Re: Accessible Labels

[Billy Biggs <vektor dumbterm net>]

  Hi Russell, thanks for replying.

Russell Shaw (rjshaw netspace net au):

> >>Billy Biggs wrote:
> >>
> >>> I'm working on an application which sometimes uses non-editable
> >>> GtkTextView widgets in place of GtkLabel to better accomodate
> >>> screen readers.  Unfortunately, this breaks on themes with a
> >>> background pixmap, as you end up with "labels" that have a flat
> >>> colour background.
> >>...
> >>
> >>> On themes with a background pixmap, there is a (usually gray) box
> >>> below the entry.  Another disadvantage of this technique is that
> >>> the entry can get keyboard focus, which sometimes seems strange.
> >>
> >> Maybe you could pack a GtkStatusbar to the bottom of the dialog.
> >
> > Do status bars have special status in screen readers?  If so it
> > might have the correct behaviour, but I would be worried about
> > putting a status bar in the middle of the widget, and I do not think
> > that it makes sense visually in a dialog to have a status bar below
> > the OK/Cancel buttons.
> 
> I don't know about screen-readers, but i'd think using a status bar
> would be more in line with user interface conventions, and a status
> bar on that dialog box wouldn't be far away from where you had the
> label text anyway. If the GtkLabel drives the screen-reader, then you
> could make the label invisible and put the same text on the status bar
> (a bit hackish;).

  The point of this exercise is to accomodate both a screen-reader and a
sighted user in a sane way, so if a status bar has no special status
then it is not very useful.  Besides, I can't find any prior art for
status bars in dialogs, nor would glade seem to let me do it at all: you
can't seem to put a status bar below the OK/Cancel buttons (and you
can't put it above since it has a resize handle).  I do not think it
would look right anyway.

> Another way is to use pango to directly draw text on the dialog
> widgets background, which hopefully shouldn't add any background of
> its own.

  I could just use a label and it would look fine and give the behaviour
I want.  The problem is controlling when it will be read by a screen
reader.  It seems like using a text area would make the user experience
really intuitive for a visually impaired user.

  That said, I could implement my own widget that supports the use I
want, my question is whether this is something worth supporting in Gtk+
itself, or is my use case invalid for some other reason.

  -Billy