Re: Sound events and GnomeMeeting

[Jeff Waugh <jdub perkypants org>]

<quote who="Bill Haneman">

> We need more than one 'ding', and those 'dings' need to be
> system-configurable. Gstreamer is OK but it doesn't have the kind of
> system-level hooks that would allow us to attach visual feedback or
> messages to those sound feedbacks - in other words we need "sounds for
> events" as opposed to just sounds.  Encouraging apps to use gstreamer for
> this on an app-specific basis (though of course a few apps will need to do
> this) will just compound our accessibility problems.

Why? I'm surprised you've raised this as an a11y issue. I've asked a number
of blind friends if they use aural feedback - beyond speech synthesis, they
expressed, um... pent up frustration at the idea blind users wanted their
computers making noises at them. One said, "There's no point getting noises
for things visually happening on screen - it's just extra noise in the mix.
I need it described [spoken]."

(It makes sense to me that aural feedback, designed to enhance or accompany
what is happening on screen, would not be even remotely useful for blind or
vision-impaired users. Alerts are totally different, and they're in the same
class as dialogues - they should only interrupt users when appropriate.)

> We need to move forward with a better API and infrastructure for system
> notifications (perhaps integrating notification-area, sound-events, and
> some kind of desktop messaging protocol), not backwards by ripping out the
> little bit we have.

I'd argue this is true for every point besides sound.

- Jeff

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