Re: iaccessible2 and linux (was Re: Lubuntu and Accessibility)
On 6/12/2011 2:40 AM, Isaac Porat wrote: Hi My comments were not a criticism of at-spi but rather the need were possible to unify accessibilities standard across platforms for the simple reason that if software vendors have to worry about one accessibility stack it is better than two or three, as Linux as very small user based it is always left behind by the main vendors. in my opinion, any criticism of the current accessibility world should not be focused on just cross platform but on how they don't really meet the needs of the disabled, application developers, or accessibility interface developers. I start from the principle that accessibility is defined by what the user needs, not what the application but accessibility interface vendor is willing to give. For example, nuance doesn't give me what I need (a speech user interface was sufficient discoverability) therefore, they don't provide sufficient accessibility. At the same time, I a assert that individual is responsible for their own accessibility because what the user needs depends on what they do and the nature of their disability. There's no way that any application or accessibility vendor can possibly provide that level of customization at a price that individual can afford. The second starting point is that trying to replicate a GUI or extract information from a GUI is a failed proposition. Speech user interfaces (spoken or heard) have entirely different structure. A blind person using a web application should here a small number of things essential to operating the interface and not all of the junk around the application unless they ask for it. A spoken interface is a wide and shallow interface where control the scope makes the same or similar command do different things. My personal objection to most of the current work is that they seem to ignore speech recognition entirely or so cripple the interface as to be useless for anything but direct text dictation in a very limited way. The current accessibility tool kits are replicating the same mistakes I've seen inaccessibility environments since I've been disabled. I think a better solution, is for the application to export the data and operations available via a GUI and accessibility tool to reveal all of its controls and data so that a customizable framework can drive both application and accessibility tool to provide the accessibility interface necessary for the user. the model I propose reduces the cost for an applications developer to provide accessibility, makes it possible to split boundaries between which machine has the accessibility device, and which machine has the application as well as applications within browsers. This model also makes accessibility cheaper, easier to validate, customize, and support than the current models. this is still theoretical as I don't have any hands with which to write code. I wouldn't turn away a volunteer to help me with making a prototype. the basic idea is sound enough that others I have bounced it off of think it's worth exploring. All I need is someone with hands. --- eric -- Ubuntu-accessibility mailing list Ubuntu-accessibility@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-accessibility
Re: iaccessible2 and linux (was Re: Lubuntu and Accessibility)
Hi My comments were not a criticism of at-spi but rather the need were possible to unify accessibilities standard across platforms for the simple reason that if software vendors have to worry about one accessibility stack it is better than two or three, as Linux as very small user based it is always left behind by the main vendors. In Windows there is MSAA which is a subset of both iAccessible2 and Microsoft own UI automation. There is also Java accessibility standard which is only supported (and even this is not great) by NVDA. This applies to Swing components, IBM Java SWT components work great in Windows anybody using Eclipse in Windows will know how accessible it is (I believe it is not bad in Linux either but not tried it recently), it relies on the native gui components for the OS which is a great approach. So more than one standard can co-exist as time moves on there is a need for new features and compatibility. I heard various stories on the feasibility of implementing iAccessible2 in Linux as well including the possibility of building a bridge to at-spi but I know very little about either. Anyway both myself and Bill Cox are very interested in cross platform accessibility solutions and working on a non related system right now. It is our desire to look at this issue at some stage in the not too distant future and we will keep you posted and