Re: [orca-list] Compare or not compare was: Re: Page presentation

[Marco Zehe <marco zehe googlemail com>]

Hi Hermann,

Hermann wrote:
> If we want to get anywhere, we must know the state of the art, and this 
> means to compare the goals achieved by Windows and also by Mac with those 
> we want to achieve.
Not every goal that has been achieved on Windows, and which is
considered "state of the art" there necessarily needs to be correct for
Linux. For example, the Orca community took a different route with the
way forms are being interacted with. There is no Forms Mode or whatever
Windows ATs may call it on Linux, and while this is certainly confusing
to migrators who are set in their ways from long-term exposure, I have
also heard that the Orca model does not cause such a big learning curve
as I have often seen on Windows. I am a migrator myself, or rather, I
use both platforms for my work, and I have found after a brief period of
adjustment that the way Orca interacts with forms on the web is very
efficient and requires less keystrokes.

> This has absolutely nothing to do wit "dignity".
No, but not everything that has been there for years should just be
copied for the sake of it. Making a new platform accessible--and Gnome
is a relatively new accessible platform compared to Windows--, often
also gives us a chance to reevaluate decisions that have been made and
see if they really were in the best interest of the community, or if
they were made at one point and are still there because of the
omni-present backward compatibility paradigm.

I believe the acceptance of the different ways of doing things is a
two-way thing: Those coming from Windows will simply have to expect that
there may be differences when they consciously chose a different
platform to work with, and that the Gnome Desktop and screen reader are
not a 1:1 copy of what they were used to. And those only working on
Linux should not close their eyes to ideas that may come from the
Windows world and which may actually make a lot of sense also for the
Gnome Desktop and Orca.

Marco