[ossrp-control] Re: What Is A Screen Reader?

Drag and drop sounds good the way you describe it Laura. Never used it myself. One very basic idea would have an item on the menu bar with all visible controls listed. Then select one and copy paste or jump to the control for action. This might be good when there multiple focus areas on screen which now require using the mouse to find instead of the keyboard cursor. I guess this would only work well if all the controls were labeled though. Just the ramblings of an old fat blind guy.
Rick of farmington Mich. USA

----- Original Message ----- From: "Laura Eaves" <leaves1@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
To: <ossrp-control@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Wednesday, May 04, 2005 6:17 PM
Subject: [ossrp-control] Re: What Is A Screen Reader?


I don't know what the difficulty is with drag and drop -- actually it is not
hard to do this with jaws -- just switch to the jaws or mouse cursor and
lock it and then navigate over to the destination and unlock and the object
is deposited. I have done it many times.

But as for spatial relationships, i am wondering if there would be an easy
way to specify relative location on the screen audibly -- such as having the
screen reader put an invisible grid on the screen and give grid coordinates
of an object.
Having come from having partial vision to having almost none, I for one miss
seeing spatial relationships. I think it would be a plus for the user if
some kind of spatial info were given by the screen reader to the user.
Obviously for many apps it is not important to know spatial layout -- and
indeed when i learned windows with jaws (at the same time) 6 years ago, I
had no idea where anything was spatially and wished I had.
And spatial relationship is not purely a visual attribute -- it is also
tactile -- and in fact I sometimes find myself moving my hands around to get
an idea of what I am doing when on the computer or solving a math problem
(math was my major in college) and indeed my vision even when I could read
was limited to a very small field so I only saw a small part of what I was
doing. But that didn't mean I couldn't "visualize" it in my mind.

If the spatial info were supplied somehow by a screen reader I think more
people would use it and soon find it very useful, if not essential. I am
aware that persons who have been blind all their lives have the feeling that
since they have never needed it it somehow isn't necessary. Well, of course
they can live without it, but if the info is available I think they would
indeed like it!

Just some thoughts.  Feel free to shoot holes in my conjectures.
--le


----- Original Message ----- From: <bryan_dufelmeier@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
To: <ossrp-control@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Wednesday, May 04, 2005 5:39 PM
Subject: [ossrp-control] Re: What Is A Screen Reader?






Well sometimes mapping these relationships would work quite well and other
times not at all. Drag and drop is a good examaple of when not to use this
approach. The progblem there is that mapping an action while it's being
performed is simply too much information for the average user to process
without an unduly amount of practice. However, I remember having a program
several years ago in dos when I was using the versabraille. Now the
program used something called exploding windows which was an effect
visually created when a new window was opened. The versabraille is not an
audio device but you could hear when a new window opened because the
braille dots zipped across the screen in an obvious way. The effect was
tactile if your hands happened to be in position as well. Audio effects
and icons could be very useful in conveying all sorts of information.
Sometimes spoken clues and explantions will be necessary and sometimes as
with drag and drop the action itself would be made more difficult by going
overboard on the audio. Doing an audio mapping for drag and drop may be
useful in a tutorial about windows for explaiing the concept but not in
actual screen reader operation. Just some comments for the road.

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