seek other developers who might be interested. Regards Isaac On 07/06/2011 13:47, Piñeiro wrote: On 06/07/2011 03:36 AM, Isaac Porat wrote: Hi I was asking the same question a couple of years ago. My understanding after looking a bit into the issue is that IBM consulted at the time key people in accessibility in Linux (there still some minutes of these meetings) to make both interfaces as close as possible which as indicated it is somewhat the case. Reading between the lines, iAccessible2 was not accepted for Linux because of both companies and Linux vs Windows politics. the interfaces are close but not the same. At the time perhaps if somebody on the Linux side took a more favourable approach the communication layer in iAccessible2 implementations would have been properly separated. As it happened my understanding from Bil Cox who looked at the issue in more details in the Windows world the implementation and communication layers can be mixed with vendors who want to support both Windows and Linux so in practice they need to a good extend maintain two separate stacks and with the ratio of Windows to Linux users of something like 90 to 1 Linux support not suprisingly is always behind. It is true that there are people that thinks that moving iAccessible2 to Linux should be the path. But AFAIK, the reason of why it wasn't done was not due politics. It was in order to avoid to "reinvent the wheel". Linux had already a working accessible interface, ATK, implemented by a lot of actors on Linux (gtk, firefox, etc). So moving to iAccessible2 means to change all in order to move to a (as already said) really similar technology, with similar features. But I also understand that having "just one thing" would have a lot of advantages. BTW: AFAIK, this is not "one is better that two". AFAIK MacOS doesn't use ATK or Ia2: http://developer.apple.com/library/mac/#documentation/Accessibility/Conceptual/AccessibilityMacOSX/OSXAXModel/OSXAXmodel.html#//apple_ref/doc/uid/TP40001078-CH208-TPXREF101 Or I'm wrong? BR -- Ubuntu-accessibility mailing list Ubuntu-accessibility@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-accessibility
Re: iaccessible2 and linux (was Re: Lubuntu and Accessibility)
On 06/07/2011 03:36 AM, Isaac Porat wrote: Hi I was asking the same question a couple of years ago. My understanding after looking a bit into the issue is that IBM consulted at the time key people in accessibility in Linux (there still some minutes of these meetings) to make both interfaces as close as possible which as indicated it is somewhat the case. Reading between the lines, iAccessible2 was not accepted for Linux because of both companies and Linux vs Windows politics. the interfaces are close but not the same. At the time perhaps if somebody on the Linux side took a more favourable approach the communication layer in iAccessible2 implementations would have been properly separated. As it happened my understanding from Bil Cox who looked at the issue in more details in the Windows world the implementation and communication layers can be mixed with vendors who want to support both Windows and Linux so in practice they need to a good extend maintain two separate stacks and with the ratio of Windows to Linux users of something like 90 to 1 Linux support not suprisingly is always behind. It is true that there are people that thinks that moving iAccessible2 to Linux should be the path. But AFAIK, the reason of why it wasn't done was not due politics. It was in order to avoid to "reinvent the wheel". Linux had already a working accessible interface, ATK, implemented by a lot of actors on Linux (gtk, firefox, etc). So moving to iAccessible2 means to change all in order to move to a (as already said) really similar technology, with similar features. But I also understand that having "just one thing" would have a lot of advantages. BTW: AFAIK, this is not "one is better that two". AFAIK MacOS doesn't use ATK or Ia2: http://developer.apple.com/library/mac/#documentation/Accessibility/Conceptual/AccessibilityMacOSX/OSXAXModel/OSXAXmodel.html#//apple_ref/doc/uid/TP40001078-CH208-TPXREF101 Or I'm wrong? BR -- Alejandro Piñeiro Iglesias (API) (apinhe...@igalia.com) -- Ubuntu-accessibility mailing list Ubuntu-accessibility@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-accessibility
Re: iaccessible2 and linux (was Re: Lubuntu and Accessibility)
