Accessible notifications (was Re: gnome-about-me)

[Billy Biggs <vektor dumbterm net>]

Havoc Pennington (hp redhat com):

> A nice touch would be to display password suggestions in real time
> underneath the password box telling the user when they have a bad
> password:
>  "Avoid using real words in a password"
>  "It would be better to include numbers or punctuation in your password"
>  "Passwords should not include your user name"
>  "Password is too short"
> 
> Before anything has been typed it could just be blank.
> 
> If this is done in a dialog box it kind of sucks - if it's done in
> real time as you type, that's way more convenient.

  This user interface pattern is pretty powerful, and we use it in some
Eclipse dialogs for presenting suggestions, warnings, or errors.

  One interesting problem is with accessibility: when should the
suggestions be read by a screen reader?  Should they be an unselectable
label and just be associated with the text entry? (if there are multiple
entries, which one?)  What if this text shows an error message?

  Is there anywhere in GNOME that does stuff like this already that may
have looked into this problem?

  -Billy