Re: [g-a-devel] Re: Announcing Orca

[Peter Korn <Peter Korn Sun COM>]

Hi Luke,

> > One of the biggest challenges in screen reading technology is
> > providing a consistent user experience across multiple applications
> > which may use objects in different ways, and to allow quick access to
> > information which may not be easily accessible through an
> > application's keyboard navigation commands.  I have created a project
> > written in C and Python to explore these issues, and to provide a test
> > bed for playing with possible solutions.  The project is in CVS
> > module orca.
>
> This is excelent. After checking it out from CVS and looking at a couple 
> of python scripts, it is quite easy to follow. Maybe it will be just 
> that little bit easier to implement extra keyboard shortcuts that I 
> would like for Gaim, rather than diving into the C code of Gaim itself :)

The ability to customize the screen reader via scripts is a critical one; 
however... there is a tempting and somewhat dangerous path that is easily 
followed with scripts: "fixing" ill-behaved apps that, now "fixed", don't ever 
actually get fixed in the application.  Blind users are very important users 
served by assistive technologies and the GNOME accessibility effort.  But they 
aren't the only users for whom this work is being done.

When it comes to getting the desired behavior out of an application, in many 
cases the right answer may be a custom script.  However, in many others a 
custom script may solve it for blind users, but in fact the right answer will 
be to fix it in the app (and thus fix it for all AT users), and in those cases 
that is where the energy should ideally be focused.


Regards,

Peter Korn
Sun Accessibility team