[ossrp-control] Re: Semi OT: Scriptability: Start Menu Highlighting (Was: Member Intro, Feature Suggestions and Questions)

Hi All,

First of all, I firmly agree with you on that beautiful point about column
layout.

However see my rant below about the rest of your comments

Come on now folks ... Do we honestly have to pull this thousand year old
garbage about how the sighted world is out to get us?

Look: GUI's by their very nature are not there to prevent blind people from
having access. The fact that some of them still do is going to be around for
a while. Let's try to change that, but when you start using words like
hostile environment and beating something into submission ... You just start
sounding like a zealot or a fundamentalist: take your pick.

Let's try to work with the nice sighted people, ok? We are not here to have
a war with the evil ones who can see ... I mean honestly: if you read some
of the accessibility webpages today: it's pethetically sad, and plane
stupid.

Now, my rant isn't all directed at your email ... I just get really upset
when I see or whitness the whole, "us against them", attitude.

Take care,
Sina

-----Original Message-----
From: ossrp-control-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:ossrp-control-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of
gerald.g.weichbrodt@xxxxxx
Sent: Wednesday, June 01, 2005 7:33 AM
To: ossrp-control@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [ossrp-control] Re: Semi OT: Scriptability: Start Menu Highlighting
(Was: Member Intro, Feature Suggestions and Questions)

I have to agree with Jamal here.  It wasn't that many years ago that, if a
web developer laid out a screen to look like newspaper columns, then one's
screen reader would read across each line of the multiple columns in
succession, providing an incomprehensible mishmash of unrelated content.
Surely that type of non-reformatting was not desirable.  I firmly believe we
have to weigh the virtue of seeing the screen "as it truly is" against the
advantages of providing a blind user with a presentation that is friendly to
his/her needs.  I would assert that the Windows GUI is largely blind-hostile
by its very nature.  There is nothing about an icon that is inherently
recognizable for a blind person.  There is nothing blind-friendly about a
complex canvas of controls thrown on a screen when the blind person cannot
easily glance across the screen, grab one of those controls, and manipulate
it at will.  We are inherently working in a hostile domain.  Anything we can
do to beat this inherently visual environment into submission and force it
to work for us is fair game IMHO.

Regards,
Jerry



 

                      "Jamal Mazrui"

                      <Jamal.Mazrui@xxxxxxx>         To:
<ossrp-control@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>

                      Sent by:                       cc:

                      ossrp-control-bounce@fr        Subject:
[ossrp-control] Re: Semi OT: Scriptability: Start Menu Highlighting (Was:

                      eelists.org                     Member Intro, Feature
Suggestions and Questions)                                       
 

 

                      05/31/2005 04:40 PM

                      Please respond to

                      ossrp-control

 

 





Hi Veli-Pekka ,
We see things differently. <grin>  I think it is fine that JAWS and
Window-Eyes (not sure about SuperNova) seek to provide a more functional
presentation of a web page from an audio or braille perspective.  I think
HTML is, in fact, intended for such usage, separating content from
presentation whenever possible according to W3C guidelines.  In my opinion,
the Virtual View of JAWS and MSAA mode of Window-Eyes have boosted web
friendliness and productivity for the average blind person compared to the
experience we had of the web a few years ago before these innovations.
Assistive technology firms are in a better position than browser developers
to be familiar with their customers needs and abilities, so they are more
likely to design a better nonvisual presentation.  One can turn off the
Virtual PC cursor or MSAA mode, but few users do because of the marked drop
in productivity.

I think such differences in GUI behavior outweigh the advantages of a
consistent, lower baseline across different screen readers.  Simple screen
readers are probably a thing of the past now:  adapting GUIs for blind users
is a complex challenge for a reasonable level of productivity to be
achieved.  Most users will pick a screen reader and stay with it, at least
for a few years.

Regards,
Jamal



-----Original Message-----
From: ossrp-control-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:ossrp-control-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Veli-Pekka Tätilä
Sent: Tuesday, May 31, 2005 4:20 PM
To: ossrp-control@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [ossrp-control] Re: Semi OT: Scriptability: Start Menu Highlighting
(Was: Member Intro, Feature Suggestions and Questions)


Hi Jamal,
I can see your point regarding whether to auto-highlight the first item in
the Start Menu with a screen reader. I'd say this does come to taste and
personally not doing these little convenience things automatically is one
reason why I prefer Supernoava to Jaws. Another point is that you can take
this same idealization scheme a bit further and start reformatting HTML
pages by the screen reader. This is another thing I greatly dislike and for

the same reason. IT is giving you a manipulated picture of screen contents
without even telling that it does so. Having a browser feature or plug-in
for HTML reformatting is fine by me, because that's an application feature
and not a screen reader specific quirk.

Apart from taste issues I do have one rational argument against the Start
Menu auto-highlight and many other similar features:

There will always be simple screen readers that don't have these convenience
features at all. Or even worse, screen readers implementing these features
slightly differently. This means that the Windows fundamentals vary from
screen reader to screen reader and the user has to cope with that.

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

Jamal Mazrui wrote:
> 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

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