Re: [FWD: Re: the keyboard accessibility caplet]

[earl johnson <Earl Johnson sun com>]

Hi,

Some late user thoughts on Bill's experiment.

It reminded me of an aspect Windows' AccessX equivalent that as a user
I don't like about it. CDE's Settings UI for AccessX is pretty ugly
but one thing I think it has going for it is you need go no further to
fine tune any setting once you click the settings button - all the
sliders, checkboxes, etc. are right there, no need to click on
additional buttons or navigate to additional windows to get your task(s)
completed.  The results clearly show the keyboard UI nav. differences
between Window's and GNOME's Access* UIs.
  - Windows is inefficient in that it forces users to perform more
    keystrokes and context switches to get to where tweaking a setting 
    is possible.
  - By comparison and with the exception of RepeatKeys, the AccessX
    capplet beta is already more efficient than Windows' and I think
    Calum's new proposed design would make it even better in efficiency
    and looks (see URL). Cool.

	http://www.gnome.org/~calum/accessx

Earl

> Subject: Re: the keyboard accessibility capplet
> Date: 27 Sep 2002 13:46:19 +0100
> From: Bill Haneman <bill haneman sun com>
> To: desktop-devel-list gnome org
> CC: gnome-accessibility-list gnome org
> 
> Hi folks:
> 
> Following Havoc's suggestion that the XP accessibility capplet was
> somehow better than the GNOME-2 capplet, I really got curious about
> testing my own, quite different opinion.  I picked out a task that I
> though was a reasonably representative task for users, specifically that
> of 'adjusting' the keyboard acceptance delay (called the "SlowKeys
> delay" in AccessX parlance.)  I picked this task more-or-less at random,
> though my impression from trying the XP dialog for awhile is that most
> end-user tasks (other than simple toggles of an AccessX feature "on" or
> "off") would yield comparable results.
> 
> Keystroke conservation is important to AccessX users; I found that XP
> required more than twice as many keystrokes to accomplish the task as
> GNOME-2, for both the case where mnemonics are used, and the case where
> "TAB"-style keyboard navigation is used.  In this case XP opened four
> simultaneous dialogs during the task, whereas GNOME only used one.
> 
> As I noted elsewhere, the XP accessibility dialogs have other problems
> as well, for instance they don't respect High-contrast and large-print
> system settings (!).  The one thing that I do think the XP dialogs have
> going for them is that they are not as "cluttered" as ours, which I
> think is what Havoc was feeling.  However when one takes into account
> four simultaneous dialogs it's not clear to me that the overall clutter
> factor is lower, and if simplification requires either loss of important
> features or doubles the number of required keystrokes for end-user
> tasks, then I think the tradeoff is not worth it.  Also note that I
> picked a seemingly-reasonable-though-short SlowKeys value of "0.2"
> seconds, and discovered that XP doesn't support values between 0.3 and
> 0.0 seconds!
> 
> I include a step-by-step description of the task on both OS'es inline,
> below.
> 
> regards,
> 
> Bill
> 
> =============================================================
> 
> Task: set 'SlowKeys' key acceptance rate to 0.2 sec (200 ms), from the
>      default setting.
> 
> Results:
> 
> ratio of keystrokes, using mnemonics: XP/GNOME-2: 11/4
> ratio of keystrokes, without mnemonics: XP/GNOME-2: 18/8
> 
> ratio of open dialogs: XP/GNOME 4/1
> 
> ========= Details: =======
> 
> On GNOME-2
> in summary:
> 
> * select Applications->Desktop Preferences->Accessibility->Keyboard
>    via mouse or keyboard (i.e. Alt-F10, arrow keys, spacebar)
> ('Keyboard Accessibility' capplet dialog appears)
> 
> THEN:
> 
> * TAB to slider (i.e. press TAB 6 times)
> * press and hold left-arrow until "200" appears in field
> * press Esc
> ('Keyboard Accessibility' capplet dialog disappears)
> 
> OR
> 
> * TAB to entry field (i.e. press TAB 7 times)
> * press '2', '0', '0'
> * press Esc
> ('Keyboard Accessibility' capplet dialog disappears)
> 
> 
> On XP:
> 
> * Start->Control Panel (Windows key, arrow keys, then Enter)
> (control panel dialog opens)
> * Select "Accessibility" (arrow keys, press Spacebar then Enter)
> 
> (dialog 'Accessibility Options' appears)
> * TAB to FilterKeys->Settings (i.e. press TAB 3 times)
> * press spacebar
> (dialog 'Settings for FilterKeys' appears)
> * TAB to Filter options->Settings (i.e. press TAB 3 times + spacebar)
> ('Advanced Settings for FilterKeys' dialog appears)
> * TAB to SlowKeys combobox (i.e. press TAB 3 times)
> * press uparrow three times to select '0.3 seconds' (0.2 seconds is not
> an available choice, closest choices are 0.0 and 0.3)
> * press Eec
> ('Advanced Settings for FilterKeys' dialog disappears)
> * press Esc
> ('Settings for FilterKeys' dialog disappears)
> * press Esc
> ('Accessibility Options' dialog disappears)
> * press Esc
> (control panel dialog disappears)
> 
> keysequence:
> tab-tab-tab-space-tab-tab-tab-space-tab-tab-tab-up-up-up-esc-esc-esc-esc
> 
> ===========
> 
> Using mnemonics:
> 
> GNOME-2:
> ...
> ('Keyboard Accessibility' dialog appears)
> * press Alt-o
> * press and hold down-arrow
> * press Esc
> ('Keyboard Accessibility' dialog disappears)
> 
> keysequence:
> Alt-o-down-esc
> (or Alt-o-2-0-0-esc)
> 
> XP:
> ...
> (dialog 'Accessibility Options' appears)
> * Alt-e
> (dialog 'Settings for FilterKeys' appears)
> * Alt-e
> ('Advanced Settings for FilterKeys' dialog appears)
> * press uparrow three times to select '0.3 seconds' (0.2 seconds is not
> an available choice, closest choices are 0.0 and 0.3)
> * press Eec
> ('Advanced Settings for FilterKeys' dialog disappears)
> * press Esc
> ('Settings for FilterKeys' dialog disappears)
> * press Esc
> ('Accessibility Options' dialog disappears)
> * press Esc
> (control panel dialog disappears)
> 
> keysequence: Alt-e-Alt-e-up-up-up-esc-esc-esc-esc
> 
> 
> ==============================================
> 
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