Holy moly! What's going on there? What's Oracle suing Google for? From: programmingblind-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:programmingblind-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Don Marang Sent: Wednesday, August 18, 2010 2:38 AM To: programmingblind@xxxxxxxxxxxxx Subject: Re: Why isn't Open Office on Windows Accessible? Is all Android app development based on Google's version of Java? Are there reasonable resources I can point developers to for Android accessibility implementation? As a potential user / tinkerer, I would like to know as well and hopefully be in a better position to provide positive feedback. Will the threatened Oracle lawsuit of Google over Java damage Android's success? Will it destroy inovation and Open Source if they win? Don Marang There is just so much stuff in the world that, to me, is devoid of any real substance, value, and content that I just try to make sure that I am working on things that matter. Dean Kamen From: Ken Perry <mailto:whistler@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> Sent: Monday, August 16, 2010 7:52 PM To: programmingblind@xxxxxxxxxxxxx Subject: RE: Why isn't Open Office on Windows Accessible? This is sort of what Android is doing even if they have not went far enough yet. They have an accessible event that is thrown by all controls excepting static and some other problems but at any rate if you use basic controls you get the accessible events if however you want to make a custom action you can also throw accessible events that the screen readers like talk back will catch and speak or the accessibility tools like kick back and sound back can catch and do something with. So its part developer putting in special access and part developer using the controls that are already accessible. The unfortunate problem is what you get is only part accessible in most cases. I am not saying Android is not accessible I am saying what Android is once again proving is if you leave it up to the developer at all us as developers are too lazy to do it. Take me for example if I as a blind coder wrote a scrabble game I would not think of special cases for high resolution graphic cards to have spinning tiles or something to make the game more interesting for a sited player. I would be shooting for my target audience. The reverse is even worse not only are sighted programmers used to rapid development and anything that slows them down out, but they wouldn't know what we need to have sent to make something accessible unless we point it out. Here is an example under the Android platform. The default media player has very accessible artist and song lists. But when you open them they say nothing for example When you open the media layer you are on a tab screen and when you arrow left and right it says artist albums and songs. If you click on artist nothing happens or at least as a blind person hears it nothing at all happens. If however you are sighted you will notice that a whole list below opens up sort of like a tree but it's more like an expanded list. If you don't know what you're doing and you click on it again because you thought nothing happened it would close the list. Now a sighted coder wouldn't know this is a problem and the current access frame work doesn't take this into account. What should have happened is a open event should have been thrown even though focus didn't change there should have been a notification. Well it would have cost maybe 10 lines a code to make this work but those lines are not easy to find and if you don't know it needs to be there well you're not going to go looking in the View.java class and the accessible_inf_event.java class to figure out how it works because you don't know you need to. So how do we fix this? My answer is better thought out tool kits. Once the developers can just use and it will be accessible. If they make accustom control then don't do something for accessibility it will error. Will this ever happen. My answer is no but shrug I hope I am wrong. Ken From: programmingblind-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:programmingblind-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Jay Macarty Sent: Monday, August 16, 2010 1:29 AM To: programmingblind@xxxxxxxxxxxxx Subject: Re: Why isn't Open Office on Windows Accessible? One of the ideas I have been toying with for the java screen reader (either we4java or jac) is providing a set of runtime annotations which could be used to enhance an application's accessibility by allowing the app developer to put in self voicing annotations. There are differing schools of thought on self voicing. Some say it is good because the developer knows the app best and where self voicing would be helpful. On the other hand, putting in self voicing without providing the user a way of controling it or turning off certain levels of it, takes away from the user's control over the accessibility feedback. If we put self voicing annotations into the java screen reader, a developer could add them in if desired but the base screen reader code base would still have control and could provide a common mechanism for allowing the user to adjust the self voicing feedback. ----- Original Message ----- From: Ken Perry <mailto:whistler@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> To: programmingblind@xxxxxxxxxxxxx Sent: Friday, August 13, 2010 5:20 PM Subject: RE: Why isn't Open Office on Windows Accessible? I agree with Chris H.'s answer but I want to point out it's our fault it's not already accessible. I wrote a simple talking java screen reader that did very little but it made it so I could use Open Office. Crappily but the buttons talked and all and I did this in like 200 lines of code. I know that code got passed around and I have since lost my copy but it can be done by replacing the access bridge with self voicing code. It just takes someone actually doing it. I am interested to see where Open Office goes now that it is Oricals. I am worried about all Java stuff now that Orical is trying to Sew Google into stopping Android. It's a crazy world. Ken From: programmingblind-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:programmingblind-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Kerneels Roos Sent: Friday, August 13, 2010 3:30 AM To: programmingblind Subject: Why isn't Open Office on Windows Accessible? Hi List, Sorry if this question has been raised before and dealt with. Does anyone know exactly why the Windows version of Open Office is only partly accessible with a screen reader, while the Linux version is streets ahead? Because Open Office is written in Java I assume the code base is 98% identical across platforms. Is the problem mainly with the JAB (Java Access Bridge) or with the screen readers themselves? Could the JAB not be open sourced so it can be updated to bridge Java, MSAA, UIA and any other access middle ware standard? NVDA works the best with Open Office, so I would assume it makes the best use of the JAB. Is there other Java to access technology middle ware in common use today? I can remember a really long thread that in part had some info on Java accessibility, but I just can't justify going through all that to possibly find out more. Keep well -- Kerneels Roos Cell/SMS: +27 (0)82 309 1998 Skype: cornelis.roos The early bird may get the worm, but the second mouse gets the cheese! __________ Information from ESET NOD32 Antivirus, version of virus signature database 5376 (20100818) __________ The message was checked by ESET NOD32 Antivirus. http://www.eset.com