Re: Orca new idea for orca accessibility with openoffice

[Willie Walker <William Walker Sun COM>]

Hi Krishnakant:

This is definitely an interesting proposition.  One of the things we're
trying to do in Orca is to use the AT-SPI as much as we can and avoid
the need to use other backdoor methods.  The ideal is that the AT-SPI
implementation provides enough information for an assistive technology
to provide a compelling user experience, helping reduce the amount of
code that everyone needs to support.

But...we have definitely considered alternative approaches.  For
example, there may be applications/toolkits whose AT-SPI implementation
doesn't provide us with the information we need or the application may
lack something, such as providing good keyboard navigation.  In
addition, there may be other ways to present information from inside the
application itself (e.g., a new navigation dialog).

For this particular OOo issue, I think the main problem to be solved is
providing access to font information.  We've filed several bugs with the
OOo folks in this area, and hope to see resolution before the next major
release.  With this, we may be able to avoid having to develop an
alternative approach.  

However, I might be missing something.  Do you have an approach in mind
that provides much more compelling access than what we might get from an
OOo that provides Orca with the font attribute information that it
needs?

Thanks!

Will



On Sun, 2006-12-31 at 12:00 +0530, krishnakant Mane wrote:
> hello all,
> I discovered a new way of making openoffice completely accessible with orca.
> may be I sound stupid so please ignore it if what I am talking sounds rubbish.
> I am aware that orca is developed completely in python.
> and I also know that just like the jaws for windows, orca too can be
> scripted for various applications.
> the difference between jaws scripting and orca scripting however is
> that we can make even the scripting methods totally customised.
> I came across a python library for open office which can read and
> write documents.  ODF is supported out of the box.
> and if I an not mistaken the font related information is also rendered
> and exposed nicely.
> what I suggest is either write an accessible view in python using this
> library and put it as a plug-in for openoffice or when scripting orca
> for openoffice, make use of this library for extracting font and
> formatting information and other inaccessible information.
> hope to get every one's feedback
> thanking all.
> Krishnakant.
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