[g-a-devel] New role or semantics for chat regions and other logs? [Fwd: Re: Screen readers and chat or instant messaging]

[Aaron Leventhal <aaronlev moonset net>]

I'm forwarding a response from T.V. Raman, from 
the mozilla.dev.accessibility list, where he 
described the user experience for chat logs.

This comes at a time when the ARIA group in W3C's 
PFWG is discussing whether to have a special role 
called "log" or to just describe it using other 
live region properties (politeness/atomic/relevant).

There are really many kinds of logs: chat, instant 
messaging, error logs, game play logs, etc. These 
are a reasonable common widget which need a lot of 
fine tuning by screen readers to get right.

So, to accomplish the right user experience, do 
these widgets need their own role or properties?

Or should we just continue to use the live region 
properties (currently being done via object 
attributes).

- Aaron

--- Begin Message ---

• From: "T.V Raman" <raman google com>
• To: jasonw ariel its unimelb edu au
• Cc: dev-accessibility lists mozilla org
• Subject: Re: Screen readers and chat or instant messaging
• Date: Fri, 26 Jan 2007 09:57:09 -0800

Here are things I've found useful with the various speech-enabled
chat apps I've built/used in  the emacspeak environment:

0In general, )        You want to hear a message as it comes in irrespective of
          your context,

1)        You want the ability to turn  the above off in the case
          of excessively chatty buddies.

2)        More generally,  the combination of "automatically
          speak messages" and "selectively turn off buddies" needs to be
          customizable together; as an example, an alternative
          work habit might be to turn off auto speaking of *all*
          messages, and selectively turn on special buddies.

3)        In all cases, you need an auditory alert as a message
          comes in (separate from speaking the message).

4)        You need a global kbd shortcut to jump to the last
          buddy who talked to you and that you haven't responded
          yet.

5)        In general the above commands works off of the ring of
          pending buddies, pushing the buddy you just jumped to the end of
          the queue.

6) Finally, you need a means of quickly finding out all the
          buddies who have  messaged you while you were AFK when you
          return; in Emacspeak this information is placed at the
          end of the mode-line output.

So to summarize, if you treat chat like any other piece of
scrolling content, the user will be able to read the chat log --
but it wont lead to an interface that lends itself to the chatter
being very responsive or effective.

Jason White writes:
 > On Fri, Jan 26, 2007 at 01:38:41AM -0500, Aaron Leventhal wrote:
 >  
 > > Or is it just like anything else? One reviews the chat log like it's a 
 > > document. That makes me wonder whether there's a quick command to navigate to 
 > > the end of the chat log, which is typically the most recent message.
 > 
 > Yes, as long as that means the beginning of the most recent message, not the
 > end of it. If I'm reading the chat log and start typing, does the focus switch
 > to the window in which I am entering text? This would be a good default
 > (assistive technologies generally allow the review position, e.g., the
 > location of the braille window, to be disconnected from the system cursor if
 > desired, and this can be useful at times in chat applications).
 > 
 > Also, if a new message is appended to the chat log while I'm reading an
 > earlier message, will the focus shift to the new message? My preference would
 > for "no shift" in this situation, by default, but maybe some users would like
 > the new message to receive focus as soon as it appears.
 > 
 > I've used IRC and Jabber chat applications in console mode, and cursor
 > movement has always presented problems, particularly with a braille display.
 > 
 > _______________________________________________
 > dev-accessibility mailing list
 > dev-accessibility lists mozilla org
   > https://lists.mozilla.org/listinfo/dev-accessibility

5)      In general

-- 
Best Regards,
--raman

Title:  Research Scientist      
Email:  raman google com
WWW:    http://emacspeak.sf.net/raman/
Google: tv+raman 
GTalk:  raman google com, tv raman tv gmail com
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