[orca-list] Clean up of Live Regions has begun! Try Google Docs

[Joanmarie Diggs <jdiggs igalia com>]

Hey all.

I've just committed a change to master which I hope will make your
Google Docs user experience much, much better. I was so happy with how
Orca was working with Google's spreadsheet functionality that I
committed first and am about to regression test. So hopefully nothing is
broken, but you've been warned. <smiles>

The way Google Docs accessibility support works is, in my opinion, a
hack. Part of this is my "delicate sensibilities" being taken aback.
<grins> Part of it has real functional implications for you. Here's the
deal: They are using live regions for purposes other than what it was
intended for. For instance, if you arrow in a text document, you don't
get a caret-moved event; you get an event for a live region providing
the string the screen reader should speak. As for why this matters to you:

1. Orca was living under the assumption that live regions were things
that should be spoken pretty quickly, but not necessarily *this very
second*. But live regions serving as fake accessibility events means
that a second or two delay is way too long. Thus I've removed the code
that delays things on purpose and begun removing sluggish code in favor
of code that should be right and hopefully won't break any of the real
live regions you use. Testing and feedback is strongly encouraged. I'll
continue to try and improve this in the weeks to come.

2. Orca's job according to Google Docs is to speak what Google Docs
tells Orca to speak. In my experience so far, often Google Docs tells
Orca good things. Again, I'm quite pleased with how the spreadsheet
works. But you may find caret navigation in Google's text document not
quite what you want. For instance, if you type "This" and put the caret
at the T, pressing right arrow moves you to the "h" but Google tells
Orca "T". When you right arrow again, you move to the "i" but Google
tells Orca "h". Again these are live region strings Google gives us;;
not proper caret moved events. I will do my best to make Orca as
performant as possible with these apps. But if you don't like what Orca
says when you use them, there may not be anything I can do about it.

Lastly, you must enable the Google Docs live regions hack. You can do
this by pressing Ctrl + Alt + Z. This is a Google thing; not an Orca
thing. You must also enable sticky focus mode (Orca + a twice quickly).
In sticky focus mode, Orca will just get out of the way and should speak
the live regions.

Give it a try and let me know! Thanks!!
--joanie