Alrighty, here goes. First, I need to make clear that I am speaking for myself, and not on behalf of my employer. Also, I am not an expert in the matter, and I have a relatively small amount of personal applied experience with accessibility.
That said, there are a few things that I think are missing. First, accessibility is about more than screen readers, and it is not just about helping people with specific acute disabilities such as deafness and blindness. It is also about helping people who may be able to hear, but just not very well, who may be able to see, but not very well, or who see very well, but just happen to be outside with a laptop and have trouble making out the interface with the reflections from the sun. Many people who are not disabled or who do not see themselves as disabled will nonetheless be served by many different accessibility features. Some examples of possible accessibility enhancements include the ability to: - change screen contrast. - change text size. - manipulate the colour scheme for people with different types of colour blindnesses. - manipulate the size of the target for clickable widgets: bigger targets are easier to click, regardless of whether you have a mobility impairment or not. - magnify the screen. - auto-complete input text. - display captions for audio or video content - applies just as much to someone listening in a noisy environment as to someone who is deaf. Flash player 8 will be able to help with some of the visual features with the filters and blending modes that have been introduced. A filter can be applied that applies specific colour transformations for those who have specific types of colour blindness, or can create a high-contrast version with white text on a black background. Styles can help with text size issues. The next issue is around an accessibility framework for a screen reader. With static content, you can get by with the proposed API, but once the content is dynamic, more is needed. Imagine where a user would normally click on a button, and different parts of the screen are updated. How does someone who is blind know what has been updated? The link below describes some of these issues as they apply to DHTML based pages. The issues for Laszlo are very similar: http://www.w3.org/WAI/PF/roadmap/DHTMLRoadmap110505.html What I understand is needed in a dynamic data situation is at minimum an implementation of state and role information. The state involves being able to broadcast to the accessibility device the fact that something in the interface has changed, and to indicate what that change is. The device must not have to poll the user interface or the model to get these changes. The matter of role is where specific parts of the screen have meta-information in the form of a role property. This role property describes what the widget is supposed to do in the context of an application. Some possible roles include: menu, menuItem, checkbox, pushbutton, toolbar, submit, datagrid, and gridcell. The role information gives the screen reader the ability to give some context to the user and lets the reader provide a way for the user to manipulate the control. The implication of all this is that unfortunately there is a fair bunch of work that is likely still needed to implement a good accessibility API. What I would be curious about is how difficult some of this stuff would be to implement in Laszlo. Again, this is my personal opinion and feedback, not that of my employer. Nathan Derksen Web Media Architect - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - IBM Canada Ltd. Centres for IBM e-business Innovation :: Vancouver 4611 Canada Way, Burnaby, BC Canada V5G 4X3 - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Tel: 778-327-7764 Fax: 778 327-7851 Email: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Max Carlson <[EMAIL PROTECTED] s.com> To Nathan Derksen/CanWest/[EMAIL PROTECTED] 12/05/2005 12:12 cc PM Henry Minsky <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>, laszlo-dev reporting <[email protected]> Subject Re: [Laszlo-dev] Re: how to test the accessibility API from a Windows machine? Please do send that feedback ASAP! We'd love to hear suggestions for making the APIs better! Regards, Max Carlson OpenLaszlo Nathan Derksen wrote: > Yup, definitely important! > > I'm actually intending to comment on the accessibility API, but I want to > get permission for some of the content I have written before I post it. I > can't really speak for IBM, so I just want to cover my butt :-) > > Nathan Derksen > Web Media Architect > - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - > - - - > IBM Canada Ltd. > Centres for IBM e-business Innovation :: Vancouver > 4611 Canada Way, Burnaby, BC > Canada V5G 4X3 > - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - > - - - > Tel: 778-327-7764 > Fax: 778 327-7851 > Email: [EMAIL PROTECTED] > > > > > Henry Minsky > <[EMAIL PROTECTED] > il.com> To > Nathan Derksen/CanWest/[EMAIL > PROTECTED] > 12/05/2005 09:42 cc > AM laszlo-dev reporting > <[email protected]> > Subject > Re: [Laszlo-dev] Re: how to test > the accessibility API from a > Windows machine? > > > > > > > > > > > Thanks, now I see why the "focusable" and taborder stuff needs to work > for for arbitrary views... > > > On 12/5/05, Nathan Derksen <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > Well, consider that someone using a screen reader is going to be using > the > keyboard, not the mouse. Mouse events are not going to be of much help in > this instance. You will also need to set aasilent="false", if I am not > mistaken. > > Nathan Derksen > Web Media Architect > - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - > - > - - - > IBM Canada Ltd. > Centres for IBM e-business Innovation :: Vancouver > 4611 Canada Way, Burnaby, BC > Canada V5G 4X3 > - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - > - > - - - > Tel: 778-327-7764 > Fax: 778 327-7851 > Email: [EMAIL PROTECTED] > > > > > > Henry Minsky > <[EMAIL PROTECTED] > il.com> > To > Sent by: Max Carlson <[EMAIL PROTECTED] > > > laszlo-dev-bounce > cc > [EMAIL PROTECTED] laszlo-dev reporting > <[email protected]> > > Subject > 12/04/2005 10:12 [Laszlo-dev] Re: how to test the > PM accessibility API from a Windows > machine? > > > > > > > > > > > Max, > > How would I implement the following behavior; I have a movieclip which I > want to "speak" some text when I move the mouse over it. I need to put > this > on "movieclip" rather than > on LzView, because I'm implementing the "alt" text feature for the <img> > tag inside of htmlText of a TextField (in an LzText view). I have access > to the actual MovieClip object that is being displayed, and I tried > adding > a _accProps object to it, but it > doesn't seem to speak when I move the mouse over it. > > For that matter, if I have an LzView that has an image resource, how do I > attach alternate text to it? I tried some variants of this as: > > <view id="foo" > resource="horse2" > aadescription="nice horsey" > aaname="pretty horsey" > width="200" height="140" bgcolor="yellow"/> > > > but it never gets read by the screen reader program when I mouse over it. > Is there > something explicit I need to do? > > _______________________________________________ > Laszlo-dev mailing list > [email protected] > http://www.openlaszlo.org/mailman/listinfo/laszlo-dev > > > > > > -- > Henry Minsky > Software Architect > [EMAIL PROTECTED] > > > _______________________________________________ > Laszlo-dev mailing list > [email protected] > http://www.openlaszlo.org/mailman/listinfo/laszlo-dev > _______________________________________________ Laszlo-dev mailing list [email protected] http://www.openlaszlo.org/mailman/listinfo/laszlo-dev
