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

Hi Jamal,
 
Broadly I understand your point.  However, there are situations where simply
going sequentially through the items in a dialog is not the process required
for daily use of a facility.  If, for example, your job is processing pay
claims, and allocating charge codes to the relevant portions of hourly
rates, overtime rates, expenses and so on, it would, and does, become
extremely tedious having to tab through all the fields that may have to be
displayed to inform you what needs to be done.
 
It may be much quicker, if the pieces of information are all grouped in one
control group, and the fields you need to fill in are in an adjacent one.
There may very likely be other data on the screen at the same time, which
don't relate directly to the job in hand.  Sighted people visually skip over
that stuff, such as the box at the top giving the identification summary of
the person and their pay reference etc.  They see that the boxes they need
to work with are all in two rectangles on the right of the screen, one above
the other, and so visually concentrate on those.  They will glance through
the information in the first box, to identify the hours being claimed, and
will then click in the second box to place an insertion pointer so they can
type in the relevant charge codes.
 
For a blind person to do this, they would need to have a quick way to
rapidly get to the information in the upper right box, and read it.  Then,
to equally rapidly, move to the lower right box, in order to start filling
in the information.  It is true that the fact that these boxes are on the
right of the screen may be of no significance whatsoever as far as both the
blind and sighted person are concerned.  But the significance is that they
separate out the information that has to be dealt with, so that the details
on the left of the screen can be largely ignored unless something special
turns up.
 
This, I think, is the kind of scenario that Will is talking about.  Not just
the fact that address fields are grouped together, but that you may need to
perform specific, and isolated tasks on that group, separate from the rest
of the data on the screen.
 
All the best, 

David 

-----Original Message-----
From: ossrp-control-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:ossrp-control-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Jamal Mazrui
Sent: 05 May 2005 08:21
To: ossrp-control@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [ossrp-control] Re: What Is A Screen Reader?


Hi Will,
I agree that spatial relationships can and do convey a lot of information to
sighted users.  I was not arguing that visual placement is generally
irrelevant, but maintain that it can be so for blind users where it does not
affect the interface we experience and the functionality of the task at
hand.  
 
For example, if the purpose of a dialog is to retrieve typical contact
information (name, address, phone, etc.) through a well-understood set of
fields, then it may be irrelevant to the blind user where the controls are
placed, as long as they speak properly.  The layout of the dialog is not an
end in itself, but a means to an end, that of gathering the data for a
contact record.  The database does not care, and does not track, where the
controls were placed in the input dialog that gathered the data for the
record that was saved.
 
To elaborate, I might press tab successively hearing fields like "First
name", "last name," etc., filling each one in, including reviewing the data
in each edit box.  If the tab order is logical and the field name and
current value speak as expected, than it does not matter to me how the
fields are aligned, what fonts are used for field names, what point size the
entered characters are, etc.
 
Sighted users, on the other hand, are affected by such characteristics.
Even if the tab order is the same, logical sequence, they will be confused
if the "City" field is placed above the "First Name" field.  If a few fields
are cramped together in one corner of the dialog in an unpleasing manner
aesthetically, their productivity will be reduced because of the
disorientation they experience, etc.
 
Jamal
 
 -----Original Message-----
From: ossrp-control-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:ossrp-control-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Will Pearson
Sent: Wednesday, May 04, 2005 4:25 PM
To: ossrp-control@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [ossrp-control] Re: What Is A Screen Reader?


Hi Jamal,
 
"As a blind user, placement
can actually be irrelevant, having  no effect on functionality."
 
Based on psychology, semiotics and communications theory, I would have to
disagree with that statement.  A control's relationship to other controls
and it's absolute positioning can be sources of semantic information about
that control's functionality.  For example. buttons grouped together may
have similar functionality, buttons placed next to a list box may perform an
action on that list box or it's selected index.  On the web, a row of links
placed in vertical alignment at the top of a page are often used as a quick
navigational group of links.
 
So. spatial relationships and absolute positioning can add a lot of meaning
regarding functionality beyond that conveyed by a simple text label.  Users
can, and often do, work out the full semantic nature of a control, but this
is often through trying out the control and seeing what it does, which is
inefficient at best, and possibly disasterous at worst, imagine deleting
something that you didn't actually mean to delete.
 
Will

----- Original Message ----- 
From: Jamal  <mailto:Jamal.Mazrui@xxxxxxx> Mazrui 
To: ossrp-control@xxxxxxxxxxxxx 
Sent: Monday, May 02, 2005 2:41 PM
Subject: [ossrp-control] Re: What Is A Screen Reader?

