Re: [orca-list] F123.org-sponsored work and Request for input: Braille scrolling and when to route the caret

[Alex Midence <alex midence gmail com>]

Hi,

I use braille every day so, this strikes close to home for me.  I'm
really happy to see this in the works.

1.  Yes, scrolling with the braille should not move the active cursor
or caret.  The only time I have ever made an exception to this
practice is when I am proofreading a document in a wordprocessor.  I
like for my braille panning to move my caret in these situations
because it is faster than page down when I get to the bottom of my
screen.  I find that I loose my place a lot when I have to hit page
down instead of just moving the caret as I pan downwards.  For all
other situations, I am in complete agreement.

2.  Yes, cursor routing is a beautimous thing!  Again, when I am
proofreading, it's great to just hit the cursor routing key and have
the cursor hop right to where I have my finger.  When I am reading a
web page, the cursor routing key activates the link and makes me just
tickled pink!  Orca should have this functionality, I think.

3.  You are correct.  The user should have control over when they
change focus.  Dropdown menus such as the ones created by jQuery come
to mind.  Just having your mouse cursor over an object can cause the
behavior of the page to change.  So, you want to be in control of what
has focus and when.

What about a toggle switch to turn caret movement on and off in
conjunction with the braille display?  Jaws uses this feature.  It's
called braille follows active.  YOu toggle it on and every time you
pan downwards, the caret focus moves to the first character of the
line.  If you turn it off, you can move all over the place and not
affect where your cursor is unless you hit a cursor routing button.

Regards,
Alex M


On 8/6/12, Thomas Ward <thomasward1978 gmail com> wrote:
> Hi Joanie,
>
>
> On 8/6/12, Joanmarie Diggs <jdiggs igalia com> wrote:
>
> > 1. Scrolling in braille seems to me to be an awful lot like scrolling
> >    visually. In other words, if I am reading a document, I can leave the
> >    caret where it is and move the document's scrollbar to look visually
> >    before and after my current location and read the surrounding text.
> >    If I then want to move the caret to a new location, all I have to do
> >    is click with the mouse. But if I just wanted to look around and I do
> >    not click, the caret remains where it was. Shouldn't Orca work this
> >    way too, especially given the next item.
>
> Yes, I do think Orca should allow someone to look around without
> actually moving the caret. This would IMO give a braille user more of
> a visual representation of the page without changing the focus of the
> caret's actual position.
>
> > 2. Three words: Cursor routing keys. As I am scrolling around via my
> >    braille display, all I have to do to reposition the caret is press
> >    the key associated with the cell of interest. This is actually easier
> >    than clicking with the mouse. Given that one can explicitly and
> >    easily update the caret position, wouldn't it make more sense to only
> >    move the caret when the user has indicated the caret should be moved?
>
> Yes, agreed. It would be simple enough to do so I don't believe it
> would be a serious problem for most braille users.
>
> > 3. Focus side effects: In the case of Web content, if we move the caret
> >    to a focusable object, there is an excellent chance we will also
> >    change the focused item. Changing focus without the user explicitly
> >    indicating focus should be changed strikes me as a bad idea.
>
> Once again I am in full agreement with you on this. Changing the focus
> without the user specifically requesting that the focus should be
> changed just seems like an all around bad idea to me too.
>
> Cheers!
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