Re: [g-a-devel] Accessibility of ibus modules

[Piñeiro <apinheiro igalia com>]

On 06/25/2014 04:04 PM, Nalin.x.Linux wrote:

Dear list,

Hello

I am Nalin from kerala/India, i am currently on the process of creating an ibus-engine for braille layout as part of google summer of code 2014 under the organisation swathanthra malayalam computing.It seems that orca screen reader is not announcing ibus-events such as expansion of preedit_string ,lookuptable etc.

Well, my first question is how a non-orca user realize about all those events? For example, as far as I see, expansion of preedit_string means that a new composing text should be set around the current cursor position, and all the previous text should be removed. So, unless wrong, that is just a combination of text-insert/text-remove event [1][2]. It would be good to know how the rest of the events are notified to a non-orca user.

Currently we solved issue for ibus-sharada-braille engin using python-espeak api.

I guess that it means that you expose using python-espeak all those events. Could you give us some examples ?

Me with my mentor Samuel thibault discussed about this and we found various ways as follows

1 - make the ibus module speak by itself

I wouldn't do that, as would interfere with the screen reader. The reason of why I asked how a non-orca user realize about those events, is because if a non-orca user is already "seeing" somehow those events, then is about exposing that information to the a11y technologies.

2 - make the ibus module show a status bar where it writes what it wants to get spoken

Not sure if this is needed. As I said, at this moment the user is already being notified of those changes, right?

3 - invent a new "input module" role, and events related to what an input module typically does (word expansion, word deletion, etc.)

And where that new input module role would be placed?

4 - is there any way to register text event to at-spi via creating invisible accessible object ??

Register? FWIW, using at-spi terminology, register to text events is the same that listen to text event. I guess that you are asking if it is possible to send text event using a non visible accessible object. Well, it would be possible, but as I said, a non-orca user is somehow already realizing about those event. I guess that something happens on a text entry. So I'm just wondering why the accessible object of that text entry can't just emit the text events, instead of creating a custom invisible accessible object.

In this scenario please let us know what are the things we have to put forward to make ibus layouts accessible for screen reader users.

As you can see, I lack a lot of info about ibus, so before we could reply your questions, you would need to give more info about the interaction of the user with the ibus module.

Thanks for your email.

BR

[1] https://developer.gnome.org/atk/stable/AtkText.html#AtkText-text-changed
[2] https://developer.gnome.org/atk/stable/AtkText.html#AtkText-text-remove

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Alejandro Piñeiro