I would like to point out, that one of my greatest complaints on sites that
serve the blind is the frequency with which text size cannot be resized
without horizontal scrolling. This vital accessibility feature is of course
untestible for the blind, as they cannot see to see if their site is usable
to the merely visually impaired.
It is also sad to me, that so few people know how to change the text size in
their web browsers. I remember when I was visiting an older uncle of mine,
he wanted to show me an article on his computer. I sat down at the web
browser to read the article, and of course I pressed Ctrl-+ a couple of
times to get the font to a reasonable size. My uncle immediately grabbed my
shoulder and shouted "how did you do that!?" It took a few moments for me
to even realize what he meant. It never occurred to me that a person
wouldn't know about the zoom feature.
I think that the plus minus buttons should be in the tool-bars of all web
browsers by default. After all, a majority of people who are older than 50
need/want the feature and yet most of them never find out it exists.
Tim
---------- Původní zpráva ----------
Od: Dr. Volker Jaenisch <[email protected]>
Komu: [email protected], [email protected]
Datum: 29. 12. 2014 0:56:02
Předmět: Re: [BRLTTY] Let's improve documentation for the non blind
"
Hi Community!
On 26.12.2014 05:40, Dave Mielke wrote:
"
The other side of this issue, though, is that adding
that kind of extra verbage all over the place would be nothing but confusing
clutter to a blind user who already understands the context.
" Why can the blind people be confused by some structured information they
cannot read at all?
As I stated in the subject the information base I like to bring up is for
the non blind AND the
visual impaired people AND the people that may assist the former noticed
people BUT NOT the blind.
"
So, in the end,
especially in this area, the blind dudes tend to win out.
" Yep. The - I call them - priviledged - blind dudes. Yeah they win.
But there are others - not so priviledged - blind and visual impaired people
out there. Maybe lots of.
And you never ever may hear of them since they are not capable to even use
brltty to communicate with you.
My Brother for instance. And he comes from a rich and educated country born
as a son of a professor.
He is lost. Not because of his capabilities. He has perfect memory - he
knows exactly what happened at 12.14.1980 and he learns as quickly as hell.
Why he is lost has lots of reasons that are not brltty allone. But brltty
can help him - because it is all he has.
He has no jaws, no windows, only brltty. And he is stuck. -- and who is
helping him?
Me. And I am not blind. And I have to come clear with brltty. And out there
is legion of People not even understanding brltty. But they never
communicate
with you becouse the are not able to communicate with you at all.
I think our mission is to reach as most people we can - or?
"
Now, perhaps, you
have an additional bit of empathy for how blind users feel when they encounter
all those graphically oriented web sites which are almost impossible for them
to use.
As an aside: You bear the title Doctor, so, just perhaps, you've written a book
or two. If not, you surely have colleagues who have. Have you ensured that
those books have adequate and easy-to-understadn wording associated with each
picture so that a blind reader can make sense of it?
" Rougly you state: "The non blind people do things that we blind cannot
read so why should we blind people produce
things for the non blind?" Sorry, but this argumentation sounds a bit
revanchist to me.
Should we hearing people stop producing music since there are some deaf
people on earth? Should deaf people no longer produce sounds for us hearing
people?
I am sure you find out that your argument is ridiculous.
"
I dig into the config of brltty and it all is clear and straight - if
someone knows where the keys "LeftGdf" or "LeftWheelUp"
are located on the physical device.
"
LeftWheelUp should be easy enough to understand. There's a vertically oriented
wheel at the left end of the top of the device. LeftWheelUp means rolling that
wheel in the upward direction, i.e. toward the back of the device. I don't
recall this ever having been a point of confusion in the past.
" " There is no wheel at this device at all. There are two rockers (Up/down)
together with a pushbutton (Press) left and right at the top that have take
over the function of the former wheel of older versions.
"
LeftGDF is a different matter. Yes, it'd be hard to guess which key this one
is. I expect, though, that the documentation for the actual device does explain
it. For the most part, we name the keys the same way the manufacturers have.
" It is completely ok to have a code internal naming convention which do not
accurately reflect changes in the design of the external world - as long as
the user documentation is according to the user/producer naming of the
buttons on the device. In case of the Focus 14 blue this is not true. The
user documentation is misleading. " "
Also the documentation of the individual key bindings descriptions are
misleading:
go up one line: LeftWheelUp
If I read "go up one line" I imagine the cursor to go up. But in this
case only the reading focus goes up one line but not the cursor.
"
Yes, that'd be a sighted person's perspective, but it's not a blind person's
perspective. Since these descriptions are meant for quick reference by a blind
person, it's their perspective which must be targeted.
