The reliance upon the notification area for the sole interaction with a service is a bummer. Ideally, there would be some other mechanism, such as a menu item under the System menu.
However, as long as one can interact with the object via the keyboard, the user can have some level of access. So, for the NWAM GUI: 1) The notification message should result in an accessibility event being emitted. Orca can pick these up and at least read them. (Though we should test with NWAM to be sure). 2) The user can press Ctrl+Alt+Tab to get to the top panel. 3) The user can press some squirrelly sequence of Tab and the arrow keys to eventually fight their way to the notification area. I never get it right the first time, but I usually can fight my way over there eventually. 4) Due to notification-area specific issues in GNOME (icons cannot be given names in this dastardly beast), the user needs to press Ctrl+F1 to bring up the tooltip for the icon to make sure it is the NWAM icon. Otherwise, all they hear is "icon". 5) When they are sure they are on the NWAM icon, the user can press Shift+F10 to bring the context menu up for NWAM. In there, they can arrow up and down to select networks and bring up the configuration dialog. I find the above a rather uncompelling and inefficient experience (and likely horrible for a keyboard-only user who is inefficient with the keyboard), but it is at least accessible because it doesn't require the mouse as the sole means to interact with the application. Will Frank Ludolph wrote: > Calum Benson wrote: >> >> On 22 Sep 2009, at 18:04, Frank Ludolph wrote: >> >>> The accessibility of notifications would seem a significant hole in >>> GNOME desktop accessibility that affects NWAM and all other >>> application/system functions that use notification. >> >> It is, so we've had to try and avoid the 'click this message' type of >> balloons in the NWAM Phase 1 GUI design, and just use them for >> strictly informational purposes[1]. (Or at least, avoid them as the >> only way of initiating some action, which was a trap we fell into with >> Phase 0.5). >> >> Cheeri, >> Calum. >> >> [1] If the current Ubuntu notification work goes upstream, this is the >> only kind of notification messages that will be allowed in future >> anyway, which should hopefully simplify the accessibility picture >> somewhat: <https://wiki.ubuntu.com/NotifyOSD> >> > So how is the "click-this-message" being avoided in NWAM phase 1? On > scanning the NotifyOSD it appears that the proper way would be to post a > morphing alert box, which I don't think is implemented in GNOME, or the > alternative, an alert box. We would want to post the alert in the > foreground since bringing it up in the background, as suggested, might > not get it noticed until too late (after an install). > > Frank
