[macvoiceover] Re: Fw: Article on Firefox and VoiceOver
- From: Jacob Schmude <j.schmude@xxxxxxxxx>
- To: macvoiceover@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Thu, 21 Aug 2008 15:40:06 -0700
Hi
As I understand it, while most of the core Darwin classes are
available as open source, there is quite a bit that is not. Remember
that Darwin is just the kernel and base system, it doesn't include
Aqua, Cocoa, or any of that. As for Opendarwin, hasn't it been defunct
for a while, with Macports being the only real part of Opendarwin
still being maintained? I stand corrected, this is just as I
understand the situation. I may very well be wrong. As for a third-
party screen reader for OS X, given that most of the actual GUI
internals are proprietary, I doubt it could currently be done without
a little cooperation with Apple. My understanding was that it took so
long for us to get access to OS X because Apple kept most of the
internals secret, in addition to not having the Cocoa accessibility
infrastructure.
I do agree that Mozilla needs to be applauded for its accessibility
efforts. They really have come a long way--compare Firefox
accessibility on UNIX a year ago to what it is now and you'll see just
how far they have come.
On Aug 21, 2008, at 3:23, Travis Siegel wrote:
Actually, I'm relatively surprised at this article.
For several reasons, but foremost, I had no idea mozilla was working
so hard for general accessibility capabilities on multiple operating
systems.
That's great to know.
As for a secondary screen reader on osx, there's nothing at all
preventing anyone from making one, since all of the base system
source is available in the darwin project.
I have no idea how much work it would be to port one of the existing
screen readers to darwin, but once that's done, there's nothing to
prevent it from being used on osx afterwords, and since open darwin
needs a screen reader anyhow, I honestly think this would be an
excellent use of resources.
Failing that, someone who is better at disassembling code than I am
can easily obtain all the information necessary to have their screen
reader get the same info voice over does, simply by writing small
modules that talk to the screen reader core apis, and see what info
they get back. After several of these modules are put together, and
worked over to provide complete access, you could (in effect)
reverse engineer the voiceover screen reader component. (this is
how I got nearly all of the utilities I wrote for the artic
technology notetakers written) It's a long and drawn out process,
frustrating at times, and of course, will (likely) find unknown bugs
with the technology (I found one with artics book reader application
this way) but the positive side is, it will eventually work. Redhat
did this with windows as well, when adding samba support into their
linux distribution.
This is likely the only approach that will give satisfactory results
with the existing technology (meaning voiceover) but again, there's
nothing saying this approach couldn't be used to build a secondary
screen reader that conforms to the needs of the mozilla community.
All the apis are there, documented (mostly) and available for anyone
to use. Someone with sufficient knowledge, time, and programming
capabilities could easily (ok, maybe not easily), produce a 3rd-
party application that could talk to mozilla, then filter the
results back to voiceover for the actual speaking, while simply
calling the vo routines to perform any additional speaking that may
be necessary on the parts of the interface that vo doesn't/can't
handle on it's own.
Admittedly, it's not a simple fix, and it will take time, but it is
possible, and if there is enough demand, this is likely the approach
that will have to be taken.
Could I do this? Not likely, although I'm a relatively decent
programmer when it comes to normal everyday tasks, I don't have the
knowledge necessary to tie apple interfacing into the mix, nor could
I do so even if I did know how, because (as pointed out here in this
article) apple still has a bit to go for complete accessibility, and
it's developer tools make it possible, but extremely difficult
(though considerably easier than it used to be) for a blind
programmer to develop an entire product from ed to end w/o sighted
assistance, and in my case, that assistance just isn't available.
I could of course, test, add patches, and perform other tasks
required to ensure smooth operations, but this task is a bit beyond
me, or I'd be perfectly happy to volunteer for it.
But, in any case, I agree, that something definitely needs done on
this front, as I said, I had no idea mozilla was working so hard on
the behalf of accessibility.
Now I need to go take a look at their site, and see if I can
contribute somehow. :)
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