Hi I was asking the same question a couple of years ago. My understanding after looking a bit into the issue is that IBM consulted at the time key people in accessibility in Linux (there still some minutes of these meetings) to make both interfaces as close as possible which as indicated it is somewhat the case. Reading between the lines, iAccessible2 was not accepted for Linux because of both companies and Linux vs Windows politics. the interfaces are close but not the same. At the time perhaps if somebody on the Linux side took a more favourable approach the communication layer in iAccessible2 implementations would have been properly separated. As it happened my understanding from Bil Cox who looked at the issue in more details in the Windows world the implementation and communication layers can be mixed with vendors who want to support both Windows and Linux so in practice they need to a good extend maintain two separate stacks and with the ratio of Windows to Linux users of something like 90 to 1 Linux support not suprisingly is always behind. So now it is probably too late to separate the layers for the large application as it would involve too much work. An opportunity lost. Like Alex, the browsing experience is the main reason I use mainly Windows. And I never understood why the off screen model is not adopted in Orca (probably the only screen reader taking this approach) yes there is sometimes the issue of synchronization with sighted users but it is in my opinion a price worth paying for speed and then there is of course the issue of inter processes as opposed to binary interface communication which is a lot faster in Windows. In addition, I was told that some screen readers take a pointer to the DOM tree which they are not suppose to do probably not wise for security but it is very fast. Regards Isaac Previous message... On 06/06/2011 23:36, frederik.gladh...@nokia.com wrote: I guess IBM needed a neutral place to dump the interface definitions. In theory it would be possible to implement iaccessible2 on linux, but the inter process communication of it would have to be replaced and all that is hosted as interface files on the linux foundation website can only be used with windows tools. So just the abstract interfaces could be taken, but as I said before, it is quite close to what at-spi is. For a better browsing experience I guess that browsers/firefox and the orca people need to have better feedback what is needed. Firefox has a lot of custom stuff that on windows is using iaccessible2, so maybe there is something needed. I have not looked at qt webkit yet as that seems to be another big project. Cheers Frederik On Jun 6, 2011, at 11:55 PM, ext Alex Midence wrote: Meant to send this to the entire list but didn't realize it did not go through. Thans. Alex M -- Forwarded message -- From: Alex Midence Date: Mon, 6 Jun 2011 16:54:43 -0500 Subject: Re: Lubuntu and Accessibility To: frederik.gladh...@nokia.com Hi, Frederik, Here is one of the resources that led me to believe that iaccessible2 was a feasible accessibility api for Linux applications and applications used to make others accessible in Linux to rely upon: http://www.linuxfoundation.org/collaborate/workgroups/accessibility/iaccessible2/overview If it can not be used in Linux, why is it supported by the Linux Foundation? Alex M On 6/6/11, Alex Midence wrote: Thanks for clearing that up. I was always quite mystified as to why it wasn't used. I found all sorts of postings as to why it was a bad idea but never anything quite so informative as to just why At-Spi was so preferable. I also found many postings when it first came out touting it as a good solution for cross-platform accessibility which is the reason I was under the impression that it could conceivably be implemented in Linux and hadn't been done so due to people preference and not because it was not feasible. Thanks again. Alex M On 6/6/11, frederik.gladh...@nokia.com wrote: Hi, On Jun 6, 2011, at 3:42 AM, ext Alex Midence wrote: I seem to recall that Klaus Knopix is reputed to have had some success making LXDE accessible in his Knopix Adrienne distribution. Perhaps that is something that could be used as reference? As for python-related slowness in Orca, I would tend to agree. C is just faster than Python. Interpreted languages are going to require far more memory and resources than compiled ones in many cases. Actually, a saner thing would be an implementation of orca written in both C or c++ and Python. The low-level code in c and the more scriptable areas in Python. This is what NVDA's devs did and it's a slighning fast screen reader on a bloated system like Windows. While we're wishing, I'll go ahead and wish for iaccessible2 support instead of complete and exclusive reliance on at-spi/at-spi2 so that more widget toolkits might become accessible since some of them do support iaccessibl
iaccessible2 and linux (was Re: Lubuntu and Accessibility)
