[nvda] Re: Some random thoughts

Hi all,
I am often given the impression that users believe we're being idealistic just to be difficult. This is not our intent, as should be obvious given the cause. We are trying to avoid simply repeating everything that other screen readers have done, potentially making the same mistakes as well. We're also trying to maintain a certain amount of consistency, which is very much lacking in other products. We'd rather try to apply a general rule wherever possible, rather than applying a badly thought out rule which has to be overridden in 90% of cases for specific applications. This is poor design and is unfortunately becoming more common. Having said this, we are aware that a general rule is not always possible and that there are always exceptions, but these exceptions should be just that: exceptions, not rules.
On another note, people suggest that they want configurable verbosity so that they can choose what should be spoken in these difficult, controvertial cases. Such configurability is not as simple as it seems on the surface and can lead to greater complexity, not just in code and efficiency, but in useability as well. Providing "beginner", "intermediate" and "advanced" verbosity is not enough, because, for example, some advanced users might still want to hear about icons, while some may not. Conversely, providing an option for every single one of these cases (e.g. whether or not to speak "pane", whether to speak "icon", etc.) makes for an excessive number of configuration options which, aside from being confusing for the user, eventually makes for a slow, bloated and inefficient code base.
Regarding speaking of window roles: The problem when considering these issues is that sometimes, semantic information is lost by not speaking these roles. Consider the following: * If we eliminate the speaking of too many roles, we will have seemingly arbitrary chunks of text spoken which don't appear to make any sense. For example, if we silence the "panel" role in the Java Control Panel, which is used to indicate grouping of controls, you will hear something like this on the general tab: 
"About <pause> About... button"
Some might wonder why "About" is spoken twice. If "About panel" is spoken for the first, it makes it obvious that the button is inside a panel also called "About". Those of us who are familiar with this know that a pause probably means a different control, but some might not. * It seems that most don't want "pane" to be spoken for a foreground window, yet they are happy to have "dialog" spoken when entering a dialog window. Why should these be any different? One might argue that the former is a normal case and so needn't be spoken, but it could also be argued that this is pointlessly inconsistent. * The "icon" role is particularly controvertial. "Icon" actually does convey information that might be useful in some cases, although it isn't actually useful in terms of the behaviour of the control. "Icon" indicates that the item that is displayed is a graphical representation, not a piece of text. This isn't much use to a blind person in most cases, but could be useful in terms of one's understanding of the operating system and for communication with sighted peers. 

My rant aside... :)
Mick and I have agreed to silence "pane" for application windows. In addition, "grouping" and perhaps "panel" will be silenced. We need constructive, useful feedback on changes like these.' 

Jamie

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James Teh
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