Re: [orca-list] Tips and tricks for Orca and Firefox

[Rastislav Kish <rastislav kish gmail com>]

Hello,

Orca shortcuts work quite reliably, infact, I don't remember seeing one 
to fail.

The problem is, that Orca doesn't allow, or at least i didn't find a 
way, how to turn off the automatic focus mode. I was always turning it 
off on Windows where possible, and this feature would be great on Linux 
as well, because the two modes are too different from each other to be 
switched by automated mechanism.

The fact, that this is actually happening then leads to exactly those 
situations, that navigation keys seemingly don't work, but in reality, 
one is just stuck in focus mode.


But otherwise, reactions are very good, just today I switched for a 
while to Windows to set up some things there and perform some research 
tasks, and I was truly amazed, how slow is FF on Win.


Youtube in my case works without any problems, the video can be 
controlled with j, k and l keys, of course after pressing orca+backspace.

I usually approach the controls either from the top by pressing b about 
10 times, or by firstly targeting the search edit field and then 
pressing b about 5 times. The same approach as on Win.


And besides already mentioned tricks, I will add, that you can read 
answers to comments by tabbing through names instead of moving by 
pressing down arrow.

i.e. you hit show x answers under a comment, and then tab until you find 
an author's name, pres down arrow to read the answer, tab again to get 
to another author's name, again read the answer with down arrow, etc.


This way, you can read the answers quite confortably, Orca normally 
skips this region for some reason.


Best regards


Rastislav


Dňa 14. 8. 2020 o 22:56 Jeanette C. via orca-list napísal(a):
> Hey hey,
> thank you for your detailed reply. As regards the specifics to 
> youtube, this is very helpful and might improve the operation greatly. 
> I did see (almost) all the keyboard commands, but found that sometimes 
> they didn't work, even though I knew that there had to be buttons, b 
> wouldn't do anything. I can't yet say how to reproduce this 
> (mis)behaviour though.
>
> Regarding hotkeys/keyboard controls defined by a website: how well do 
> these work with Orca? I'm sure they won't work in Browse mmode. How do 
> you deal with that? Just switch modes whenever you need a web shortcut?
>
> Would you have a tip for getting a good overview of the whole Firefox 
> application, i.e. a structural representation of elements within the 
> program (tabs, toolbars, attached windows, etc..)?
>
> Best wishes and thanks for the tips,
>
> Jeanette
>
> Aug 14 2020, Mewtamer has written:
>
> > Personally, YouTube isn't the most screen reader friendly website out
> > there. Lots of extraneous buttons that make getting to the controls of
> > the active video harder than it should be, comments are a mess with
> > lots of hidden text and lots of controls that are hard to skip for
> > seamless reading, there's a trick to even locating the comments
> > section of a video page... and at least on my system, even with
> > YouTube videos at 100%, I have to bump up my system volume to the
> > point Orca is screaming my ears to hear most videos.
> >
> > That said, some tips for making the most of YouTube's not very
> > accessible interface:
> >
> > On a video page, the title is a level 1 heading, cthe comments start
> > with a level 2 heading, and the links to suggested videos are level 3
> > headings. When Orca is in browse mode, pressing the h key will jump to
> > the next heading indiscriminately, and using the number row 1-6 will
> > jump to headings at specific levels. Like with other Orca navigational
> > hotkeys, you can use shift+ the hotkey to jump backwards and
> > alt+shift+hotkey to bring up a list of elements of the given type.
> >
> > The video controls on a YouTube video page are right above the Level 1
> > heading with the Video's title and the controls for favoriting, adding
> > to personal playlists, and information on the video are below this
> > heading. If you press b on the keyboard when you first load a video
> > page, sometimes this will put focus on the play button, but sometimes
> > there will be several buttons from YouTube's top navigation to cycle
> > through first. From the play button, shitf+tab will bring you to the
> > progress slider and then the skip add button when available and
> > tabbing will bring you to the next button and then the volume slider.
> > There are other controls, but these are the ones I use most.
> >
> > In addition to H for headings, 1-6 on the number row for specific
> > level headings, and b for buttons, some other navigational hotkeys I
> > find useful include:
> >
> > A for JavaScript clickables(alt+shift+a to bring up the list of all
> > such elements is particularly useful here since these often don't
> > respond to keyboard input and selecting one from the list and tabbing
> > a few times to the activate button is often the easiest way to
> > activate these controls)
> > C for comboboxes
> > e for text entry(note that you'll need to use Orca+a to switch to
> > focus mode if you actually want to type in one)
> > g for graphics
> > i for list items
> > l for lists
> > q for block quotes
> > r for radio buttons
> > s for separators
> > t for tables
> > x for check boxes.
> >
> > I think k, u, and v also jump to links, unvisited links, and visited
> > links respectively, but I've never found them that useful.
> >
> > Naturally, which, if any of the above navigational hotkeys are useful
> > varies greatly from site to site, though I find using h to cycle
> > through the headings is often a good first step when orienting myself
> > to an unfamiliar website.