RE: [libreoffice-accessibility] Windows LO with JAWS

[Alex Midence]

I've done it before.  They didn't seem to care.  The guy told me LO needed to 
be written to use UIA.  Very depressing.  So, I gave up and started using IBM 
Lotus Symphony on Windows and only use LibreOffice on Linux ever since.

-Original Message-
From: David Goldfield [mailto:dgoldfield1...@gmail.com] 
Sent: Friday, May 4, 2018 4:19 PM
To: V Stuart Foote ; 
accessibility@global.libreoffice.org
Subject: Re: [libreoffice-accessibility] Windows LO with JAWS

This is distressing. Several years ago, JAWS was working reasonably well with 
LibreOffice, if my memory is correct, but I have also encountered the same 
problem with more recent versions. As you say, NVDA offers much better support. 
While NVDA has been my screen reader of choice for nine years I would encourage 
users of JAWS to contact VFO at supp...@vfo.com to let them know your feelings 
regarding the lack of support being offered by JAWS for this excellent suite.



David Goldfield, Assistive Technology Specialist WWW.David-Goldfield.Com On 
5/4/2018 2:59 PM, V Stuart Foote wrote:
> Bryen Yunashko wrote
>> ... A couple of months ago, I installed LibreOffice and had great 
>> difficulty because often when I started up LO, Jaws would stop 
>> working and then restart itself.
>>
>> A number of buttons and fields didn't work either.   So, I put it aside
>> for a while.   This week I decided to try again and asked someone to
>> update the latest LO as the inplace update button wasn't accessible 
>> for me.
>>
>> Now, when I start LO, it does not even speak anything.  It is completely
>> "hidden."   But I know LO is actually running because I will randomly type
>> some text, then press Alt+F4 to close the program and I get a prompt 
>> to save or discard my file.
>>
>> But while LO is open, nothing works.  No menu button, tabs, arrow 
>> keys, nothing.
>>
>> Is this a known problem?
> Completely normal...
>
> LibreOffice implements a native Windows accessibility bridge based on 
> the opensource IAccessible2 API
>
> Reference:
> http://accessibility.linuxfoundation.org/a11yspecs/ia2/docs/html/
>
> Unfortunately for JAWS users Freedom Scientific has never seen fit to 
> implement modular support for IA2, so the short answer is it is known 
> and JAWS willl not work with LibreOffice.
>
> You will need to install NVDA as a free and open source Windows backup 
> to JAWS. The screen reader navigation is a bit different--but fidelity 
> of IA2 accessible content is much better.  LibreOffice accessible 
> event based support is pretty complete--and its screen review/Graphics 
> API "screen scraping" rounds things out.
>
> Available here:
> https://www.nvaccess.org/
>
> Let us know how you make out.
>
>
>
>
>
> --
> Sent from: 
> http://nabble.documentfoundation.org/Accessibility-f2006038.html
>


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RE: [libreoffice-accessibility] LibreOffice Impress : Slide show mode with Orca seems not working

[Alex Midence]

Hi, Alex,

I have never been able to use the slideshow mode effectively.  I always had to 
export the slide shows to html and read it with a browser.  Impress is very 
difficult to use with Orca and has been this way since forever.  You sound like 
you may have a better idea of why it doesn't work well than most people I've 
encountered who run against this difficulty.  Looks like filing a bug is the 
way to go although I've been using some form of Open Office/Libreoffice since 
2010 and the problem was well-known and long-standing even six years ago.  I 
would be flabbergasted to find out that absolutely no one who works with its 
accessibility was aware of the issue and that a bug hadn't been already filed 
somewhere.  This is not new, folks.

Alex M


-Original Message-
From: Sophie [mailto:gautier.sop...@gmail.com] 
Sent: Thursday, July 21, 2016 7:04 AM
To: accessibility@global.libreoffice.org
Subject: Re: [libreoffice-accessibility] LibreOffice Impress : Slide show mode 
with Orca seems not working

Hi Alex,
Le 20/07/2016 à 11:57, Alex ARNAUD a écrit :
> Dear LibreOffice and Orca folks,
> 
> I'm trying to use the slide show mode of LibreOffice Impress with some 
> difficulties. I'm able to activate it but Orca stays silent at 
> start/exit of the mode and when I switch between slides with the left 
> or right arrow.