Just an observation to share.
 
In trying to program dialog boxes under Windows, I have experienced the
situation where something I developed worked well with a screen reader, yet
I subsequently discovered that it was almost unusable for a sighted person.
A screen reader can tab from one control to another, and as long as each
control is properly labeled and otherwise voicing as one would expect at the
time it has focus, then the controls in the dialog serve their purpose.  It
may be the case, however, that the controls are placed in visually peculiar,
unbalanced, or overlapping places on the screen, thus making the dialog
difficult for a sighted user.
 
As a blind developer, I need to know the location of controls so that I can
meet the needs of both sighted and blind users.  As a blind user, placement
can actually be irrelevant, having  no effect on functionality.
 
Regards,
Jamal
-----Original Message-----
From: ossrp-control-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:ossrp-control-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Lyn Eagers
Sent: Saturday, April 30, 2005 11:19 PM
To: ossrp-control@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [ossrp-control] Re: What Is A Screen Reader?


Hi Will and Others,
 
Will, I found your description of what a screen reader is quite interesting.

 
I train people to use screen readers and, from my experience, some blind
folk are interested in where things are on the screen (spacial perception)
and others are not.  In particular, those who have had sight and were
extremely visual people find it important to know where things are.  Some,
and I say some, so therefore not all, long term blind people don't seem to
be interested in the spacial factor.
 
I am a long term blind person and have always tried to grasp a mental
picture of what is on the screen and where - probably because I teach both
kinds of blind people and sometimes assist sighted folk.
 
Anyhow, I thought I'd share my experiences with you.
 
Cheers,
Lyn
 
----- Original Message ----- 
From: Will Pearson <mailto:will-pearson@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>  
To: ossrp-control@xxxxxxxxxxxxx ; uvip@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx 
Sent: Sunday, May 01, 2005 11:58 AM
Subject: [ossrp-control] What Is A Screen Reader?

Hi,
 
I thought I'd share my, rather academic, view of what a screen reader is.
It offers a little glimmer into what screen readers could potentially do,
and some of the pitfalls that the current crop of screen readers have fallen
into.  All this is from the viewpoint of human computer interaction,
psychology and communications theory.
 
OK.  So, what is a screen reader?  Well, it's actually a lot more than
people often assume it is.  It's not just something that grabs the text from
the screen and reads it to you, well, at least it shouldn't be, it is in
fact the interface by which user and machine communicate semantic meaning,
relating to thoughts, concepts, actions and states.
 
So, how did I arrive at this view?  As some of you may know, I've been
researching into semantics and their role in software interfaces for a while
now.  During this time, it's become apparent that software interfaces are
just intended to communicate semantic meaning, but as we're not capable of
extr sensory perception and telepathy with the computer, we need some way to
indicate our thoughts, concepts, actions, etc. to the computer, and vice
versa.  The way this is visually done is by placing elements on the screen,
such as icons, buttons, etc. and having their shape, colour, position on
screen and relationships to one another act as encoding channels by which
the semantic meaning is conveyed.  Users then just point to an object,
conveying the semantics of which element they would like to interact with,
and either click it or select an action to perform on it from a menu.  All
this is just a form of physical encoding of the semantic meaning between
user and machine and vice versa.
 
So, as a screen reader is a replacement for the visual interface, it's role
is simply to act as an interface between user and machine and convey the
semantic meaning generated by the machine.  However, there's a nasty twist,
and that is that a screen reader has to get the semantic meaning that it is
to communicate to the user from somewhere.  As the screen reader has no
access to the internals of the machine, it's only available source of
semantics that the machine wishes to convey is the visual interface, which
uses encoding techniques such as colour, shape, position and spatial
relationship to convey it's semantics.  So, a screen reader should really be
about extracting the semantics from the visual display and encoding them in
a non-visual form suitable for a blind user, and this is where current
screen readers fall down.  To maintain accurate and efficient communication
with the user, all the semantics that are conveyed visually need to be
conveyed to the user.  This includes things like spatial positioning and
spatial relationships between interface elements, things that are currently
lost to the user when they are using one of the current screen readers.  If
this were to happen, then the number of errors, and according back-tracks
and reissuing of commands that go along with errors, would decrease, and
screen reader users would be more efficient beasts.
 
I haven't gone into design specifics, as they're for another day, and these
can dramatically affect efficiency as well, but that's my thoughts of what a
screen reader should be doing.  In focusing on the semantics, then it's
likely that through the use of semantic translation access to all those
difficult accessibility problems could be increased.
 
Will

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