On 29/12/08 17:51, David Poehlman wrote:
all well and good but the statements below demonstrate that it is
possible for them to make ff accessible.
It's possible if you (or anyone else) can offer code that solves the
problems they've run into.
I don't know how oo was made
accessible, I don't know how opera was made accessible
That doesn't sound like a position of strength from which to dismiss the
difficulties these developers encountered as "excuses".
I do know though that they point the way to others.
How? Have the OpenOffice.org developers produced any code that solves
Mozilla's problems?
look at tables too.
How? Is the Tables developer offering code solutions to Mozilla's problems?
I'm sorry, All
this shows me is what the excuses are and not what the real problems
are.
Why are these "excuses" not "real problems"? If they aren't "real
problems", what would a theoretical example of a "real problem" be?
Yes, I do know that there is some information lacking but to stop
short of accessibility using coco because "we don't want to do it that
way" is not enouh to convince me that there is a problem that prevents
accessibility.
I'm not clear how your vaguely expressed conception of "accessibility
using Cocoa" differs from what all three vendors (Apple, Opera, Mozilla)
are attempting, with varying success, to provide.
If you're just talking about widgets sets, Apple and Mozilla (and I'd
bet Opera too, though I can't find any official statement to that
effect) are not providing "accessibility using Cocoa" using native Aqua
widgets for good reason - because they can't do the job required of
browser widgets - not from pure caprice as you imply.
You said yourself that they
turned their attention elsewhere and haven't worked on this since 06.
While progress ran into the ground, I didn't say anything about stopping
in 2006. To quote Aaron's blog post and subsequent comments:
"Håkan made multiple attempts from 2006-2008 to get assistance from
Apple, and received replies but no follow-up. … the Mozilla team is
planning to give VoiceOver compatibility another shot this year [2009]"
http://accessgarage.wordpress.com/2008/08/21/firefox-and-os-xs-voiceover-reading-the-magic-8-ball/
I think talking about "they" is rather problematic here, anyways. A lot
of progress in an open source project happens because a person chooses
to devote their time and energy to making that progress happen. The last
person who tried to do this (Håkan) for Mac OS X accessibility for
Firefox found it a frustrating experience. Other people have other
hobby-horses.
The excuses though need to be revealed for what they are.
These problems to which you offer no solutions are not being presented
as "excuses"; and simply saying they are "excuses" doesn't make them so
or make them disappear.
> I'll be happy to use ff on the mac when I can.
Well, if you want to experiment with things in the state they are - and
experience any performance problems and bugs first hand - you can
apparently build Firefox for the Mac with accessibility enabled:
http://mindforks.blogspot.com/2007/10/building-firefox-with-accessibility-on.html
https://wiki.mozilla.org/Mac:Accessibility
--
Benjamin Hawkes-Lewis