Did you search for an existing bug on this and/or did you fill a bug?
> 
> I've investigated a little bit on Accerciser and It seems that 
> LibreOffice sends information but no event "page change" and maybe a 
> wrong accessibility tree for slide show mode.
> Could someone explain what me  LibreOffice does wrong on the slide 
> show mode ?
> 
> When we switch between pages, what do you want to be announced by Orca ?

Are you willing to fix the bug? in that case, the best list to discuss about 
Orca's feedback should be UX/design list.

Cheers
Sophie

It's up to you to help
> 
> Best regards.
> 


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RE: [libreoffice-accessibility] Screen reader does not read impress presentations

[Alex Midence]

Hi,

In order to read presentations written in Impress, you will need to export them 
to html from the file menu and read them with a browser.  Unfortunately, 
Impress doesn't have much accessibility support on either Windows or Linux.  

Alex M


-Original Message-
From: josé alberto Vázquez maranto [mailto:beto_vazq...@outlook.com] 
Sent: Wednesday, November 04, 2015 12:45 PM
To: accessibility@global.libreoffice.org
Subject: [libreoffice-accessibility] Screen reader does not read impress 
presentations

Hi all, and used LibreOffice in its latest version and me and noticed that my 
NVDA screen reader reads not impress presentations. Is it possible to add 
support for reading the presentations with this screen reader? Or is it 
possible to implement some method to read them? Thank you very much for your 
answers.

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RE: [libreoffice-accessibility] LibreOffice 4.2 and Window-eyes 8.4

[Alex Midence]

It would surprise me to see fast turnaround on this issue.  Window Eyes
recently signed a deal with Microsoft making their product free for users of
Microsoft Office 2010 and higher.  This makes me doubt that any serious
resources will be dedicated towards this issue on their part as there could
exist a conflict of interest.  They do, however, have a thriving user
community that frequently submits scripts and plugins from whom a solution
may come some day.  Just don't expect it to be real soon.  I'd recommend you
use NVDA which can be installed along side any commercial screen reader and
just deactivate Window eyes when you are in Libre Office in favor of NVDA.  

Regards,
Alex M


-Original Message-
From: V Stuart Foote [mailto:vstuart.fo...@utsa.edu] 
Sent: Monday, February 03, 2014 10:25 AM
To: accessibility@global.libreoffice.org
Subject: Re: [libreoffice-accessibility] LibreOffice 4.2 and Window-eyes 8.4

@Marco, *,

Thanks.  Heard back from GW Micro, they said use a Java JRE and JAB. 
Mentioned that JAB support was being dropped for both projects.  Response
was a non-committal, that they would  "pass this on to our developers for
investigation".

>From: Marco Zehe 
>Sent: Monday, February 03, 2014 1:21 AM
>
>Hi Stuart,
>
>I can reproduce this. This is another indication of the way WindowEyes 
>is architected. They have support for IAccessible2, at least they use 
>it in part in Firefox, but their support is not crafted in a way that 
>it can be used universally, but is either used or enabled on a per-app 
>basis. My fear is that, if they enable it for Apache OpenOffice, this 
>may not automatically mean they would use it for LibreOffice, too. 
>Their current tailoring simply does not take into account that the 
>LibreOffice interface may change from JAB to something else. 
>Frustrating, but that's the way this thing works apparently.
>
>So no error on your part! :)
>
>Marco



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RE: [libreoffice-accessibility] Re: [MariaDB Announce] MariaDB Java Client 1.1.4 Released

[Alex Midence]

I think the Fedora people will benefit especially from this.  They stopped
using Mysql as the stock LAMP database engine and switched to Maria if
memory serves.  You have to put in a special package request distinguishing
mysql form it or you will get Maria even if you ask for mysql.  

Alex M

-Original Message-
From: Tom Davies [mailto:tomdavie...@yahoo.co.uk] 
Sent: Tuesday, September 10, 2013 12:45 PM
To: us...@global.libreoffice.org; Accessibility@Global.LibreOffice.Org
Subject: [libreoffice-accessibility] Re: [MariaDB Announce] MariaDB Java
Client 1.1.4 Released

Hi :)
I don't know if anyone uses MariaDb as a back-end for Base here but i
thought maybe a few people might be interested in this recent announcement
from them.  

