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Re: [orca-list] Thoughts on a "list of elements" feature for Orca in Firefox

On Fri, 2008-05-23 at 12:56 +0530, Krishnakant Mane wrote:

hi michael, willi.


[...]





I second that thought.  infact, wili, you seam to have taken words
from my mouth.
I was actually going to suggest the same thing.
it not just speeds up the things as you rightly suggested but afterall
free software culture implies that all parties work in an eco system
so if this becomes an extention then no matter what screen reader is
used it will still work the same way and user need not learn different
set of keystrokes for different screen readers.

Might it also be useful as an accessibility testing tool, by providing
developers with a tool which shows what we have to use to navigate the
page, rather than them needing something like orca which has extra
complications, due to other features relevant to us as actual users, but
not relevant to accessibility of web pages.

Also the idea of free software is the choice aspect, and plugins give
the user the ability to choose what features they want, initially the
idea of list of links is not something that gets me as I have never made
use of such a feature in any screen reader, but the alternative
suggested by Jason about having a way to specify orca command to be
repeated N times sounds initially more what I might use. I would expand
on this, but feel it may have more meaning in response to another
response on this thread.

I would suggest the forms element list more important than the links
one because some forms are pritty complex to handel with or without
forms mode.

Also sometimes, and it is due to por accessibility consideration on the
form designer, forms don't always have a sensible tab order, so it could
be useful to select the elements from a list there.

further more since we don't involve a forms mode fortunately, it will
not require the user to first select an edit field from a list by
hitting enter on it and again hit enter for activating the forms mode.
however buttons need the hit of the return key and that is their
default and obviously safe behaviour.

I actually thought space was the way to activate the button, enter
normally works but I thought it had a subtly different meaning
(something like do default action, eg. on google one can just press
enter in the search box and google search is automatically activated for
you, so saving the tab key press you would need to do to get from the
search edit box to the button).

we already have a way to use u and shift u and v and shift v for links
but I think providing the url in the second column and the available
lable in the first one is wonderful idea.

This is what I meant, the idea seems well thought through, and it does
have some nice ideas, but is orca really the best place?

happy hacking.
kk

On Thu, 2008-05-22 at 10:37 -0400, Willie Walker wrote:

Hi All:

I'm curious if anyone has tried Jon Gunderson's Firefox Accessibility
Extension: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/5809

The reason I ask is that an extension living/running inside Firefox is
most likely going to provide faster analysis of the web content than
Orca can.  The reason for this is that the extension lives in the
Firefox process and doesn't have to do numerous roundtrips to build up
the data structures necessary to present the list of links.

Will

Marco Zehe wrote:

Hi all,

I've given the possible list of elements (for example list of links)
feature some thought and would like to share it with you all to see what
you think.

First off, let me clarify that I think Orca could really benefit from at
least a list of links. Others that are offered by other screen readers,
such as a list of headings, are not so imminently necessary IMO because
Orca provides access to these already with structural navigation, both
by any heading and by certain heading levels. However, a list of links
has no real equivalent in Orca's structural navigation, and I personally
find the Firefox search not as effective as I find a list of links when
I'm on Windows.

So now for the look of the actual list: I would think it makes sense to
put this into a kind of dialog box that contains a tree table which
contains the name of the link (screen name, alt or title, whatever
Firefox provides) in the first column, and the URL in the second column.
The reason I think an URL should be presented in an easily accessible
fashion is because there are still enough pages that don't properly mark
up links, and sometimes the URL is the only reliable way to find out
what the link is about.

The left and right arrows should move between cells in any given row as
usual (e. g. in Nautilus' file list view).

When typing in letters, like is usual in Gnome tree tables, a search
should be performed. When typing and a match is found, Orca should speak
the result that would be activated. If using braille, Orca should show
the full link's name (contents of the first column) to the right of the
cursor  where one types the search. That way, even when only using
braille, one can read immediately whether the desired link has already
been found.

ENTER should activate an "Activate link" button, close the dialog, focus
and activate the link, and thereby let the user navigate to the desired
destination page.

In addition, a second control, possibly labelled "Focus link", should be
provided, which allows the user to focus, but not activate, the link
(for example in order to pull up its context menu). We could also think
of a keystroke like SHIFT+ENTER or something else that would activate
this button without having the user to tab to it. Or we could just make
sure it has an easily rememberable access key.

ESCAPE should close the dialog obviously, without causing any change.

I am not sure we'd need radio buttons to filter by visited, unvisited,
or all links, or to sort in alphabetical or tab order, as offered by
other screen readers. I find myself never using these at all. If I want
to explore the page, I usually do it by reading the page in whole, not
by simply arrowing through its links. I personally use the links list
ron pages I know well and know that I want to go to link 150 quickly and
activate it.

Any thoughts?

Marco
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_______________________________________________
Orca-list mailing list
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http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/orca-list
Visit http://live.gnome.org/Orca for more information on Orca
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