Re: [orca-list] Bug tracking tools: interaction with the web

[Michael Whapples <mwhapples aim com>]

I have thought some more about this, regarding the way a speech/braille
user interacts with the web using orca and firefox (possibly relates to
other screen readers and browsers). Comments below.
On Mon, 2007-12-17 at 13:50 -0800, Gaijin wrote:
> On Sun, Dec 16, 2007 at 06:13:20PM +0000, Michael Whapples wrote:
> > And that link is a perfect example of why I dislike web interfaces.
>
>     I wish they'd just add accessibility controls to Firefox, which
> probablyalready has the web page decoded and ready for ease of
> navigation.  Having to decode the page a second time is a waste of
> resources and will continue to plague our community as long as the
> problem exists.  Even the barest level of support would help cut the
> redundancy, because all we seem to be doing is trying to splice in the
> tools and controls that everyone else is leaving out.
I'm not quite sure what you mean by some of this, but may be its my lack
of knowledge of what firefox does and what orca does in providing me
with the information I get. In saying about the page needing to be
decoded again, are you meaning about how orca uses the information
directly from the page to try and work out where to go, unlike many of
the windows screen readers which make an internal model of the page
which needs to be kept up to date if the page is changes? Is a text
browser such as lynx more like what you would want? In the text browser
case being that the page is formatted by the browser and then all the
screen reader is doing is reading the array of characters of the text
console. I have to say I think the text browser system works better, as
with brltty tables of data are really easy to read and use, and it is
even possible (provided the browser has behaved itself in aligning the
colums) is possible to read easily with speakup and its screen review
keys (eg. using numpad 7 to go up a line keeps its horizontal position,
so you should land on the item above the one you moved from in the same
column, and numpad 5 should read it (provided it is only a word)). May
be its this more natural (in my mind) interaction which makes me feel
text browsers are better, as wel as the speed improvements.

>     I think we have a much better opportunity in the open-source
> community to solve the problem, at least in some areas, where there are
> next to none everywhere else.  Adding a keyboard mouse feature alone to
> Firefox would be a step in the right direction.  GUI's were made for
> mice, and without sight, they're next to useless.
> Again, I think I need to know what exactly you were meaning in the first paragraph, but I think I agree. I 
> think why web interfaces are so popular, it requires no software installation for the user (assuming they 
> have a web browser, and most OSs have one), and if you use a mouse it makes very little difference if you 
> are clicking inside a web page or an actual application, but it does if you are using a keyboard. This 
> again is probably why a text browwser feels more natural to me, I am interacting with the page in the way 
> the browser intends you to, rather than this made up system GUI screen readers do with browsers (which is 
> OK for reading documents, but I feel clumbsy for using interactive stuff).

Does any of this I have described about how I find things match with
what you meant? If not try and expand on it.

From
Michael Whapples
>             Michael