Regards from 
Tom :)  





 From: MariaDB Announce List 
To: annou...@mariadb.org 
Sent: Tuesday, 10 September 2013, 18:21
Subject: [MariaDB Announce] MariaDB Java Client 1.1.4 Released
 

The MariaDB project is pleased to announce the immediate availability
of the MariaDB Java Client 1.1.4. This is a Stable (GA) release.

- - Links  - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

MariaDB Java Client 1.1.4
  - Release Notes:
      https://mariadb.com/kb/en/mariadb-java-client-114-release-notes/
  - Changelog:
      https://mariadb.com/kb/en/mariadb-java-client-114-changelog/
  - Downloads:
      https://downloads.mariadb.org/client-java/1.1.4/

  Overview of the MariaDB Java Client:
      https://kb.askmonty.org/en/about-the-mariadb-java-client/


- - Quality - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

The project always strives for quality, but in reality, nothing is
perfect. Please take time to report any issues you encounter at:

  http://mariadb.org/jira


- - Support MariaDB - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

If you would like to contribute to MariaDB, please see our
"contributing" and "donations" pages. We also have merchandise
available in a cafepress store.

- https://kb.askmonty.org/en/contributing

- https://mariadb.org/en/donate/

- http://www.cafepress.com/mariadb

We hope you enjoy MariaDB!

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RE: [libreoffice-accessibility] Libo 4.0.5 and Accessibility/Follow-up

[Alex Midence]

How long will Java be needed for Libreoffice accessibility in Windows
anyway?  Isn't the iaccessibility2 code being merged in at some point?  


-Original Message-
From: David Goldfield [mailto:dgold...@asb.org] 
Sent: Wednesday, August 28, 2013 12:28 PM
To: V Stuart Foote
Cc: accessibility@global.libreoffice.org
Subject: RE: [libreoffice-accessibility] Libo 4.0.5 and
Accessibility/Follow-up

Stuart,
I understand these instructions, but I'm sure you'll agree that this level
of preparation may be way beyond the capabilities of many computer novices.
I'm a professional computer class instructor, and it would be unreasonable
for me to expect many of my students to perform these tasks.  I guess I'm
wondering if the Libreoffice installer could automate some of these
functions during the installation process.  To an extent, the program
already does this with the checkbox allowing for a.t. support to be enabled.
This was a nice change, which I really appreciate.  I'd like to see the
developers take this a few steps further by implementing the changes you
outlined in your message during the installation process, to make it easier
for new users.  However, I'll be sure to save this message for the future.
Thank you for these instructions.

 


David Goldfield
Computer Technology Instructor
919 Walnut Street
4th Floor
Philadelphia, PA  19107

215-627-0600 ext 3277
FAX:  215-922-0692

mailto:dgold...@asb.org 
http://www.asb.org


Serving Philadelphia's and the nation's blind and visually impaired
population since 1874.

 
-Original Message-
From: V Stuart Foote [mailto:vstuart.fo...@utsa.edu] 
Sent: Wednesday, August 28, 2013 1:05 PM
To: accessibility@global.libreoffice.org
Subject: RE: [libreoffice-accessibility] Libo 4.0.5 and
Accessibility/Follow-up

David,

You have to make sure that the JRE, with its JAB activated,  has been
enabled in LibreOffice.

First,  enable the JAB.  Open a command window "run as administrator" and
execute:

"C:\Program Files\Java\jre7\bin\jabswitch.exe" -enable

Second,  enable JRE support within a LibreOffice session:

ALT-T
ALT-O
A (for appearance)
A (for Accessibility)
A (for Advanced)
TAB into Java Options -- Checkbox "Use a Java runtime environment" -- space
to toggle ON/OFF  be sure it is checked TAB into Java runtime environments
(JRE) already installed -- Radio button "Oracle corporation 1.7.0_25  with
accessibility support"
TAB out of the Panel to reach the OK button.

