Hi,
I ah joining the effort with Mozilla if I can.
Thanks,
Alex,
On 29-Dec-08, at 11:56 AM, David Poehlman wrote:
Thanks Ben,
I'll check out the plans for future work and have a look at the info
for building an voiceover accessible ff. y listing of other
development tracks was to show progress with apple accessibility,
not to suggest that they offer solutions for mozilla. My use of the
word excuse is a broad term and refers to the fact that developers
are doing it while mozilla has not as of yet as microsoft has not
yet. It feels to me like but somewhat less now that you have
brought some new info to light that mozilla is stuck in the windows
ATworld and doesn't want to move out of it if they can help it but
I'll look at this and perhaps revise my judgement.
We've already talked about what apple seems to need from mozilla in
order to get results so I hope they get that so that the work can
move forward if it is still needed.
On Dec 29, 2008, at 2:36 PM, Benjamin Hawkes-Lewis wrote:
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
