[nvda] Re: Some random thoughts

We need to distinguish between unknown controls and a pane indication.  In
general, an unknown control has no relation to whether you switch panes.  I
have no objection to NVDA saying something like unknown control when it sees
one it doesn't recognize.  However, here again, I think this should be
customizable.

Regarding the issue of panes, while I don't consider the question of whether
NVDA announces the word pane, to be an important issue in itself, I was
discussing it more to make a broader point, that of not following an
ideology when it conflicts with common sense or what is the best practice in
a given instance.  It may be argued whether a user should be told they are
in a pane in a case where a window has more than one pane.  For example,
when a user enters a help system, would it be useful to be told you are in a
pane?  It may be, but I don't have a conclusion about that.  It can be
argued that this will alert the user that it is likely that he/she can move
to another pane by using f6.  As a practical matter, it might be argued that
an experienced user will already know to try this while an inexperienced
user won't even know that this can be done and so the pane announcement will
mean nothing to that user.  As I say, I don't have a conclusion or
particular opinion about this.  My point is that the ExpressTalk example
given appears to have no proper relevance to the
pane announcement argument.

As far as I can tell, not having used the program you cite, the reason the
program told you you were in a new pane is because you had moved to a new
pane.  However, that is a completely separate issue, as I said, from whether
an unknown control is announced.  Almost all of the time when an unknown
control is seen, no pane is changed.  Mostly, this happens when you tab
through a dialog and panes don't change in dialogs. It is just a coincidence
that you were informed of the pane and simultaneously happened to be on an
unknown control.  Since the information appears to be completely unrelated,
your example doesn't appear to make your case.  You can argue that unknown
controls should be identified but that is a completely separate argument
from the pane argument.  You can also argue that panes should be announced
but that is a completely separate argument from the control argument.

Here again, I think the announcement of unknown controls should be
controllable by the user.  At a minimum, it should be definable whether it
is announced before or after readable text in the control.  Some
screen-readers announce that some controls in Media Player are unknown and
then go on to read perfectly applicable and understandable text.  At times,
the screen-readers are quite verbose in Media Player when announcing what is
unknown or what kind of window or control the screen-reader thinks is
encountered.  The control may be unknown but the screen-reader reads the
descriptive text properly.  In such a case, it doesn't matter that the
control is unknown.

My point is not to make these issues more important than they are.  I'm not
arguing that these are crucial or important issues.  I'm using them as
examples to demonstrate the kind of erroneous decisions that are made when
one places ideology above a broader principle, that a screen-reader should
provide information in the fastest most relevant way.  Because users will
differ as to what is relevant information, this sort of thing should be
controllable by the user.  In cases where no relevant information is given,
I would argue none should be.  When you open Notepad or Wordpad, etc. you
are in a window with one pane.  There is no reason to announce anything
about a pane in such a case.  On the other hand, as I said, you may be able
to make a good argument that a window with more than one pane should be
announced as having more than one pane.

Gene

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