I agree. Your earlier discussion brought to mind immediately that tab
order is probably the most immediate form of semantic information blind
users have available. We see things in the order we visit them while
tabbing. This both gives us order and forces us to chug along the train
track, visiting every stop, until we reach the virtual station we want.
I'm hoping that the screen reader project will give us some new ways to
home in on what we want in other ways than that grinding tab-by-tab
approach.
Cheers,
Jerry
"Jamal Mazrui"
<Jamal.Mazrui@xxxxxxx> To:
<ossrp-control@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent by: cc:
ossrp-control-bounce@fr Subject: [ossrp-control]
Re: What Is A Screen Reader?
eelists.org
05/05/2005 03:21 PM
Please respond to
ossrp-control
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 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
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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