese wrote:
        >> All that screen readers do is read text, and as long as there is 
text on 
        >> the screen it will be read. 
        > This isn't entirely true, especially in the case of a screen reader 
like
        > NVDA and especially with a technology such as Flash. The easiest way 
to
        > expose information to screen readers is through the use of 
accessibility 
        > APIs such as MSAA. You would never use MSAA directly; Flash would 
expose
        > certain information to the accessibility API for the platform in use.
        > However, I'm not sure how Flash determines what information to expose 
for 
        > accessibility.
        >
        >> The method is to be able to code the keys to tab from button to 
button,
        >> have the button function with either a control/enter or two 
keystrokes on
        >> the users keyboard, and to place the text over the button,  This is 
also 
        >> the limitation of the TTS voice files
        > Again, I'm not sure how Flash implements accessibility, but you should
        > theoretically be able to have a piece of text which is exposed for
        > accessibility but which is not visible on the screen. You should be 
able 
        > to do this as part of the control itself, rather than having to place 
a
        > separate text control over the button. At least, this is how it is 
done in
        > other UI toolkits. Hopefully, Flash is intelligent enough to have 
        > something similar...
        >
        > Jamie
        >
        >
        > --
        > James Teh
        > Email: jamie@xxxxxxxxxxx 
        > WWW: http://www.jantrid.net/ 
        > MSN Messenger: jamie@xxxxxxxxxxx
        > Jabber: jteh@xxxxxxxxxx
        > Yahoo: jcs_teh
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open 
        > source free screen reader for Microsoft Windows:
        > http://www.nvda-project.org/
        > To get the latest NVDA snapshot:
        > http://www.nvda-project.org/snapshots/ 
        > Report bugs or make feature requests at:
        > http://trac.nvda-project.org/
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        > http://www.freelists.org/archives/nvda
        >

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        Thank you for your continued support of Nonvisual Desktop Access, an 
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        http://www.nvda-project.org/ 
        To get the latest NVDA snapshot:
        http://www.nvda-project.org/snapshots/ 
        Report bugs or make feature requests at:
        http://trac.nvda-project.org/
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