You, as a sighted person, see the whole screen, so, in a single glance, you
kind of know everything it says, where everything is, etc. So, where the cursor
is, which area has special highlighting, etc, is the most important thing you
want to be told about, so it's those areas that you tend to think about when
movement is discussed.
" The different perception of the world does not change the need for a clear
terminology,
well structured documentation and fast access to the things one search.
If you do not agree on this fact we should end our discussion.
To the terminology:
You write:
go left one window
and :
go to end of line
The first operation moves the window one instance to the left.
The later moves the window to the end of the line, but no "window" is
mentioned. Why not mention the "window"at the later?
To the structure and the access:
The list of operations is not structured nor even sorted.
Even the same operations that are represented by more than one key-code have
definition listed 50 lines appart. E.g.
go up one line: LeftWheelUp
...
50 lines
...
go up one line: RightRockerUp
A simple sort operation before putting out this lines would improve the
readability a lot.
And I am pretty sure that also the blind people will be happy about this.
Additional I would like to see some structure:
* Cursor Movement
* Window Movement
* Searching
* Setting Attributes
etc.
>From the perspective of a programmer these are minor tasks from the
>perspective of the user this will be great improvements
in the access time to the information.
"
"
Overall I miss the great picture on what is going on. There is no meta
document that discribes the difference between cursor and reading focus
movement and
this crucial difference is also not reflected in the terminology of the
config files.
"
But it's implicitly understood by blind users.
" Mh. My brother may not have this inbuild implicit insight you attest all
blind users. :-)
Without my help he had never mastered the focus 14 brltty keybindings.
He is very intelligent - has an absolute memory -- he never forget anything
- and learns at a speed of light.
But without knowing the names of the buttons all the documentation of the
keybindings is useless.
It was not possible even for his genius to fiddle it out by try and fail. "
"
You may find a graphical documentation of the BRLTTY Key-Bindings to the
physical keys on the FS Focus 14 here:
<a
href='https://inqbus-hosting.de/volker/focus_14_doku.odg/at_download/file'>https://inqbus-hosting.de/volker/focus_14_doku.odg/at_download/file</a>
"
Including this sort of thing for just one model wouldn't, in and of itself, be
all that useful. It might be extremely useful, however, were we to have such a
picture for each and every model (or, for at least most of them). I'm
wondering, therefore, if you might have the time to put together just such a
collection.
" I would be honored to craft this graphical documentation for the
community.
Since I do not have physical access to all the many braille device brltty
support, I will need some help from the community.
Here is my plan:
1) I will get me an overview of the different devices and their key naming
schemes.
2) These I will compare with the brltty keynames in the documentation and
look for differences.
3) The differences I then will publish for the community to give me hints to
correct or complete.
4) I will produce documentation of the devices and name all the buttons,
levers, rockers according to the brltty notation. I will produce these
graphics
in a way that visual impaired people like my mother (10% sight) can read
it at their reading device easily.
5) A judge will review the documentation and will report to the community.
6) The reviewed documentation will then be published
For all this we need
* a judge
* a medium for collaboration. What medium do blind use to work effectively
together on a single document?
We non blind use etherpad for this task but this is using javascript and
does not works with console browsers like links2.
What do you recommend?
"
It also highlights an interesting "problem". I myself - and, in fact, most of
us - am unable to even check it out in order to aprove it for web site
inclusion. You see, most of us (myself included) are fully blind.
" Recently I have asked Klaus/Adriane Knopper for assistance. I think they
may be a good judge for the quality of my work.
"
"
Tell me how to contribute more ..
"
We'd welcome whatever you may be able to contribute. As mentioned above,
perhaps you could put together a collection of braille device pictures for us
that would assist sighted users.
On the issue of key layouts: Some of our key tables already do contain verbal
descriptions of them. Check out the *.ktb and *.kti files within the
Tables/Input/*/ subdirectories of the source tree for lines which begin with
the keyword "note". After installation, these files end up in the /etc/brltty/
directory. Since verbal descriptions are useful to both blind and sighted
users, completing these descriptions is something that definitely must be done.
" I have checked them out. One Idea my wife has was to give every key
binding some optional tags.
Together with sorting and tagging the list of keybindings can be structured
easily and very personally.
Best Regards
Dr Volker Jaenisch
--
======================================================
inqbus it-consulting Dr. Volker Jaenisch
Richard-Strauß-Str. 1 +49(08861) 690 474 0
86956 Schongau-West <a
href='http://www.inqbus.de'>http://www.inqbus.de</a>
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