I guess IBM needed a neutral place to dump the interface definitions. In theory it would be possible to implement iaccessible2 on linux, but the inter process communication of it would have to be replaced and all that is hosted as interface files on the linux foundation website can only be used with windows tools. So just the abstract interfaces could be taken, but as I said before, it is quite close to what at-spi is. For a better browsing experience I guess that browsers/firefox and the orca people need to have better feedback what is needed. Firefox has a lot of custom stuff that on windows is using iaccessible2, so maybe there is something needed. I have not looked at qt webkit yet as that seems to be another big project. Cheers Frederik On Jun 6, 2011, at 11:55 PM, ext Alex Midence wrote: > Meant to send this to the entire list but didn't realize it did not go > through. > > Thans. > Alex M > > > > -- Forwarded message -- > From: Alex Midence > Date: Mon, 6 Jun 2011 16:54:43 -0500 > Subject: Re: Lubuntu and Accessibility > To: frederik.gladh...@nokia.com > > Hi, Frederik, > > Here is one of the resources that led me to believe that iaccessible2 > was a feasible accessibility api for Linux applications and > applications used to make others accessible in Linux to rely upon: > > http://www.linuxfoundation.org/collaborate/workgroups/accessibility/iaccessible2/overview > > If it can not be used in Linux, why is it supported by the Linux Foundation? > Alex M > > On 6/6/11, Alex Midence wrote: >> Thanks for clearing that up. I was always quite mystified as to why >> it wasn't used. I found all sorts of postings as to why it was a bad >> idea but never anything quite so informative as to just why At-Spi was >> so preferable. I also found many postings when it first came out >> touting it as a good solution for cross-platform accessibility which >> is the reason I was under the impression that it could conceivably be >> implemented in Linux and hadn't been done so due to people preference >> and not because it was not feasible. >> >> Thanks again. >> Alex M >> >> On 6/6/11, frederik.gladh...@nokia.com wrote: >>> Hi, >>> >>> On Jun 6, 2011, at 3:42 AM, ext Alex Midence wrote: I seem to recall that Klaus Knopix is reputed to have had some success making LXDE accessible in his Knopix Adrienne distribution. Perhaps that is something that could be used as reference? As for python-related slowness in Orca, I would tend to agree. C is just faster than Python. Interpreted languages are going to require far more memory and resources than compiled ones in many cases. Actually, a saner thing would be an implementation of orca written in both C or c++ and Python. The low-level code in c and the more scriptable areas in Python. This is what NVDA's devs did and it's a slighning fast screen reader on a bloated system like Windows. While we're wishing, I'll go ahead and wish for iaccessible2 support instead of complete and exclusive reliance on at-spi/at-spi2 so that more widget toolkits might become accessible since some of them do support iaccessible2 but not at-spi. >>> >>> the APIs of IAccessible2 and at-spi2 are very similar. >>> Their big difference is the implementation. IAccessible2 (based on MSAA) >>> uses Windows COM for inter process communication. >>> at-spi2 uses dbus. >>> >>> That means having IAccessible2 on Linux doesn't make much sense. And >>> implementing it using DBus you end up with exactly at-spi2. >>> Please don't propose solutions that simply don't match the problem. >>> >>> Instead of speculating about performance we should use profiling tools to >>> see where the performance lags. >>> I suspect DBus is a large part of it. And the way we use DBus is used is >>> another big issue. Python may or may not play a role. >>> >>> Greetings, >>> Frederik >>> >>> I'm on a orle here so, I'll keep wishing. I want a faster, lag-free web browsing experience with something akin to an off screen model, navigation by element list. and an expanded list of elements by which one can navigate like div and span. The inferior browsing experience in Linux is the only thing that keeps me going back to windows. Just my two cents, Alex Date: Sat, 4 Jun 2011 09:49:37 +0200 From: Halim Sahin To: ubuntu-accessibility@lists.ubuntu.com Subject: Re: Lubuntu and Accessibility > Message-ID: <20110604074937.GA25814@gentoo.local> > Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii > > Hi, > On Di, Mai 24, 2011 at 01:14:32 +1000, Luke Yelavich wrote: >> The first thing is making sure LXDE is actually accessible, i.e make >> sure it has keyboard shortcuts, and supports the launching of the >> accessibility framework at startup etc. As to using the LXDE GUI with >> Orca etc, I think the bigge
