Re: 2.6 proposed module: dasher

[Bill Haneman <Bill Haneman Sun COM>]

Peter Korn wrote:

> Hi Murray, Bill,
>
> > > If the GNOME accessibility team say that they need it, and that they 
> > > plan to integrate it into the whole set of accessibilty tools, then the
> > > release-team is likely to just say "OK, you're the experts". However,
> >> as a sanity check, I would like to know that somebody is actually
>
> > > getting some benefit from it already, so it's not just a theoretical
> >> thing.
>
> I don't disagree with anything Bill writes (below), but want to add a 
> different perspective for consideration.
>
> The GNOME integration may well be strong enough by the time 2.6 ships, 
> but I think there are still some significant issues to work out to 
> make that more useful.  As a standalone application for entering text 
> via an alternate interface for people with severe physical 
> disabilities, it is *very* interesting and the performance numbers 
> from their studies are quite remarkable.  As an assistive technology 
> that allows a someone with a severe physical disability to completely 
> control their desktop, I think it has a good ways to go.
>
> So - I have absolutely no objection to it being included with GNOME, 
> and I can't think of a better place for it to live in the default menu 
> structure other than in "Accessibility", but I personally would like 
> to see much more functionality in the roadmap and active development 
> before I would consider it a real alternate user interface for the 
> desktop.  Until a user can navigate dialog boxes and toolbars and the 
> like with Dasher, they will be unable to effectively use an 
> application (navigating menus alone isn't enough). 

Dasher allows any and everything that is keyboard-navigable to be 
accessed.  I was under the impression that recent Dasher versions allow 
access to more than just menus; what version did you last test, Peter?

- Bill

> Regards,
>
> Peter Korn
> Sun Accessibility team