[ossrp-control] Re: Member Intro, Feature Suggestions and Questions

As acknowledged this is partly a matter of taste, but I personally am glad that 
JAWS automatically highlights and reads the first option of the Windows Start 
Menu.  Most application menus automatically highlight the first option when 
activated, so this is not peculiar behavior.  It has an efficiency benefit of 
giving a bit more information about the menu just opened, but not too much to 
be verbose.  Hearing the first menu option is additional, relevant information 
about the context of current choices available, and if one wants the first menu 
option, one can just press Enter, thus saving an extra down arrow keystroke.

I do not think we should be such purists that we necessarily immitate the 
visual interface, even its oddities, through sound.  If there are ways the 
screen reader can make the computing environment more productive for us as 
blind users, without losing some other significant feature, then why not?  We 
have enough obstacles to contend with in a GUI environment that it should be 
respectable if not desirable to improve it for ourselves when feasible.

Jamal

-----Original Message-----
From: ossrp-control-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx 
[mailto:ossrp-control-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Veli-Pekka Tätilä
Sent: Tuesday, May 31, 2005 2:05 PM
To: ossrp-control@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [ossrp-control] Re: Member Intro, Feature Suggestions and Questions


Hi Matthew,
Ok agreed that my ideas might be too minimalist for general usage. But 
surely that doesn't mean I couldn't try them myself or make the prompting as 
brief and consise as possible in existing screen reading products. I've 
found that screen reading issues come a lot down to taste, too. Having 
started out with Supernova versions 3 and 4, it tought me a screen reading 
philosophy that's quite different from the current versions of Jaws or 
Supernova itself.

One classic example of what I consider to be sound use of the relative term 
"too different from how the sighted do it" is the Win 9X start button. In 
Win 98 none of the menu items gets the focus if you open up the Start Menu. 
Jaws used to highlight the first item with scripting and thus made the UI 
unnecessarily different from how it appears to the sighted keyboard user. 
Supernova doesn't alter this glich in Windows and I personally like this 
philosophy much better. It is reading the screen not idealizing and altering 
it.

Frankly speaking, I didn't really expect people to take my page as a list of 
acceptable feature suggestions or a generic direction of this project. I 
would be happy if even one or two ideas would be implemented over time. And 
I would be willing to put programming effort into something generally usable 
such as a good redundancy filter. None of the screen readers have one and 
the idea sounds good at least on paper. Take highly redundant path names in 
visual Studio 6 or reading three digit progress indicators totally, if in 
most cases only the last digit changes.

You still haven't answered any of the other questions, though. To rehash and 
re-phrase slightly:

a. Do I need Longhorn for Longhorn development and which version of Visual 
Studio is necessary? Parts of both Visual Studio 2003 and 2005 are highly 
inaccessible with Dolphin Supernova in particular the property pane in the 
forms designer doesn't speak anything. Visual Studio 6 is unsupported 
already but at least it works.

b. In which phase is this screen reader project currently and what ways of 
participating are there?

c. Does the reader include some sort of extension mechanism such as a 
plug-in interface?

Also a slight niggle about the terminology. It says on the intro page that 
this is a list for everyone so shouldn't people use common terms where ever 
possible? I came across some posting a few days back and didn't understand 
even half of it, even though I would consider myself a powre user and have 
read bits and pieces about usability and accessibility. So I'd say your 
average user is even more lost than I am <no offence ment to anyone>.


With kind regards Veli-Pekka Tätilä (vtatila@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx)
Accessibility, game music, synthesizers and programming:
http://www.student.oulu.fi/~vtatila/

