Am 09/28/2011 03:47 PM, schrieb Jean-Philippe MENGUAL:
Hi,
Very interesting answer, thanks:
I say 'potentially' as the developers in the community will make it a
priority if, and only if, it is clear there is a strong demand for IA2
and someone leads the work and use of it. So I would encourage you to
continue your work of letting us know of the need and also suggest you
guide other users and developers who require IA2 support in AOO to
join in the discussion here. A good approach would be to get folks to
blog about why it is important and we can post links here. That way
the AOO community will be encouraged to work on ensuring there is an
open and accessible Office suite available for Windows. In fact there
may eventually be even more choice for users if AOO becomes the core
used by other projects, as indeed it has the potential to be.
I will try doing that. But I'd like to mention one problem and several elements
which make me think I represent an enormous part of users who want IA2 to be
integrated. The problem is that I have feedbacks essentially from France or
French-speaking people, and they decided me to be intermediate between
English-speaking community and them. So, they have difficulties to write here
directly. The language is a problem for the major part of them.
However, several things make me think there's a large demand:
- In the public administrations in France, where OOo is choosen, we have
thousands of people who work and who are blind or sight-impaired;
- The workgroup "Accessibilité et logiciel libre" (A11y and Free software), from April
(the main French organization which Promote the Free Software in France) asked for this evolution.
It appeared in our "bug tracker" (used to enable not English-speaking users to report
problems so that we forward, as I do now). 4 bugs appear about this issue.
- The LibreOffice project expressed the desire to wait for AOOo integration to
integrate itself IA2 in their utility.
- The problems with OOo are very often denounced on French mailing list of
blind people (for instance, ALLOS mailing list).
- The CFPSAA, an official enormous organization which defends the blind people
rights, published, this June, a newsletter where they explained that migrating
a desktop to OOo was a mistake as it's not accessible (it's a pitty! ). I tried
answering and communicating about this, but of course if such official
organization has this approach, it proves the need.
- I met 60 people in France IRL a few weeks ago, to show them what free
software gives to accessibility. The cain problem where I had to fight was OOo.
Anyway I'll forward your appeal, but I'd like you to know that even if I'm
alone to write, it's a time and language problem. But thousands of people asked
me to do that. It's really major, that's why I try speaking directly to the dev
today. Because when that is fixed, a major limitation will be removed to
migrating to Free software with NVDA and other assistive technologies. If you
want some tests, of course tell me. I can test, make other tests, as
intermediate.
Thanks a lot for underlining your position with some details. I did't
know this and hadn't thought about such a hugh impact.
As I wrote the IA2 technology is coming (AFAIK) from IBM. With Rob and
the other guys we have some employees that can push the integration of
the IA2 code now better than in the past.
So, I'm very confident that we can see big parts but hopefully the
complete code in a AOO relase. However, I think you have to wait after
the 3.4 release.
I hope that we'll have a rough timeline and roadmap for things after the
3.4 release. Please have a look for it and shout when you see that IA2
has not the priority that it should have.
I hope the time to wait is not to long for you. ;-)
Marcus
It's great to hear from Marcus that dev work is under way. It's up to
us in the accessibility community to 'cheer them on'.
So please do encourage the NVDA community to join in here. I'll ping
the developers and let them know of your interest and this thread that
you started.
Ok I'll write to NVDA too.
I stay available,
Best regards,
Thanks again
1:
http://www.linuxfoundation.org/collaborate/workgroups/accessibility/iaccessible2
Steve Lee
OpenDirective
2011/9/27 Jean-Philippe MENGUAL<mengualjean...@free.fr>:
Ok thanks very much for this interesting answer. If you need some
dialogue with NVDA or Orca (Linux), and if I can help as intermediate,
no problem, don't hesitate. I follow the situation as I consider it's a
very important progress to promote better free software in general.
Thanks for your interest.
Regards,
Jean-Philippe MENGUAL
Le mercredi 28 septembre 2011 à 00:05 +0200, Marcus (OOo) a écrit :
Am 09/27/2011 08:58 PM, schrieb Jean-Philippe MENGUAL:
Hi Jean-Philippe,
As ordinary blind user, I work very much to promote OOo and
accessibility free software for blind people. The current problem is
that public administrations, in France, choose OOo, but blind people are
thanks a lot for your effort to promote OOo. :-)
complaining, as they consider it's not perfectly accessible with NVDA
(Free screen reader for Windows). And migrating to Linux isn't always
easy in a network (active directory features, ...).
However, IBM Symphony works fine. My problem is that's not a really free
software. Nethertheless, IBM, according I was told, gave to the Apache
Foundation Iaccessible2, which is the code which enables Symphony to be
perfectly accessible with NVDA.
That's correct.
Could someone study Iaccessible2 and integrate it in OOo? It'd be great
if OOo could be accessible with NVDA in the next stable releases. As no
developper, I'd appreciate if you could tell me when it's integrated, if
someone accepts to do it.
I don't know if it's already completely arrived or if there are still
some things to fix before it can be integrated into the code. However,
we are really working on taking advantage of the IA2 technology. Maybe
Rob can say more about the current status.
It's very unlikely that it will be part of the first AOO release because
of this and nobody knows the side effects that could occur. So, IMHO
expect it not for the coming release but for the following one.
HTH
Marcus
Jean-Philippe MENGUAL
