Re: [orca-list] links list

[Alex Midence <alex midence gmail com>]

How would you account for dropdown menu items disappearing as your focus
moves away from them?  Please understand, I am not being argumentative.  You
offer some interesting and fresh possibilities on how this can be
accomplished and I wish to mull them over.  Keep in mind that he web
applications used by people on the job are often not community products and
new features and bug fixes take anywhere from six months to a year to
implement at the very least depending on priority and mission criticalness.
Sadly, it has been my painfeul and frustrating experience that a11y-related
fixes are at the bottom of the pile as I have, at times, been the sole
employee with these special needs.  If it wasn't because that screen reader
I had to pay out the nose for went and created the solution they did, I'd be
up a creek without a paddle.  Your solutions are fantastic assuming it's an
open source product with a responsive user and developer community and an
end user savvy enough to implement these scripts.  What if you have a
management type whose talents lie in directions far from technical.  For
instance, I know a man who is incredible on the phones, phenomenal people
skills, hehas.  He is also a whizz with written documentation and very very
good at problem solving and trouble-shooting financial snafus.  When it
comes to how pc's work at a deeper level though ... He's out of his depth.  

Thanks.
Alex M

-----Original Message-----
From: orca-list-bounces gnome org [mailto:orca-list-bounces gnome org] On
Behalf Of Jason White
Sent: Friday, December 07, 2012 1:45 AM
To: orca-list gnome org
Subject: Re: [orca-list] links list

Alex Midence <alex midence gmail com> wrote:
 
> On 12/6/12, Jason White <jason jasonjgw net> wrote:
> > On the other hand, I use searching heavily (including the ' key 
> > which searches only for links).
>
> Searching takes a lot of typing.  

Incremental searching, i.e., moving the focus to matches as each character
is typed, requires much less typing, and that's how I would handle your
scenario (which I haven't quoted here for the sake of brevity).

I would also use heading navigation and the usual tab sequence, but I think
being able to search for words incrementally, matching only links, is the
real efficiency gain.

If headings and other structural components weren't specified in proper HTML
then I would either get that fixed or obtain a script that would
automatically apply Aria roles to the relevant elements on the page.
Google's Axsjax tool is a good example of what I mean. I think there's scope
for a crowd-sourced solution that would let users and volunteers create
scripts that improve the accessibility of Web pages and applications. I
don't know to what extent the scripting can be automated. For example, it
might be possible to write it so that in many cases, a user can just mark
text as, say, a heading, and the tool will try to generate rules to match it
later on. The general point is that there is plenty of scope for
browser-based solutions that transform and add Aria to Web pages and we'll
probably see more of them over time. These scripts can also add access keys
and transform the page in other ways.

I can also envisage service providers doing scripting on behalf of clients.
If I were working with a complex Web application heavily then it would be
worth getting the scripting done to improve efficiency still further, but my
fundamental suggestion is that I don't see a need for a list of links in
your scenario as described - I might be missing something important however.

_______________________________________________
orca-list mailing list
orca-list gnome org
https://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
Log bugs and feature requests at http://bugzilla.gnome.org Find out how to
help at http://live.gnome.org/Orca/HowCanIHelp