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Re: [orca-list] date and time keybindings

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Hi
I have to ask: Has any of you who've brought up Voiceover on the Mac in
these discussions ever actually used it? Some people keep bringing up
Voiceover in relation to established convensions. If you'd used
Voiceover for even a second you would know it resembles no other screen
reader either in keybindings or concept. Yet, Voiceover's user base is
growing by enormous amounts compared to any free Windows screen reading
product, jaws emulation or no, and most users have no problem picking it up.
Look, people aren't dumb, and it's not as hard for us to learn new
things as a species than some of you are making it out to be. Difficulty
and will are two different things, and if a person doesn't have a wish
to learn something new then (s)he won't do well with Orca no matter how
much we make the key bindings like jaws, because Orca just isn't jaws.
It's that simple.
What's this assumption I'm seeing that we want to forceably attract
Windows users? Are we on some sort of evangelical quest I'd not heard
about? I wouldn't think our goal should be to emulate Windows AT just to
pull Windows users away from there to GNOME and Orca. Remember, most
people who first look at an alternative operating system or environment
do so for either of two reasons:
1. They're sick of the status quo.
2. They have to, for work.
In the case of 1, forcing Orca to be like jaws will drive them away, not
interest them. In the case of 2... well, if you're in such a position
where you need to learn an alternative os and you don't have the will to
learn a couple different keystrokes, then you're probably not in the
right position.
Apple isn't succeeding with their accessibility because they emulated
jaws. They're succeeding because they had the will to rethink how a
screen reader and accessibility in general should work and they let the
product, and their users, do the rest.

On 05/02/2010 01:19 AM, Isaac Porat wrote:

Hi

There are two free screen readers (that I know about) in Windows, both
came out roughly at the same time.
The first took the pragmatic approach and decided to emulate good
practice (or perhaps familiarity) with other established screen readers
with lots of user experience behind them. At the same time   certainly
it has its own distinct way of doing things.
The second one has implemented its own user interface very different
from established practice.  Although the second one is still a lot
better with Microsoft products than the first one the first one
practically established itself as the most popular.
There are of course other reasons for this but the above I believe is a
major factor.

The ratio of Windows desktop to Linux users is about 90 to 1.  The scene
changed a lot since Orca came on the scene; there is an increasingly a
good free screen reader for Windows and many more free (and open source)
applications available, and of course the Mac screen reader came along

I argue that the opinion of members of this list (me included) many of
whom used Linux before Orca came along is not so important - it is the
experience of those from other OS who might like to use it who will find
comfort with familiarity which is the issue.

Speaking of gnome itself, I actually like the key bindings many of which
sensibly map to Windows the most stupid I find is F10 and Shift + F10
for the menu and context menu a feature used a lot more than finding the
time and date which I find stupid - it easy enough to get to function
key in either side of the keyboard but more difficult to get to a
function key in the middle.  .

Regards
Isaac


On 01/05/2010 18:48, Joanmarie Diggs wrote:

Hi Glenn.



I prefer the JFW key bindings, as they seem most intuitive to me.


Intuitive or familiar?



  I wish
someone would make a JFW-like set of key bindings that could be
loaded into
Orca.


Do you also wish that someone would make a Windows-like set of key
bindings that could be loaded into GNOME?

As a reminder, the GNOME desktop is not Windows; Orca is not JAWS. There
is not a one-to-one correspondence between Orca commands and JAWS
commands, nor is there a one-to-one correspondence between Orca "modes"
and JAWS "modes".

But even if we didn't care about that and figured we'd slap together
something that kinda sorta mapped for the sake of being familiar for
JAWS users, we're leaving out a bunch of folks. In order to be fair, we
should probably do the same thing for Window-Eyes and NVDA users. And
since Orca also has magnification functionality, we really need to do
mappings for folks coming to us from ZoomText and MAGic. Oops, almost
forgot: VoiceOver users.

So that means we'd require the following layouts:

1. Orca Desktop
2. Orca Laptop
3. JAWS-like Desktop
4. JAWS-like Laptop
5. Window-Eyes-like Desktop
6. Window-Eyes-like Laptop
7. NVDA-like Desktop
8. NVDA-like Laptop
9. ZoomText-like Desktop
10. ZoomText-like Laptop
11. MAGic-like Desktop
12. MAGic-like Laptop
13. VoiceOver-like Desktop
14. VoiceOver-like Laptop

More if we need to also ensure a smooth transition for Hal/SuperNova
users. ;-)

Then there's the maintenance: Even if we decided to discriminate against
all screen readers but JAWS in this loadable-layout scenario, that would
give us four keyboard layouts. Currently, when creating new Orca
commands, it's hard enough to find ideal, intuitive, available
keybindings. Now we also have to ensure that we find them for two
additional layouts? And I'd bet money that if we went to all the trouble
to do so, one of the things we'd see is confused and frustrated users
posting questions here to the effect of "I'm using the JFW-like set of
keybindings. So why isn't Orca working like JAWS?"

Having said all that, there's nothing stopping you from binding Orca's
commands to whatever you'd like them to be.

--joanie

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_______________________________________________
orca-list mailing list
orca-list gnome org
http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/orca-list
Visit http://live.gnome.org/Orca for more information on Orca.
The manual is at
http://library.gnome.org/users/gnome-access-guide/nightly/ats-2.html
The FAQ is at http://live.gnome.org/Orca/FrequentlyAskedQuestions
Netiquette Guidelines are at
http://live.gnome.org/Orca/FrequentlyAskedQuestions/NetiquetteGuidelines
Log bugs and feature requests at http://bugzilla.gnome.org
Find out how to help at http://live.gnome.org/Orca/HowCanIHelp


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