Re: [orca-list] Accessible email clients; really need an alternative to thunderbird

[Michael Whapples <mwhapples aim com>]

As memory goes, thunderbird 3.1.x has issues of its own, but may be I am 
wrong. Also are you using it with gnome 3.2? I know that the at-spi2 
stuff has affected how older application behave.

Yes evolution is feeling the best alternative, but it doesn't feel a 
great one. May be as you said it can be customised and that is why I 
asked about documentation on using it with Orca and from the keyboard in 
case there is something I have missed which does make it better.

Michael Whapples
On -10/01/37 20:59, Christopher Chaltain wrote:
> I use Thunderbird 3.1.15, and I don't think I'm running into the
> problems you're describing. I know it isn't the latest and greatest, but
> it's still what I'm running on my Ubuntu 11.04 system, and I haven't
> noticed any new features I can't live without or any major bugs. In
> fact, I prefer using Thunberbird 3.1.15 on Ubuntu over any Windows email
> client. I would assume you could still get your hands on and install
> Thunderbird 3.1.15, but I may be wrong about that.
>
> It's been a while since I used Evolution, but I think you can customize
> the interface to just get the information you want. For example, you can
> hide the calendar, tasks, contacts and so on. Furthermore, you can even
> hide the panel that let's you select these different views, forcing you
> to go to the menus to access them, which I think is what you want.
>
> On 18/11/11 16:28, Jude DaShiell wrote:
> > you could use emacspeak and I wrote earlier about nmh, emacs has an mh.elc
> > program that can be added to a .emacs file and once that's done you have
> > the full accessibility to nmh and the power that that confers.  It does
> > handle mime attachments too with an additional program but that's all in
> > the documentation.  Nice thing about emacspeak is like orca, it'll be a
> > desktop environment. On Fri, 18 Nov 2011, Michael Whapples wrote:
> >
> > > Hello,
> > > I know I have written about this before, but I never really found a
> > > satisfactory alternative. So as a last try I will try and be very specific in
> > > what I am looking for.
> > >
> > > OK, as many will know I really am not happy with the quality of accessibility
> > > in Thunderbird, Mozilla just don't seem to be able to deal with the problems
> > > and accessibility requirements seem to be a second rate citizen
> > > (justification: Some of the accessibility issues are so obvious and critical
> > > to use, that should a non-disabled user be faced with such issues they would
> > > never make a release of Mozilla products, an example being Orca echoing the
> > > text being entered in edit fields, would non-disabled users stand for not
> > > knowing what they typed, why should we?). There are other quality issues I
> > > have with Thunderbird but we'll leave those for now.
> > >
> > > Now to the positive look on things, what alternatives are there? Evolution
> > > normally is the obvious one. Yes I have used it back in the past (back in the
> > > gnome 2.18 and 2.20 days. While I could use it then, to me it always felt like
> > > its usability lay somewhere between difficult or clumsy. Some of the specific
> > > issues were finding attachments, being able to open individual messages in
> > > list digest messages as an attachment (like I can in Outlook Express on
> > > windows or Thunderbird) so I can reply to individual messages rather than the
> > > digest one and also evolution can feel like its interface is just a bit
> > > cluttered as it has calender and other features I do not tend to use (see
> > > below for what I really would want from an email client). If anyone could
> > > point me to good documentation on using evolution (particularly as an orca
> > > user and using evolution from the keyboard, may be my problems with evolution
> > > could be overcome as I might be able to use it more efficiently.
> > >
> > > Another alternative which has been suggested to me is balsa, but I never
> > > really got to grips with that.
> > >
> > > I know that another alternative might be to look at text based clients. The
> > > only ones I really got on with were pine and cone. Anyway, I feel text base
> > > clients may be off the cards as I feel Orca isn't great with text based
> > > software. Speakup would be my preferred choice for screen reader with text
> > > based software, however it just doesn't load on the computers I would install
> > > Linux on.
> > >
> > > OK, here is what I am looking from the email client:
> > > Accessible with Orca: As I noted speakup doesn't work on my Linux systems so
> > > Orca is what I will be using, so in my opinion that rules out the text based
> > > clients.
> > > Simple interface, focused on what is wanted: I only really want it for mail,
> > > things like calenders are just a waste of space to me. The main places I use
> > > in the email client is the folder/account tree and the message list. More than
> > > that in the main view is more than I want, I may find search useful but I
> > > don't mind going to the menu for that.
> > > Multiple account support: It should support more than one account, with
> > > different outgoing servers for each account.
> > > Ability to access the individual messages in a mail digest: I have most of my
> > > list subscriptions set to digest (eg. that is how I have the orca list set)
> > > but I have it set to mime for the format. This means that in Outlook Express
> > > on windows and thunderbird on Linux I can access each individual message sent
> > > to the list by viewing the attachments of the main digest message. This works
> > > quite well to keep things tidy. May be rules could help here and that I could
> > > receive separate messages and use rules to separate them into folders, but
> > > unless that is done on the server I need to set up those rules on every
> > > computer (undesirable thought) and I am unsure whether I could set these rules
> > > on the server.
> > >
> > > I think that covers the main things. Any suggestions.
> > >
> > > Thanks in advance.
> > >
> > > Michael Whapples
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> > Jude<jdashiel-at-shellworld-dot-net>
> > <http://www.shellworld.net/~jdashiel/nj.html>
> >
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