Matthew King wrote:
> Veli,
>
> With all due respect, I think your "minimalist" ideas at:
> http://www.student.oulu.fi/~vtatila/free_screen_reader.html
> are too minimalist, not realistic,  and are counter productive.
>
> For instance, rationalizing the exclusion of a feature because it is "too
> different" from how a sighted person uses a computer seems baseless. The
> same logic would say that using an audio interface to a visually oriented
> system at all is "too different." The reality is that the very idea of a
> screen reader, verses a computing platform designed from the ground-up as
> an audio-interface computing platform, begs for accomodations to mitigate
> the lack of efficiency inherent in bolt-on accessibility. Without such
> mitigating accomodations, the audio-interface or tactile-interface user
> will be left in the dust by his or her sighted peers.
>
> Matt King
> Accessibility End User Advocate
> IBM Enterprise Services/Corporate Accessibility CoC
> Phone: (719) 520-3006, Tie line: 8-656-3006
> Internet: mattking@xxxxxxxxxx
> IBM Internal Accessibility Tools:
> http://w3.ibm.com/tools/it/ittools.nsf/main/pwd_PWDResources.htm
> IBM Internal Accessibility Transformation Home:
> http://w3.ibm.com/transform/cio.nsf/main/pwd_main.htm
> IBM Accessibility Center: http://www.ibm.com/able
>
>
>
>
>             Veli-Pekka Tätilä
>             <vtatila@xxxxxxxx
>             dent.oulu.fi>                                              To
>             Sent by:                  <ossrp-control@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
>             ossrp-control-bou                                          cc
>             nce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
>                                                                   Subject
>                                       [ossrp-control] Member Intro,
>             05/28/2005 07:54          Feature Suggestions and Questions
>             AM
>
>
>             Please respond to
>               ossrp-control
>
>
>
>
>
>
> Hi list,
> I thought I'd introduce myself and ask a couple of questions about the
> screen reader.
>
> I'm a 21-year-old sight immpaired FInnish guy and a lot into computers. I
> do
> have a little sight left on my left eye: enough to use magnification but
> not
> so much to be able to abandon screen reading completely. I prefer speech,
> braille and the screen as output media in this order. FOr more info on my
> sight, check out this Web-page:
>
> http://www.student.oulu.fi/~vtatila/sight.html
>
> As to development work I know C plus plus and Java at some level and have
> done courses on software architectures
> and object oriented design. Additionally, I'm naturaly into usability and
> accessibility. In addition to human computer interaction basics and some
> GUi
> design, I did beta test the screen reader for MacOs X 10.4 and am
> currently beta testing Dolphin screen reading products.
>
> My first question is whether it is possible to create plug-ins for the
> screen reader or if there's some other extension mechanism for this
> purpose?
> A plug-in based approach would promote customizability or even alternative
> solutions to problems, in addition to enabling one to say emulate existing
> screen readers.
>
> I'd like to experiment with some ideas of my own or those that have been
> proposed elswhere. Some examples:
>
> a. I read in CSUN about conveying the current screen position with
> surround sound. That would be great and I could actually try it out as I
> do have a 10x10 professional sound card for music and audio work. I think
> you should arrange the speakers a litle unconventionally around the
> monitor, though, such that moving up would mean up soundwise, too.
>
> b. An optional redundancy filter could help in streamlining screen
> prompts. That is it could compare the current and previous output and if
> there were similar pieces, remove them possibly notifying the user. This
> way the problems of file names, progress indicators or any other prompt
> text that
> is
> at least partially redundant could be mostly eliminated.
>
> c. Though this is only my personal take on things, I've got a very
> specific idea of how a screen reader should work overall and why. I call
> it the screen reading philosophy and have a whole page dealing with it as
> well as with the feature suggestions at:
>
> http://www.student.oulu.fi/~vtatila/free_screen_reader.html
>
> Based on this page, any ideas as to what kind of philosophy the screen
> reader will have? Many of the more minimalist ones like Narrator,
> Gnopernicus or VoiceOver seem to be close to what I'd like. In brief, my
> screen reading philosophy is that the screen reader should not change how
> the computer is operated unless that's absolutely necessary. Most of the
> things I'm listing on the page stem from this basic rule.
>
> Finally, is it possible for a sight impaired person to do Longhorn
> development? Surely you need an existing Longhorn screen reader if the SDk
> must run under Longhorn, don't you? A bit of a chicken and egg problem,
> you could say, a screen reader for developing a screen reader.
>
> Another thing I'm worried about is Visual Studio 2003. The menu colors
> don't
> conform to my high-contrast color scheme, which leaves sufficient contrast
> between windows (fields) and dialogs without sacrificing readability,
> unlike
> most
> high-contrast schemes. More importantly, though, large parts of the
> program including the property panel in the forms editor and the right
> side of many dialogs seem to be totally inaccessible with Dolphin
> Supernova 6.51.
>
> Any thoughts or comments appreciated as usual,
>
> PS: I hope this is the list posting address. I haven't received a real
> welcome message just yet.
>
> With kind regards Veli-Pekka Tätilä (vtatila@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx)
> Accessibility, game music, synthesizers and programming:
> http://www.student.oulu.fi/~vtatila/
>
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