Re: A Terible Problem with accessibility of Gnome

[Bill Cox via gnome-accessibility-list]

I agree emacspeak is awesome.  I include T.V. Ramin at the top of my list
of a11y hereos.  There are Orca heroes on my list, too.  These folks
changed the world for those of us with vision impairments.

I envy a11y devs for being able to make such a direct and impactful
contribution.

On Mon, May 31, 2021, 5:53 AM Jason White  wrote:

> Emacs with BRLTTY and Emacspeak, in my opinion, offers a superior
> interface to anything that proprietary operating systems (including
> Microsoft's) currently offer. I wrote my Ph.D. thesis largely in the Emacs
> environment.
>
> The key to this success is the extensibility that is built into Emacs,
> which T.V. Raman - the computer scientist who developed Emacspeak - could
> then take advantage of to create a highly effective interface. If we had
> more such extensible and open systems, perhaps there would be more such
> solutions.
>
> BRLTTY offers excellent braille support in the Linux console (while also
> supporting graphical environments such as GNOME/Orca). It's another example
> of success.
>
> Nonvisual access to graphical environments is a different kind of problem,
> requiring work across a wide variety of projects. It isn't something that
> one or two people can implement relatively independently, so it will
> require the regulations or some other investment of resources to bring the
> quality up to high standards.
> On 30/5/21 8:57 pm, Bill Cox wrote:
>
> The EU regulations are good news!  Still, regulations force companies to
> make products accessible.  Making them delightful to use while blind is not
> required.  Gnome is already accessible.  Every problem the OP ran into has
> a work around.  That generally is all laws require.
>
> What makes Windows a11y nice is Microsoft made it a priorityat the CEO
> level, in a militaristic company.  Note that I use Linux exclusively, but I
> miss the.speed of NVDA with Microsoft Word, for example.  Google docs is
> slow, so I copy docs into gedit to read them quickly using Orca.  Note that
> Google is also a slime mold.  Google's a11y devs are awesome!  I know a few
> of them, and some of the are my heros.  But a slime mold has trouble
> delivering delightful a11y.
>
> Bill
>
> On Sun, May 30, 2021, 7:01 AM Jason White  wrote:
>
>> I think the regulatory environment may change attitudes and resource
>> allocation somewhat. For example, computers and operating systems are
>> explicitly required to meet accessibility standards under the European
>> Accessibility Act, which applies to products placed on the European common
>> market. This isn't yet in force, but it will be later in the decade. There
>> may be other regulatory changes elsewhere.
>>
>> This could have significant consequences in terms of legal liability for
>> commercial distributors and for hardware vendors who supply pre-installed
>> systems. I think it is in the interests of Linux distributors to move ahead
>> of the regulations by coordinating through the GNOME Foundation, Linux
>> Foundation and other projects to commit additional resources to
>> accessibility efforts. At the moment, there's a community with great
>> expertise which is doing excellent work, but there's a need for additional,
>> ongoing commitments in order to improve the quality of implementation and
>> to make it sustainable. We may be heading to a point at which distributors
>> can't integrate code until it satisfies accessibility criteria - for legal
>> reasons, and that would place pressure (positively, by way of developer
>> education and awareness, and negatively, by way of the risk of legal
>> liability) on the decentralized development processes.
>> On 30/5/21 8:02 am, Bill Cox wrote:
>>
>> GNU-Linux's accessibility limitations compared to Windows are basically
>> baked-in, and I doubt it will change.  It is no one's fault.  It is simply
>> a result of distributed development with no central leader.  However, you
>> can use NVDA to access Linux through a terminal window, and most of Linux's
>> goodness will be accessible this way.
>>
>> I will try to explain how I see the situation below.  It is certainly not
>> the fault of anyone working on Orca, or any a11y developer at all.  It is
>> just life in the land of distributed open source projects.
>>
>> TL;DR
>>
>> Janky a11y on Linux is not the fault of the various a11y developers, who
>> genuinely care about the needs of blind folks, and IMO do a great job with
>> very limited resources.  The problems are baked into GNU-Linux in various
>> ways.  One way to look at this is that Microsoft is like the military, with
>> a top commander issuing orders, which are followed by everyone, while Linux
>> is more like a slime mold, with no central nervous system.  There is good
>> and bad with both approaches, and unfortunately, a11y support will
>> generally be better in a military-style run organization, assuming that the
>> top leaders have made a11y a priority.
>>
>> Bill Gates mandated that accessibility was a top priority, and 

Re: A Terible Problem with accessibility of Gnome

[Bill Cox via gnome-accessibility-list]

The EU regulations are good news!  Still, regulations force companies to
make products accessible.  Making them delightful to use while blind is not
required.  Gnome is already accessible.  Every problem the OP ran into has
a work around.  That generally is all laws require.