Then merge LibreOfficeAccessibilitySupport.reg

the attached/uploaded Windows Registry file that has this text:

===start===
Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\LibreOffice\Accessibility\AtToolSupport]
"SupportAssistiveTechnology"="true"
===end===

Stuart

> -Original Message-
> From: David Goldfield [mailto:dgold...@asb.org]
> Sent: Wednesday, August 28, 2013 11:43 AM
> To: V Stuart Foote
> Subject: RE: [libreoffice-accessibility] Libo 4.0.5 and 
> Accessibility/Follow-up
> 
> Hi, Stuart,
> I'm actually using a 32-bit Windows 7 Pro machine.  As I've said, I've 
> gotten
> 4.0.5 to work but only if I use GW Micro's JAB installer, which comes 
> with the Window-eyes screen reader.  If I install Java, even from the 
> java.com Web site, accessibility with 4.0.5 is nonexistent and it 
> works as though a.t.
> support
> has been disabled.
> 
> 
> 
> David Goldfield
> Computer Technology Instructor
> 919 Walnut Street
> 4th Floor
> Philadelphia, PA  19107
> 
> 215-627-0600 ext 3277
> FAX:  215-922-0692
> 
> mailto:dgold...@asb.org
> http://www.asb.org
> 
> 
> Serving Philadelphia's and the nation's blind and visually impaired 
> population since 1874.
> 




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RE: [libreoffice-accessibility] Comments on using Calc 4.0.5 with NVDA

[Alex Midence]

You might want to cc the NVDA list on that one.  It could be that there is
something they can do faster on their end to ameliorate the situation.  It
may also yield some more technical explanations for why it behaves this way
with LIbreoffice i.e. some control is being exposed in a different way and
NVDA interacts with it incorrectly ETC.

HTH,
Alex M


-Original Message-
From: David Goldfield [mailto:dgold...@asb.org] 
Sent: Wednesday, August 28, 2013 7:50 AM
To: accessibility@global.libreoffice.org
Subject: [libreoffice-accessibility] Comments on using Calc 4.0.5 with NVDA

Hello.
I've done some preliminary testing with Calc and NVDA.  NVDA properly reads
the cell coordinates as well as any data contained within the cell as you
use the arrow keys.  This is how screen readers handle spreadsheets in
excel, and this is good news.  However, if I type any data within a cell,
pressing arrow keys after I enter any data reads too much information,
namely the title of the open workbook folowed by instructions telling me
that I can edit or enter data.  It does this every time I use arrow keys to
move from cell to cell.  When I compared this to the behavior in OpenOffice,
I noticed that OpenOffice does not have this bug and allows me to just hear
the cell and its corresponding data while arrowing through the spreadsheet.
Again, Libreoffice only begins reading too much information after I enter
data into a cell.




David Goldfield
Computer Technology Instructor
919 Walnut Street
4th Floor
Philadelphia, PA  19107

215-627-0600 ext 3277
FAX:  215-922-0692

dgold...@asb.org
www.asb.org

Serving Philadelphia's and the nation's blind and visually impaired
population since 1874.






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RE: [libreoffice-accessibility] LibreOffice 4.0.5

[Alex Midence]

Awesome news.  I personally won't lose much sleep over there being no
improvements on Linux a11y right now in this version.  Windows and Mac are
where there needs to be the most work.  The version for Linux is by far the
most accessible of them all right now.

Alex M


-Original Message-
From: Niklas Johansson [mailto:sleeping.pil...@gmail.com] 
Sent: Thursday, August 22, 2013 11:26 AM
To: accessibility@global.libreoffice.org
Subject: [libreoffice-accessibility] LibreOffice 4.0.5

LibreOffice 4.0.5 was released today and I just wanted to make you all aware
that there are at least two accessibility related fixes included in this
release.

Windows:
As Stuart announced earlier the Java Accessibility Bridge is now fixed for
Java 7. This is the first release in the 4.0-series of LibreOffice that
includes this patch. David did a great job with this patch.

Mac:
The first patches from Boris will be in this release. It is a patch to make
VoiceOver follow the keyboard focus. This is a huge step for the
accessibility support on Mac. There are a more improvements to come in later
versions of LibreOffice, such as typing echo information about text
attributes etc. I do not know exactly when these improvements will be
available but they should be in LibreOffice 4.2-series which will be
released in the beginning of next year (~february).

