On Sun, Dec 28, 2008 at 4:23 PM, David Poehlman <[email protected]> wrote: > Firefox like any other application can be made to be accessible just like > any other application.
I think they're aiming for something a bit better than that; they're trying to make the web accessible, not produce a half-accessible application that nobody will use. If Firefox uses custom controls, but the Accessibility API is broken by design so that its provision for custom controls is unusable (e.g. no notifications for custom controls), or broken by implementation such that the custom controls make VoiceOver unusably slow, then there's really little value in the exercise of trying to integrate with VoiceOver. There might, by contrast, be some value in improving the Fire Vox add-on. The interesting question, I think, is why Opera seems to be having better luck with VoiceOver integration since I'd assume they too are using custom controls. It may be they've essentially postponed worrying about some of the critical issues Mozilla is trying to solve, like Live Regions. I haven't exactly heard any rave reviews of their performance from this list. I don't know if that reflects caution about trying Opera or problems with the software. I've seen some very strange navigation ordering in Opera, but then I've seen similarly bizarre navigation ordering in Safari. -- Benjamin Hawkes-Lewis
