Re: [orca-list] Off-Screen-Model Suggestions

[Jason White <jason jasonjgw net>]

Steve Holmes <steve holmes88 gmail com> wrote:
 
> Yeah and my experience with OSM's is not 100% satisfactory either.  I
> use Window-Eyes while on that other OS and when it works, the OSM
> isn't all bad but I find myself having to "redraw" the screen quite
> frequently with some applications.  Even GW Micro tries wherever
> possible to use the DOM (Document Object Model) or MSAA for
> accessibility information from a more predictable and stable
> environment.  

It should also be recalled that off-screen models were designed at a time when
there wasn't any alternative, and in proprietary environments where the
applications weren't open-source.

If I remember correctly, IBM's OS/2 screen reader used an OSM, and IBM claimed
at the time to have made modifications to the operating system that
facilitated its development. As to what exactly this involved, we'll probably
never know. Significantly however, when IBM developers turned to Java and
later Gnome accessibility, they opted to work with accessibility APIs and
appear to have fully embraced the new approach.

On the other hand, if someone were seriously to propose writing one for the X
Window System and had the expertise and resources to do it, together with a
design that would actually solve accessibility problems, they could go right
ahead as far as I'm concerned. At the console level, the terminal output can
be read directly from the operating system, but as soon as we move into an X
environment, accessibility is only possible in so far as the application or
underlying UI library cooperates by applying the accessibility API correctly.
At the console, I can use whatever application I wish, knowing that it will
almost certainly be accessible, but that simply isn't the case under X,
despite all of the advances which have been made. On the positive side, the
over-all effect is that one now has more options; there are some X
applications that will work well with assistive technology, thanks to the
outstanding efforts of the Gnome Accessibility and Orca developers, and some
of those don't have non-GUI equivalents, which is a major reason why they need
to be made accessible.