Re: [orca-list] screen layout

[Alex Midence <alex midence gmail com>]

I don't understand why it is such a bad idea to do this on the screen reader
end.  It would not tie you to a specific browser if you did it this way.  I
use this self same functionality every day at work on my Windows machine and
have done so for the last 11 years.  It is an exponentially faster way to
navigate complex webpages than the linear way in which we have to do it in
Orca as things are now.  This is why people keep bringing it up.  They've
done it in Windows this way and have seen the benefits of it and know it can
make things in Linux much more painless with regard to webpage navigation.
You don't realize it as much in simple pages but, if you go to a page that
has more than a hundred links and more than ten headings, you really notice
it.  I have also found it very handy on pages that employ jQuery Javascript
code to make those fancy drop down menus people are finding so appealing
these days.  I hover my mouse cursor over the link that makes the dropdown
menu appear and then pop into my links list dialog and all the resulting
links that only appear with the drop down menu become available to me.  If I
were to move my mouse cursor I would lose the ability to click on those
links because they often disappear too quickly for you to find them that way
unless the web developer did his homework and took you into consideration
with web page accessibility.  Unfortunately, making a webpage accessible is
not mandatory so there are tons of them out there that are not designed with
us in mind.  So, imho, any tool we can get our hands on to make navigating
sites with less than optimal accessibility needs to be warmly received and
used to the fullest.  

Alex M

-----Original Message-----
From: orca-list-bounces gnome org [mailto:orca-list-bounces gnome org] On
Behalf Of Jason White
Sent: Sunday, July 01, 2012 9:57 PM
To: orca-list gnome org
Subject: Re: [orca-list] screen layout

Dave Hunt <ka1cey gmail com> wrote:
> Reformatting pages is not in orca's design.  This sort of thing is 
> best handled by browser extension(s), or style sheets.

I agree that's where it is best handled. Since I don't need this
functionality, I haven't looked at the available extensions.

If somebody does look at them, perhaps this could be documented on the wiki,
since this question is becoming "frequently asked".

Javascript can manipulate the document in complex ways, and some browsers
support XSLT as well, so there is no shortage of tools for doing what is
desired. If existing extensions aren't up to it, I think this would be best
written by someone who needs lists of links and other such transformations.

If this were implemented in Orca, what would most likely happen next is that
somebody would run it on a large page with lots of links (or headings or
whatever is being listed), and then complain about the lack of performance.
A much better solution is to write it in Javascript, run it in the browser
where it is much faster and take advantage of all the work which is being
devoted to optimizing Javascript interpreters.

_______________________________________________
orca-list mailing list
orca-list gnome org
https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/orca-list
Visit http://live.gnome.org/Orca for more information on Orca.
The manual is at
http://library.gnome.org/users/gnome-access-guide/nightly/ats-2.html
The FAQ is at http://live.gnome.org/Orca/FrequentlyAskedQuestions
Log bugs and feature requests at http://bugzilla.gnome.org Find out how to
help at http://live.gnome.org/Orca/HowCanIHelp