Re: [orca-list] many nice words related to Orca screen reader

[Willie Walker <William Walker Sun COM>]

Hi:

Thank for your kind comments about Orca and GNOME accessibility.  In 
order to achieve what we have done, we tend to try to focus on "the 
most important stuff" first.  In my opinion, the priority of things 
tends to be in this order, though the order is not something I adhere 
to in a Draconian manner:

1) The core accessibility infrastructure.  If this is broken, nothing 
else works.
2) Support by the highest visibility toolkits -- GTK+, Gecko, 
OpenOffice, WebKitGtk+, GNOME Shell toolkit, etc.  If these are broken, 
the apps created with them will not work.
3) Fundamental access by assistive technologies, such as Orca.
4) Access to commonly-used applications, such as those used for daily 
productivity, communication, and content generation.  This also 
includes the GNOME desktop itself.
5) Specific access to specific applications, including possibly working 
around their failures with accessible design.

Unfortunately, it looks like dimdim.com is towards the bottom of this 
list for us.  We're also currently mired in issues with #1 and #2 for 
GNOME 3.0.

From your description, it also appears as though the organization 
behind dimdim.com might need some education regarding accessible 
design, the W3C WCAG guidelines, etc.  Upon a cursory analysis of the 
site, for example, it seems to be very mouse-centric.  Orca provides 
some workarounds for web pages created with disregard to accessibility, 
but it is not a magical silver bullet.  I believe the right thing to do 
is to contact the dimdim.com content providers 
(http://www.dimdim.com/aboutus/contactus.html) and kindly let them know 
of the accessibility issues you are having and point them to 
http://www.w3.org/TR/WCAG10/ and http://www.w3.org/WAI/intro/aria.

It is my personal belief that the way stop pushing this ever growing 
big rock up a steep hill is by education.  I kind of liken this to 
wheelchair access to buildings -- you could request that all wheelchair 
manufacturers are responsible for building ramps for all buildings, or 
you could request that the building developers design/build for 
accessibility.  The former request does not scale and will also be 
quite effective in destroying the ability for wheelchair manufacturers 
to survive - you cut off your nose to spite your face.  The latter 
request scales and also results in a higher degree of accessibility 
everywhere.

Will

On Jan 22, 2010, at 10:09 AM, Mgr. Janusz Chmiel wrote:

> Dear core developers of Orca,
>
>    I Am very, very nicely surpriced by The Orca development. Orca 
> screen reader is very fast, stable and new features are coming with 
> every new release. Now, Orca is really The best GTK compatible screen 
> reader. I will not type other examples of screen readers compatible 
> with at-spi, which are much slover and are much more bad than Orca. 
> Because every programmer want to do his best to make The best screen 
> reader. But about what i would like to write is The potential, which 
> Orca can have for visually impaired users. Thank's to The fact, that 
> Orca and at-spi infrastructure is providing for several years very 
> stable environment, thank's to it visually impairecd computer users 
> can use their computer in their job.
>
>    Algorithms for getting information and textual and other contents 
> from Mozilla Firefox are very fast, reliable and can provide very good 
> Internet surfing experience. I AM now able to chat with Orca even on 
> The WEB page, which is not unfortunately supporting live regions for 
> storing chat messages. I would like to very kindly and with The 
> highest respect to You ask YOu, if it is possible to develope The WEB 
> page, which would store The messages from The chat from several live 
> regions, so Orca users would even choose, from which active region 
> they would glad to hear The information.
>
> I do not have as a normal user with very little money to convince 
> developers of WEB pages to incorporate support for live regions while 
> using chat on several WEB servers in our country. But i would like to 
> atleast be informed, if this would be possible to develope The WEB 
> page, which can store chat messages in to The several live regions.
>
> Unfortunately, pover companyes will rather to use this technology to 
> display advertisements on The WEB pages. The very good example of WEB 
> page, which is very often using several live regions and Orca can very 
> reliably to read it are the WEB page
>
> www.dimdim.com
>
> Please, would somebody of this conference to create his user account 
> on this server and would somebody be so kind and would somebody of us 
> try to find The cause, why visually impaired user can not use his 
> microphone while using The conference call, user is only able to hear 
> somebody, but how visually impaired user would have a chance to 
> activate The crucial button, which will give AThe
>
> www.dimdim.com
>
> WEB pages The permission to access The Microphone or WEB cam? It is 
> necessary to have ADOBE flash player compatible with Yours Linux 
> distro installed, if somebody would try to help not only me.
>
> Orca is able to provide very efficient working environment, and i 
> hope, that The top management of The SUN microsystem will not end this 
> ammazing project, related to At-spi and Orca. Because Mr Walker and 
> other core developers, who are participating on this very, very nice 
> projects are really truly experts and I AM deeply appreciating their 
> complex programmers work. ANd what I AM very deeply appreciating on 
> them is The fact, that they are really very kind to every users, they 
> are patient and their work is giving many visually impaired computer 
> users The possibility to be part of todays informatics society. Core 
> developers of Orca, please, do not forget, that Orca is now not only 
> usable with Gnome, but also with XFCE and if You would help core 
> developers of XFCE, Orca would be usable also with this desktop 
> environment. So Orca would be The poverful assistive technology, which 
> would be supported by Three desktop environment.