What makes Windows a11y nice is Microsoft made it a priorityat the CEO
level, in a militaristic company.  Note that I use Linux exclusively, but I
miss the.speed of NVDA with Microsoft Word, for example.  Google docs is
slow, so I copy docs into gedit to read them quickly using Orca.  Note that
Google is also a slime mold.  Google's a11y devs are awesome!  I know a few
of them, and some of the are my heros.  But a slime mold has trouble
delivering delightful a11y.

Bill

On Sun, May 30, 2021, 7:01 AM Jason White  wrote:

> I think the regulatory environment may change attitudes and resource
> allocation somewhat. For example, computers and operating systems are
> explicitly required to meet accessibility standards under the European
> Accessibility Act, which applies to products placed on the European common
> market. This isn't yet in force, but it will be later in the decade. There
> may be other regulatory changes elsewhere.
>
> This could have significant consequences in terms of legal liability for
> commercial distributors and for hardware vendors who supply pre-installed
> systems. I think it is in the interests of Linux distributors to move ahead
> of the regulations by coordinating through the GNOME Foundation, Linux
> Foundation and other projects to commit additional resources to
> accessibility efforts. At the moment, there's a community with great
> expertise which is doing excellent work, but there's a need for additional,
> ongoing commitments in order to improve the quality of implementation and
> to make it sustainable. We may be heading to a point at which distributors
> can't integrate code until it satisfies accessibility criteria - for legal
> reasons, and that would place pressure (positively, by way of developer
> education and awareness, and negatively, by way of the risk of legal
> liability) on the decentralized development processes.
> On 30/5/21 8:02 am, Bill Cox wrote:
>
> GNU-Linux's accessibility limitations compared to Windows are basically
> baked-in, and I doubt it will change.  It is no one's fault.  It is simply
> a result of distributed development with no central leader.  However, you
> can use NVDA to access Linux through a terminal window, and most of Linux's
> goodness will be accessible this way.
>
> I will try to explain how I see the situation below.  It is certainly not
> the fault of anyone working on Orca, or any a11y developer at all.  It is
> just life in the land of distributed open source projects.
>
> TL;DR
>
> Janky a11y on Linux is not the fault of the various a11y developers, who
> genuinely care about the needs of blind folks, and IMO do a great job with
> very limited resources.  The problems are baked into GNU-Linux in various
> ways.  One way to look at this is that Microsoft is like the military, with
> a top commander issuing orders, which are followed by everyone, while Linux
> is more like a slime mold, with no central nervous system.  There is good
> and bad with both approaches, and unfortunately, a11y support will
> generally be better in a military-style run organization, assuming that the
> top leaders have made a11y a priority.
>
> Bill Gates mandated that accessibility was a top priority, and attended
> accessibility meetings personally.  That is why Windows is as accessible as
> it is.  Ubuntu is an open source project, and it is simply not possible to
> force every developer to get onboard.  IIUC, Steve Jobs did not care about
> a11y, which is why Apple had non-accessible products for so long, and IIUC,
> Tim Cook does care, and was able to force Apple to embrace a11y.  With
> Linux, we have various leaders who do care, and some who don't.  The result
> is that a11y on Linux is janky and probably always will be.
>
> There are many examples I can point to.  For example, the main developer
> of PulseAudio cares about music, but not as much about screen reader users,
> which is why PulseAudio has broken a11y so many times.  Some devs in the
> low level GTK widgets refuse to make pixmaps capable of having a text
> description, which is why the icons remain inaccessible in many desktop
> environments in Linux.  Gnome does better than any other Linux desktop
> environment, in my experience, but Gnome can't make non-accessible widgets
> magically accessible.  While in most cases, the goals of free software
> advocates are in line with a11y advocates, these groups tend to differ on
> support for commercial closed-source software, such as text-to-speech
> engines, which is one reason we have limited options in Linux.  I use the
> Voxin voice, which is the same as Eloquence, and if I were not a programmer
> capable of hacking the speech stack, I doubt I could consistently 

Re: A Terible Problem with accessibility of Gnome

[Bill Cox via gnome-accessibility-list]

GNU-Linux's accessibility limitations compared to Windows are basically
baked-in, and I doubt it will change.  It is no one's fault.  It is simply
a result of distributed development with no central leader.  However, you
can use NVDA to access Linux through a terminal window, and most of Linux's
goodness will be accessible this way.

I will try to explain how I see the situation below.  It is certainly not
the fault of anyone working on Orca, or any a11y developer at all.  It is
just life in the land of distributed open source projects.

