Re: Exploring LibreOffice Accessibility with Accerciser.

[Joanmarie Diggs <jdiggs igalia com>]

Hey Jason.

> I don't know what you're proposing and I am not well qualified to give an
> opinion on whether your feature should be written in Orca or in LibreOffice.
> Rather, I am expressing a general concern about the push for more and more
> complex, application-specific, interactive features in screen readers which I
> think should be resisted.

I agree.

On a related note, check out the LibreOffice Navigator. It already does
in LibreOffice what is being proposed for addition in Orca. And it does
so incredibly performantly, without a need to examine the entire
accessible tree, and can be used by everyone. Bonus points that I don't
have to maintain that code, update that code (e.g. to Python 3 which is
on this cycle's to-do list, or gobject introspection like a couple of
cycles ago). Nor do I have to debug that code with LibreOffice decides
to toss yet another dead accessible in our general direction.

If the Navigator is lacking a particular element, I think the thing to
do is add that missing element to the LibreOffice Navigator and improve
the feature for everyone.

I also wish that the energies spent in trying to add yet one more thing
into Orca would instead be spent on trying to improve the applications
Orca users wish to access. That might be enhancing the LibreOffice
Navigator code or fixing LibreOffice accessibility bugs. Or, if one
prefers to avoid the LibreOffice code, why not fix the accessibility
support in Evolution? Or if you don't like Evolution, perhaps adding
caret navigation to KMail? Or <insert Free software tool Orca users
cannot use or use fully here>? All of these things would greatly benefit
Orca users.

<shrugs>

> In the free software world, we also have the advantage that changes can be
> made to applications and extensions can be written, so it doesn't have to be
> done in the assistive technology.

Exactly.

Take care.
--joanie, Orca Project Lead