Keynav and accessibility

[Bill Haneman <bill haneman sun com>]

Bryan Campbell wrote:

> I'm a guy whose physical disabled who types & runs
> computers, over 23 years, with a headwand now on a standard Windows  
> style keyboard [image on http://www.opera.com/press/guides/operapower 
> suggests how i work]. 

Hi Bryan:

As Luis says, we're committed to 100% keyboard navigability of GNOME 2. 
However, single-key navigation is troublesome for a number of reasons;
for one thing, in order to provide *consistent* keyboard navigation
without conflicting with text entry and application-specific use of the
keyboard, we must for the most part rely on meta-keys.  Function keys
might provide an alternative, but in general function keys are reserved
for use by application-specific functions.  I believe that gtk+ provides
some means for selecting alternate keybinding sets (for instance an
emacs-like set), but it's not clear how far this could get you without
conflicting with applications and/or text entry.

AccessX (and the corresponding Keyboard Accessibility control dialog in
GNOME 2) provides "sticky keys", "slow keys" and key debouncing support,
etc. which can assist in use of the keyboard.  Your point that this
turns keystrokes like "control-f" into longer key sequences is a good
one, but this is only one of a number of solutions available.  

Since you are using a head pointing device, it sounds as though you may
be a good candidate for GOK (the GNOME onscreen-keyboard) in "dwell
mode", in conjunction with a head tracker.   One of the strengths of GOK
is that is can capture the UI of a running application (for instance
menus and toolbars) and present them to the user as actionable buttons;
this is accomplished via the accessibility APIs built into the GNOME 2
platform.  In dwell mode this means that a simple pointing gesture
(without the need for a 'click') can be used to activate UI controls,
select menu items, etc., and GOK can be customized for your specific
needs.  GOK doesn't have a "1.0" release yet, but it's under intensive
development now and is ready for testing by users, particularly those
like yourself who are looking for enhanced access to applications but
who are not totally unable to use the normal keyboard.  Ultimately GOK
targets users who have no access to normal keyboards too, but since
things are still in a development phase it would be good for you to be
able to bootstrap your way into GOK use from the standard keyboard.

You may wish to subscribe to one of the GNOME accessibility lists,
either http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/gnome-accessibility-devel
(for technical discussions) or
http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/gnome-accessibility-list
for more general discussion.

best regards,

Bill