[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  <mailto:will-pearson@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> 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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