Christian Hofstader <[email protected]> wrote: > cdh: The Gnome a11y issues for people with vision impairment in the 2.xx > releases are many, especially when compared to what users enjoy with JAWS or > VoiceOver. These issues, though, are not all based in Gnome itself, rather, > across the ecosystem of OS, UI, app, etc. The Gnome Accessibility API has > most of the power necessary but too few programs fully implement it.
Correct. > > cdh: Sure, there will always be room for improvement but, again, compared to > a Windows user with JAWS, WE, SA, NVDA, etc. a Gnome user has far fewer > options and, in some really important application categories, they have > nothing even remotely fully featured (compare using MS Excel with JAWS to > Orca with the LibreOffice spreadsheet as a quick example of what one can and > cannot do). I've been a Linux user since the late 90s and an Orca user for a number of years. I wouldn't recommend Linux and gnome to a blind person who insisted on working primarily in a GUI environment, due to the bugs and limitations of the accessibility support. The problem largely lies not in the Orca project itself, but in bugs and inconsistencies in the implementation of ATK and AT-SPI by desktop environments such as Gnome and by applications. I use Linux full-time and exclusively, but I only run X11 and Gnome when I really need the capabilities of an X application (e.g., Mozilla firefox for accessing certain Web sites). This actually suits me, as I don't like typical graphical user interfaces even if the accessibility works - I find them too constraining and inefficient compared with textual tools from the UNIX tradition that offer much richer and more flexible command sets as well as greater configurability. If I were in a job that truly required heavy use of an office suite, though, Linux/Gnome/Libreoffice wouldn't be a compelling choice, as the comments quoted above imply. If accessibility-related regulations are tightening, this might create incentives for distributors and other commercial supporters of free operating systems to increase their funding commitments in this area. I think the Gnome accessibility community has a good grasp of the technical issues that have to be addressed, including the lack of appropriate documentation for desktop and application developers as to how to implement accessibility interfaces. I would encourage the completion of any proposed redesign of ATK to solve the problems which have been identified. It should also be recognized that the ATK/AT-SPI infrastructure is now used by other desktop environments (XFCE, and KDE with the QT to AT-SPI bridge), and by various application developers - Mozilla Gecko, LibreOffice, Eclipse, etc., which are independent of Gnome, and that these projects need to be part of whatever solutions are decided upon. The coordination problems and resource shorages discussed in this thread are very real. I've seen the following pattern repeatedly on the Orca list. 1. A user identifies a bug. 2. The bug is traced to shortcomings in the ATK support provided by a UI library, desktop environment or application. 3. The bug is reported to the relevant project. 4. The project in question lacks the resources to deal with the bug in a timely fashion, or for some other reason it simply doesn't get addressed in the next release, or the one after that, or... Thus the original reporter and everyone else affected by the bug waits, and waits... A further difficulty identified in this thread is how better to involve programmers with disabilities who want to fix bugs. Some suggestions would be to provide better mentoring and assistance with review processes, and to simplify and document the accessibility infrastructure as far as possible to make it easier to implement, and easier to debug. By "simplify", I do not mean "reduce the power of" - we actually do need all of those roles, states, properties and events for good accessibility. _______________________________________________ gnome-accessibility-devel mailing list [email protected] http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/gnome-accessibility-devel
