[macvoiceover] Re: FW: [Webwatch] Interesting Blog Post on Macintosh Web Browsing Accessibility
- From: "David Poehlman" <david.poehlman@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: <macvoiceover@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Fri, 29 Aug 2008 10:24:21 -0400
Travis,
You have hit the proverbial nail on the proverbial head here. Mozilla knows
exactly what they are doing and they are refusing to budge but instead, they
are trying to force apple to aceed to their demands. They have apparently
been successful at this with others so they are emboldened. The only issues
I see here are for features currently out of scope for voiceover such as
aria but apple will most likely correct those but not as soon and in the way
the mozilla would want so they are pushing for open source voiceover which
is not necessarily a bad thing, but not necessarily a good reason to go open
source with voiceover. I suggested to mozilla that they build their own
open source screen reader for the mac or that they help nvda to become cross
platform if they wanted an open source screen reader but that did not get a
good reception.
----- Original Message -----
From: "Travis Siegel" <windowbridge@xxxxxxx>
To: <macvoiceover@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Friday, August 29, 2008 9:57 AM
Subject: [macvoiceover] Re: FW: [Webwatch] Interesting Blog Post on
Macintosh Web Browsing Accessibility
Accept, the problem with firefox accessibility is:
they're using 100 percent custom screen attributes. That is precisely
why it doesn't work with voiceover.
They complain, because apple won't support them (or answer their
requests they claim).
Honestly, if I had spent hundreds of hours providing a framework, and
someone contacted me, and said I can't get something working that uses
your operating system, and I need help, because I can't figure out how
to do it myself, and oh, by the way, we're ignoring all the hard work
you put into making the os accessible, and doing things our own way,
I'd not be very likely to answer their requests either.
Admittedly, apple could respond, and tell them to use the provided
apis (perhaps they have and firefox just isn't saying so) but firefox
should step up to the plate, and add provided accessible options where
possible to make things usable.
Making custom screens accessible is possible, but it's a whole lot
more work than just using the apple provided items in the first place,
especially if the custom ones perform the same function as the apple
provided ones to start with. Why build your own button where you have
to add custom accessibility features (and likely miss something) when
you can use the apple provided button that acts exactly the same, and
already has the accessibility features built-in.
I see no reason why firefox *needs* to use 100 percent custom screen
elements.
Sure, in some cases, it may be necessary to get the results they want,
but that can't possibly be true for the entire interface.
Firefox needs to meet apple halfway here, and from what I'm seeing,
that isn't happening.
But, then again, I'm not privy to *all* the communications that have
gone on between firefox and apple, so it's possible there's a lot more
going on here than anyone could possibly be aware of, but regardless,
firefox needs to make some efforts to use apple provided screen
interface elements where possible, and only use the custom items when
the apple ones just can't be made to do what's required.
Until that happens, I'd not look for any accessibility improvements in
firefox, and that's really a shame, as from what I hear, firefox is an
excellent browser.
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