Linux:
Sorry to say that I do not know of any improvements for the Linux version.

See: Stuarts announcement


--
Cheers,
Niklas Johansson


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Re: [libreoffice-accessibility] where's the accessibility?

[Alex Midence]

I tried browsing the code and found nothing on that link that was
posted.  I don't guess any has been moved in yet.

Alex M

On 12/21/12, Tom Davies  wrote:
> Hi :)
> Would it be possible for someone to copy the code en-masse to make sure we
> get it all.  Then we can pick through what bits we can't keep later?
> Regards from
> Tom :)
>
>
>
>
>
>>
>> From: Dennis E. Hamilton 
>>To: 'Simon Eigeldinger' ;
>> accessibility@global.libreoffice.org
>>Sent: Thursday, 20 December 2012, 18:46
>>Subject: RE: [libreoffice-accessibility] where's the accessibility?
>>
>>Some Symphony code has been donated to Apache OpenOffice, including the
>> IAccessibility2 support.  The IP in the code needs to be cleaned up; the
>> current approach is to clean the license as it is integrated into AOO.
>> One of the Symphony-experienced developers just set up a branch to do the
>> IAccessibility2 integration, which would then be available under Apache
>> ALv2 license.
>>
>>It is difficult to know how this work will advance to readiness for
>> integration into a release, although it might be available for
>> cherry-picking into LibreOffice before that.
>>
>>For anyone wanting to follow-along at home, the code branch is in the AOO
>> SVN at
>>.  I haven't
>> paid attention enough to know if any check-ins have happened yet.
>>
>>- Dennis
>>
>>-Original Message-
>>From: Simon Eigeldinger [mailto:simon.eigeldin...@vol.at]
>>Sent: Thursday, December 20, 2012 10:06
>>To: accessibility@global.libreoffice.org
>>Subject: Re: [libreoffice-accessibility] where's the accessibility?
>>
>>hi,
>>
>>i just had time to check it out a little bit better.
>>
>>here are some examples:
>>
>>Using NVDA daily build Main 5723, java 7 update 9 with accessibility
>> bridge:
>>
>>Writer:
>>Start writer and then open the export as pdf dialog. you might be
>>figuring out that you can't navigate the dialog with the tab key. or
>>actually you can but the accessibility bridge seems not to know what to
>>do with that dialog at all.
>>also when you wrote something and you exit you can't read the dialog
>>where it asks you if it should save the changes to the document.
>>
>>calc:
>>start calc then enter some numbers for example in a1 you type 422 then
>>you down arrow to go to the next cell and enter 319 in a2. then you
>>arrow back up again to a1 and you might figure out that the screenreader
>>kind of gets interupted by saying something of toolbar and other stuff.
>>
>>
>>there are also more things like it seems that the options dialog seems
>>not to be accessible sometimes.
>>
>>i read somewhere that IBM symphony has been discontinued and IBM might
>>donate some code to LibreOffice.
>>Let's hope they also donate the accessibility code as well cause i heard
>>it works nicely with windows screenreaders.
>>
>>greetings,
>>simon
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>Am 11.12.2012 20:07, schrieb V Stuart Foote:
>>> Simon,
>>>
>>> Good that you now have working Accessibility with LibreOffice Assistive
>>> Technology tools.  But as you've now experienced for Windows users there
>>> are
>>> warts between what is implemented in the UNO Accessibility API (UAA)
>>> and
>>> what is passed to Java Accessibility API (JAA) via the Java Access
>>> Bridge.
>>>
>>> Try to identify specifics of what you believe is not working.  Also,
>>> work
>>> against an example document that you can share with developers and QA
>>> volunteers. Be specific as it would need to be reproducible and we'll
>>> need
>>> to be able to isolate the accessibility component that is involved.  In
>>> a
>>> sense build a test case, one that could be tested on Windows as well as
>>> on
>>> Linux and OSX.
>>>
>>> Stuart
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> --
>>> View this message in context:
>>> http://nabble.documentfoundation.org/libreoffice-accessibility-where-s-the-accessibility-tp4023600p4023806.html
>>> Sent from the Accessibility mailing list archive at Nabble.com.
>>>
>>
>>--
>>Simon Eigeldinger
>>Follow me on Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/domasofan/
>>E-Mail: simon.eigeldin...@vol.at
>>MSN: simon_eigeldin...@hotmail.com
>>ICQ: 121823966
>>Jabber: domaso...@livejournal.com
>>
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RE: [libreoffice-accessibility] Re: [libreoffice-users] Re: LibreOffice and VoiceOver

[Alex Midence]

Isn't there some port of open/libreoffice specifically designed for the Mac
called Neo Office or something like that?  Might that work for him?

