Re: [orca-list] Page presentation issues

[Jason White <jason jasonjgw net>]

On Fri, May 16, 2008 at 07:28:27PM +1000, Daniel Dalton wrote:
 
> Would writing the navigation functions for orca in c help? (Is python 
> causing the slowness?) Or is it not related to that?

It would increase performance to some extent, but slow down development a lot.
Python code, in general, is much shorter than the corresponding C code,
less prone to bugs (e.g., memory allocation problems) and quicker to develop.

Let's state it this way: the Orca developers aren't going to rewrite the
Firefox support in C, and they are right in not doing so. This discussion has
been held before on the mailing list; perhaps consulting the archive would
help if you are interested.
 
> Which is better than the windows buffering I think I have seen in internet 
> explorer.
> (I hardly ever use windows so that is why I didn't notice the speed thing)

I don't notice any performance problems in Firefox.
> > > Is there any hope of implementing a links list dialog?
> >
> > I think the majority of the community rejects such suggestions.
>
> Why not a hotkey to put the links into a list view or whatever so you can 
> down arrow through links (same with forms, and perhaps objects) but when 
> these lists are not active show the page as it looks. (Like it is shown 
> now.) (Don't invent this buffering stuff)

This sort of manipulation is best implemented as a Firefox extension so that
it can be used regardless of what screen reader happens to be operative, and
can also be used by people who aren't accessing Firefox with a screen reader,
but who may find a list of links, a list of headings, etc., helpful.

This sort of functionality should not be in Orca. It should be a firefox
extension, I would argue.

A much more powerful and valuable solution is provided by the Axsjax software,
written by Charles Chen and T.V. Raman at Google. It is written entirely in
Javascript and modifies Web pages to improve accessibility as they are loaded
into the browser. To activate Axsjax you can use bookmarks or the Greasemonkey
Firefox extension.

Axsjax modules have been written for various Google applications as well as
several other Web sites. It would be easy for Javascript developers interested
in accessibility to implement more features and to extend this approach
further.

If you're interested in looking at Axsjax, it is available here:
http://code.google.com/p/google-axsjax/