TL;DR

Janky a11y on Linux is not the fault of the various a11y developers, who
genuinely care about the needs of blind folks, and IMO do a great job with
very limited resources.  The problems are baked into GNU-Linux in various
ways.  One way to look at this is that Microsoft is like the military, with
a top commander issuing orders, which are followed by everyone, while Linux
is more like a slime mold, with no central nervous system.  There is good
and bad with both approaches, and unfortunately, a11y support will
generally be better in a military-style run organization, assuming that the
top leaders have made a11y a priority.

Bill Gates mandated that accessibility was a top priority, and attended
accessibility meetings personally.  That is why Windows is as accessible as
it is.  Ubuntu is an open source project, and it is simply not possible to
force every developer to get onboard.  IIUC, Steve Jobs did not care about
a11y, which is why Apple had non-accessible products for so long, and IIUC,
Tim Cook does care, and was able to force Apple to embrace a11y.  With
Linux, we have various leaders who do care, and some who don't.  The result
is that a11y on Linux is janky and probably always will be.

There are many examples I can point to.  For example, the main developer of
PulseAudio cares about music, but not as much about screen reader users,
which is why PulseAudio has broken a11y so many times.  Some devs in the
low level GTK widgets refuse to make pixmaps capable of having a text
description, which is why the icons remain inaccessible in many desktop
environments in Linux.  Gnome does better than any other Linux desktop
environment, in my experience, but Gnome can't make non-accessible widgets
magically accessible.  While in most cases, the goals of free software
advocates are in line with a11y advocates, these groups tend to differ on
support for commercial closed-source software, such as text-to-speech
engines, which is one reason we have limited options in Linux.  I use the
Voxin voice, which is the same as Eloquence, and if I were not a programmer
capable of hacking the speech stack, I doubt I could consistently use it.

A common reply to a11y advocates in the open-source community is that if
you don't like the way it is, fix it yourself.  However, this is simply not
realistic.  For example, I fixed the pixmap GTK class to add an accessible
description, and attempted to merge this fix into the Vinux version of
Linux.  I had to fork not just GTK, but all of Gnome to make this work.  I
don't have the time to maintain a fork of the entire desktop just to make
pixmaps talk.

Another problem I've faced personally in the open-source community is
dealing with folks' feelings.  For example, I have an entire alternate
speech stack that can work with Orca, but this upset some of the
speech-dispatcher devs who do very important a11y work.  I tried working
with them, and to their credit, they did incorporate one of the most
important changes I have in my stack: they moved the code to talk to the
sound system into speech-dispatcher proper.  However, I keep most of my
a11y code to myself simply not to upset anyone.  Maybe if I understood
people's feelings better, I could contribute more effectively, but from my
point of view, I poke a random weak spot of the slime mold, and the whole
thing freaks out.

So, I hope that long winded explanation helps you understand why Linux a11y
is as janky as it is.

Best regards,
Bill






On Sat, May 29, 2021 at 12:21 PM Jason White via gnome-accessibility-list <
gnome-accessibility-list@gnome.org> wrote:

>
> On 29/5/21 4:29 am, Rynhardt Kruger via gnome-accessibility-list wrote:
> > I definitely think image recognition has improved a lot, both in speed
> > and accuracy. However, even a difference like 50 milliseconds may be
> > noticeable by an experienced screen reader user, especially if one
> > uses speech at 400 words per minute or more.
>
> A further difficulty is that any system relying on image recognition
> imposes the burden of errors on the user, whose ability to correct for
> them is limited.
>
> Image recognition might be useful, however, in automatically detecting
> errors in the implementation of accessibility APIs. I suppose that would
> be a research project.
>
> My understanding is that the GNOME Foundation has accessibility plans
> which include a new accessibility API in GTK 4, guidance for developers,
> and, possibly, 

Is there an ATK dev who can answer noob questions?

[Bill Cox via gnome-accessibility-list]

There is a small effort of part-time a11y contributers within Google and
Opera who would like to hook up Chromium to ATK so it can work with Orca.
Between us, I think we have no experience with ATK.  Is there anyone who
would be available to answer our noob questions?

Here's my first one: This function

has this line:

atk_class->get_root = atk_util_auralinux_get_root;

However, atk_util_auralinux_get_root is never called, while some other
atk_class functions, like get_toolkit_name, are called.  At the moment, in
Debian Stretch running Cinnamon, I see the application "chrome" registered,
but it has no children.  IIUC, the chromium code used to present more than
this.  Is atk_get_root supposed to be called to get access to the
accessible objects within the application?  Any help figuring out what we
mucked up would be appreciated.  Just as an added incentive, if you help
now, I'll punish you with lots more noob questions in the future :)

Thanks,
Bill
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