Alex M



-Original Message-
From: Tom Davies [mailto:tomdavie...@yahoo.co.uk] 
Sent: Thursday, November 29, 2012 11:07 AM
To: accessibility@global.libreoffice.org; Patrick Adams
Subject: [libreoffice-accessibility] Re: [libreoffice-users] Re: LibreOffice
and VoiceOver

Hi :)
I am just forwarding this to the Accessibility List just in case anyone here
knows something Alex doesn't.  Alex is usually very up-to-date but i can
always hope that things are better on Mac.  

Regards from 
Tom :)  






>
> From: Alexander Thurgood 
>To: us...@global.libreoffice.org 
>Sent: Thursday, 29 November 2012, 16:38
>Subject: [libreoffice-users] Re: LibreOffice and VoiceOver
> 
>Le 29/11/12 16:21, Patrick Adams a écrit :
>
>Hi Patrick,
>
>>
>> Please someone tell me this maybe a faulty installation and what I can do
about that (yes I can download again but don't want to waste time if this
lack of accessibility for VoiceOver is reality. Or perhaps there are some
settings that need altering, I could not make any sense of the settings
window, nothing worked and nothing led to anywhere.
>> 
>> Can anyone help?
>
>Sorry to disappoint you, but LibreOffice is not "fully accessible" on
>the Mac. Your experience pretty much sums up the limited support for
>people with disabilities on that platform attempting to use LibreOffice.
>
>In addition, using VoiceOver and other accessibility tools with
>LibreOffice is known to cause random crashes. The reason is that the
>accessibility calls rely on an obsolescent programming interface which
>has since officially been declared deprecated by Apple, so until someone
>within the project manages to convince a Mac developer to join and help
>fix those issues, your problems will not be solved. There are or were
>plans to integrate IBM's developments for Symphony of a newer
>accessibility API into LibreOffice, but that has not happened for the
>moment as far as I know, and yet we keep hearing about it every now and
>then.
>
>
>For the time being, your best bet is to stick to the application that
>currently works best for you, but I sincerely doubt that that
>application is LibreOffice.
>
>
>
>Alex
>
>
>-- 
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>
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>
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RE: [libreoffice-accessibility] Re: Funding Wishlist

[Alex Midence]

Hi,
One area that I'd like addressed is Impress accessibility in Linux.  The 
authoring and presenting experience is far behind that which can be had using 
MS tools on Windows with a screen reader.  I am a professional trainer and use 
presentation software every day.  If my company were to move away from 
Microsoft and embrace either Libre or Open Office, it would be a disaster for 
me as I rely heavily on Powerpoint to do my job.  

I'd certainly like for all the accessibility stuff to be fixed in Windows but 
others have mentioned it so, I thought I'd bring up something far more close to 
home for me.  

Thanks.
Alex

-Original Message-
From: Christophe Strobbe [mailto:stro...@hdm-stuttgart.de] 
Sent: Tuesday, November 20, 2012 10:39 AM
To: m...@marcpare.com; LibO Mailing List Accessibility; Florian Effenberger
Subject: Re: [libreoffice-accessibility] Re: Funding Wishlist

Hi,


(I was away from this list for a while because I moved to a different employer 
and a different country earlier this year.)


Am Di, 20.11.2012, 16:48 schrieb Marc Paré:
> (...)
> To the accessibility team, if there was funding available for such a 
> thing, what would your items be and in order of preference. I know in 
> my local school boards Dragon Speaking is a requirement, that is, 
> unless there is an equivalent replacement.
>

That's an interesting question, since I prepared a presentation on LibreOffice 
accessibility for FOSDEM 2012 but I had to cancel it (force majeure, basically).

