FW: Gnome and support for the visually impaired

["Ian Pascoe" <ianpascoe btinternet com>]

Hi all

Just picking up on some recent threads.

Like most things in our arena it is down to personal preferance.  For myself
as a touch typist I favour the adjust in voice tone to indicate the status
of the Caps Lock; taking on Dave's point about many fingers on the keyboard
whilst away maybe a hot key combination to cycle through the various status
of each lock.

However, this does not take into account those who may be uncertain in the
use of computers who require a more positive feeling about what they are
doing; in this case a full announcement would be preferable ie Caps lock on
or some such.

So in essence there would need to be 3 settings in the verbosity depending
on preferance - those being none, tone change, and full announcement.  I
quite like the tone keys of Dave's but I find my ear is more attuned to the
voice than a tone in the background.

I reckon the wizard is quite necessary for establishing Personal Interface
Guides - well it's the best I can come up with that doesn't include the
words profile or preferance!  The main reason is that the accessability
options would not be needed to be labeled as such but just as enhancements
to the user's own profile.

The way I would see this working is that the administrator would at Gnome
set up create a default PIG; Gnome would then use this PIG to set up a
number of PIGs that are specifically attributed to those requiring
accessability.  The user would then come along and either copy an existing
PIG to their own and alter it or have the option to start from scratch.  The
reason for doing it this way would be the option is there for those who are
not in denile to quickly grab a template to work on whilst those who are ,
or do not beed the facilities can add what they want easily.  I think the
important thing here is to ensure that whatever the feature / facility is
called it does not show that it's operation is only for those requiring
accessability functionality.

For instance if there were an option for menu text size and highlighting all
you would need to show would be standard or large texdt with the bar option
of either inverted or bordered.

Last comment for Bill / Peter.  During the testing of varius apps I presume
from the previous postings that it is up to the individual project to test
their product?  In view of our accessability needs over all GUIs could not
the main stream releases be put through a group of people to specifically
check for accessability or is that the purpose of the tools you mentioned?

Keep up the interesting postings all - if we don't say it no one will know
that there are problems with their product and are missing a potential
market - ie us.

Ian

-----Original Message-----
From: gnome-accessibility-list-bounces gnome org
[mailto:gnome-accessibility-list-bounces gnome org]On Behalf Of Dave
Mielke
Sent: 30 September 2005 16:22
To: Bill Haneman
Cc: gnome-accessibility-list gnome org
Subject: Re: Gnome and support for the visually impaired


[quoted lines by Bill Haneman on 2005/09/30 at 15:54 +0100]

>It's not totally clear what the best solution is.  If, for instance, we
>announced when the CapsLock key changed state, I might not hear the
>message or it might have gotten interrupted by some other message.

Or, in my case (with 11 of 13 children still at home), any number of people
could've changed the state of the key while I'm momentarily away. It'd also
be
way too inconvenient to have to test the key every time before typing. It's
much better to have an on-going indication of the lock states, which, in
fact,
is exactly what the keyboard LEDs give a sighted user. That's why (see
earlier
post) I wrote locktones. It really does solve the problem.

>If
>gnopernicus announced each shift state change, would that be too
>annoying?  At least I might notice that pressing "shift" was causing
>gnopernicus to say "lower case" (for instance) instead of "upper case".

I think that announcing state changes like that would get annoying. Every
time
I start a new sentnece or type a name, I'd have to hear "upercase",
"lowercase". Also, when using an application like vi, it's essential to know
the state of the caps lock key before any key is ever typed.

--
Dave Mielke           | 2213 Fox Crescent | I believe that the Bible is the
Phone: 1-613-726-0014 | Ottawa, Ontario   | Word of God. Please contact me
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