On 11/2/06, Michael Yeaney wrote: >What frustrates me most about screen reader software for the web is >the fact that the only way for them to get information from a document >is to flatten and remove ~2/3's (CSS and script) of the factors that >(possibly) are contributing to the presentation as a whole (be it >audio/visual/etc.)
I'd like to respond to this one a little bit later... on to the rest: >1) The isn't any other way to develop the software for the desktop >(you can't change the layout, there are no style sheets to remove, >etc.) There may not be the ability to change the layout, but there are "layout" considerations when developing desktop software. If you are building a desktop application and drag and drop form fields (a convenient example, I'll admit) their tab order is in the order in which they were dragged on to the "form" or "stage" or whatever-the-thing-is-called-in-your-situation. So, what do we do? We make the layout more linear using the tabIndex property. The linear, logical order is the equivalent to layout - it mimics to a certain extent the logical visual layout that is apparent on through visual grouping, proximity and similarity of style. >2) From a 'semantic structure' point of view (if there is such a thing >for desktop software), these type s of applications are a mess - >windows nested within windows ad nauseum (OS windows mind you). I'm not following what you mean here (seriously!) - are you saying that semantic structure doesn't exist in desktop applications? I'm not sure how that applies here... Can you clarify? >3) The are specific API's designed to help convey information to >accessibility clients from the software (Microsoft's Active >Accessibility API comes to mind). Indeed. Windows based screen readers tie directly into the MSA API. VoiceOver on OSX ties in directly to the OSX Accessibility API, and other *nix based screen readers are trying to do the same... >So, in a nutshell, I guess what I'm miffed about is that world of the >web has no matching counterpart, be it in script, tag attributes, or >otherwise, to help accessibility clients discover and convey >information about a site.. Seems like a very big gap, IMO. I don't think the gap is as big as you think it might, to be honest. Cheers, Derek. -- Derek Featherstone [EMAIL PROTECTED] tel: +1 613-599-9784 1-866-932-4878 (toll-free in North America) Web Development: http://www.furtherahead.com Personal: http://www.boxofchocolates.ca Web Standards: http://www.webstandards.org ******************************************************************* List Guidelines: http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm Unsubscribe: http://webstandardsgroup.org/join/unsubscribe.cfm Help: [EMAIL PROTECTED] *******************************************************************