The issues can be divided into two categories:
1. The accessibility of LibreOffice itself. The most important blocker is the 
missing implementation of IAccessible2 (the Java Accessibility API is not 
sufficiently supported on Windows). There are also a few issues on Gnome. (My 
presentation for FOSDEM contained bug IDs etc.) 2. Features that allow you to 
create accessible content - not only accessible ODF documents, but also formats 
that you can "save as" or export, e.g. HTML and PDF.  (Again, my presentation 
for FOSDEM contained bug IDs etc.)

I would say that the IAccessible2 issue is the biggest one. It's been a while 
since I was involved in discussions about this, but the LibreOffice developers 
were basically waiting for the IAccessible2 implementation in OpenOffice.org, 
which they would then borrow. (In order to avoid duplication of efforts.)

I'm sure other list members will chime in with comments.



>
> Another funding wishlist item could be that the TDF/LibreOffice help 
> fund an Accessibility conference where some of the leading members of 
> the accessibility team along with other interested partners could meet 
> to try to solve bottlenecks in development for LibreOffice.

Not sure if it necessary to fund a conference. Do you mean travel costs?
The LibreOffice conferences should be good opportunities, but my experience in 
Paris last year was that it is difficult to get developers to attend an 
accessibility presentation when there are technical tracks running in parallel.


>
> It is sometimes good to meet as a team with 3rd party software 
> providers to see what kind of progress or what type of cooperative 
> development could take place.

This reminds me of earlier work to enable OOo support in Dragon Naturally
Speaking:
.
I don't know if this still works.


Best regards,

Christophe


>
> ===
>
> Would there be any other items that you could think of to put on your 
> wishlist?
>
> Cheers,
>
> Marc
>
>
> --
> Marc Paré
> m...@marcpare.com
> http://www.parEntreprise.com
> parEntreprise.com Supports OpenDocument Formats (ODF) 
> parEntreprise.com Supports http://www.LibreOffice.org
>
> --
> Unsubscribe instructions: E-mail to
> accessibility+h...@global.libreoffice.org
>


--
Christophe Strobbe
Akademischer Mitarbeiter
Adaptive User Interfaces Research Group
Hochschule der Medien
Nobelstraße 10
70569 Stuttgart
Tel. +49 711 8923 2749


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Re: [libreoffice-accessibility] Ubuntu LiveCd & Wubi - was Java Nightmare

[Alex Midence]

Yes, please do not install it on your machine or it will wipe your
entire hard drive and probably drive you insane and you will curse our
names to kingdom come.  You do *not* want to choose the install
option.  You want to choose the try it option which doesn't install it
but rather runs your OS in such a manner that it pretends your
computer's ram is a harddrive.  It's amazing.  If you are going to
install the thing, get a computer you don't mind wiping clean.
There's some cheap ones on eBay.  You could get one for like a hundred
bucks or something that windows would turn it's nose up at but Ubuntu
would run like a charm on.

