[g-a-devel]Question about reading text "blobs"

[Malcolm Tredinnick <malcolm commsecure com au>]

Mark's recent posts about Gnopernicus and Balsa reminded me of something
I have been meaning to get some advice about:

I am writing an application which will need to be accessible (think of
something like a talking book). Portions of the display of this
application are chunks of text that I am currently dropping into a text
widget which I have marked in Glade as not editable and "don't show
cursor". Does this mean I am going to have to go to extra lengths to
make sure that a screen reader will be able to see the contents? Or
should I permit the cursor to be moved around the text and just not
allow editing?

I seem to have worked out that I need to leave the text widget as able
to take the focus just so that a screen reader can get there in the
first place. This seems necessary just so that any scrollbars can be
manipulated via the keyboard.

My accessibility setup on my computers is a bit suspicious at the
moment; sometimes it works, sometimes things go pear-shaped. So it is a
bit hard to tell if things are broken by design or broken by accident
when I am testing some of this.

Any advice appreciated,
Malcolm