Re: [orca-list] Update on Jokosher accessibility

[Michael Sheldon <mike mikeasoft com>]

Hi Joanie,

 Thanks for looking in to this, I've just got a few questions on this 
point:

On 17/04/10 22:53, Joanmarie Diggs wrote:
> There is one notable exception, however: The timeline does not seem to
> be keyboard accessible. This means that the primary functionality that
> you would presumably wish to access is not accessible, and that's
> something the Jokosher developers need to fix. I found a couple of bugs
> already filed for this issue [2], [3].

 Firstly I just want to make sure we're on the same page as far as 
terminology goes, this diagram shows what I mean when I refer to the 
timeline: http://mikeasoft.com/~mike/jokosher-labelled.png Is this also 
your understanding?

 Most actual editing tasks happen within an "event" on the "event 
lane", the only action that gets performed on the timeline itself is 
moving the play/record head (the position from which playback/recording 
begins) which can also be done via the Forward/Reverse buttons; however 
it'd still be a good idea to make this work via the keyboard as well 
(IIRC this was possible in the past when I made most of our 
accessibility changes, but I think the timeline widget has been 
rewritten since then so this needs revisiting).

 Editing events via the keyboard should already be possible, I think 
perhaps what's at fault here is our woefully out-dated documentation 
which doesn't describe how this can be done.

 It should be possible to tab through events, when an event is focused 
it should give the event name, the event position (in seconds) and the 
event length (in seconds) as an accessibility hint for orca to use (and 
last time I checked this worked). It's then possible to select an event 
by pressing return. Once an event is selected it's then possible to:
        * Move that event with the left/right arrow keys.
	* Select a point for cutting by holding shift and pressing left/right 
then pressing space to cut.
	* Create fade points by first holding alt and pressing left/right to 
select the region to fade over and then pressing shift + up/down to move 
the left most fade point or ctrl + up/down to move the right most fade 
point.
	(All of the selection/movement tasks can be sped up by holding ctrl at 
the same time.)

 It's also possible to cut an event by selecting that event, beginning 
playback and then pressing the space key at the point it should be cut 
(space was selected for this as it's a nice large key that should be 
easy to hit quickly and accurately).

 Is this the sort of behaviour that you'd be expecting and merely the 
undiscoverability of these options is letting us down, or is there 
something more/different you'd like to see in this area?

 I'm not sure there's a great deal of accessible non-visual feedback on 
these actions as they're being performed though, do you have any advice 
on how this might be handled better? What's generally done during 
changes to scrollbars for example?

 On the topic of improving our help documentation is there a common 
section heading recommended for use across all applications for these 
sorts of areas to help users find the relevant accessibility specific 
information quicker? Or would a general section such as "Keyboard 
Shortcuts" be enough?

 The other issues should be fairly simple to fix and I'll try to look 
at them in the next few days.

 Thanks again for helping us with this, we'd like Jokosher to be as 
easy to use as possible for everybody :).

 Cheers,
  Mike.