Regards,
Alex M



On 9/2/12, Tom Davies  wrote:
> Hi :)
> Most versions of Linux have a "Live Cd" option.  When it really gets down to
> it all the different versions of Linux are pretty much the same "under the
> bonnet".  Ubuntu 12.04 sounds like the best one to try first at the moment.
>
>
> The tricky bit is that your machine's Bios might not be set-up to allow
> booting from Cd.  I suspect that you can edit the Bios yourself.  Most users
> can't but then most people have trouble installing software at all.  The
> added complication is that the Bios probably doesn't have a screen-reader so
> you might need to get someone else to follow your instructions to do it.
> Let us know if it would be good to have some screen-shots of typically
> bioses or google it.
>
> Hopefully you wont need to worry about all that and the Cd will just boot
> happily.
> Regards from
> Tom :)
>
>
> --- On Sun, 2/9/12, Tom Randall  wrote:
>
> From: Tom Randall 
> Subject: Re: [libreoffice-accessibility] Ubuntu LiveCd & Wubi - was Java
> Nightmare
> To: "Alex Midence" 
> Cc: accessibility@global.libreoffice.org
> Date: Sunday, 2 September, 2012, 2:37
>
> Hi Tom and Alex and all.
> This is good information and I am definitely going to look into it sometime
> in the near future.  I had looked at ubuntu a while back as well as Vinux.
> I frankly don't care much which one I run again so long as it works.  I
> will
> probably try the Ubuntu live cd solution first and then if that seems to
> work halfway decent on this machine and if I don't have to jump through a
> bunch of hoops to get speech up and running I will probably go ahead and
> install it.  As I said before I've toyed with Linux in the past even way
> back in the day when you had to run it through a terminal and it's
> something
> I've kind of wanted to get back into.  I don't have a huge hd in this thing
> at the moment, I believe it's a 300GB but I can pick up a bigger one pretty
> cheap at some point.  Even if I don't do that right away I could probably
> make Windows lose 50GB or so to install ubuntu and not miss it too much.
> I'd have to resize my Windows partition but I think I have the software to
> do that someplace around here.
> Fortunately I have found a reasonable solution that gives me some breathing
> space while I figure this out.  As I said in another message I do have a
> MacBook as well as a pc so I can teach people how to use VoiceOver.  I have
> LO installed on this and while there are some pretty serious access issues
> particularly in the preferences section that make it pretty impossible to
> change things, accessibility in writer and calc themselves are good enough
> that I am able to do what I need to for now.  I will go on the ubuntu site
> maybe this evening or tomorrow and check it out.
> Laters.
> Tom
>
> -Original Message- From: Tom Davies
> Sent: Thursday, August 30, 2012 7:12 AM
> To: Alex Midence ; Tom Randall
> Cc: accessibility@global.libreoffice.org
> Subject: [libreoffice-accessibility] Ubuntu LiveCd & Wubi - was Java
> Nightmare
>
> Hi :)
> Ahhh, a LiveCd session of Ubuntu 12.04 sounds like a fast way to a quick
> result.
>
> I guess a fresh install of 12.04 on a new partition would have things set up
> right too?  About 10-20Gb is a comfortable amount of space for Ubuntu if you
> can't share /home or Swap.  The fresh install sorts out a boot-menu so that
> you can choose to use a pre-existing OS that you already have on your system
> but by default it puts the new install of 12.04 at the top of that menu.  To
> change that login to 12.04 and get to a command-line and paste in these
> lines;
>
> cd /etc/grub.d
> sudo mv 30_os-prober 08_os-prober
> sudo update-grub
>
> If it makes a difference which side the minimise, full-screen and close
> buttons are on the title-bar at the top of windows then you can change them
> from left (like a Mac) to right (like Windows) by copy&pasting this line
>
> gconftool-2 --set "

Re: [libreoffice-accessibility] timing, Paralympics

[Alex Midence]

Yes, I would very much like a link to the wiki or whatever resource is
available for going through the proper procedure to file bug reports.
The stuff does not even ahve to be in English.  I am conversant in 7
languages.  I'm sure there's something written in one I understand.

Saludos.
Alex M


On 8/31/12, Sophie Gautier  wrote:
> Hi Tom,
> On 31/08/2012 12:50, Tom Davies wrote:
>> Hi :) I think right now is an excellent time to push any
>> Accessibility Agendas to a wide variety of lists.  Sadly people on
>> most lists ignore me or disagree with anything i say sometimes purely
>> because it's me that's saying it.
>
> First, paralympics unfortunately won't have any influence on our
> resources. I hope that you have enough confidence in us to trust that if
> we don't look at something right when we are aware of it, it's not
> because of lack of interest. We try to manage our resources for the best
> for all our users, but unfortunately we are also quite short here.
>
> Second, we don't ignore or disagree with what you said because of you,
> it's not personal, but sometimes you give your opinion on something
> you have no idea about. Because most of us are reading a lot of lists,
> are doing a lot in the project, we just ignore what you said (i.e
> because it's not a real answer) or sometimes we may over react because
> we have lost some precious time reading one of your mail and it didn't
> bring any added value for us. We are not right, you are not wrong, we
> both (you and us) need to think before replying. Your reply will be
> read, but this time may be taken from others in the community who may be
> in more needs (and I hope that my English is enough to explain that it's
> not against you at all.)
>> So, can other people push any of the ideas of current (or past)
>> threads to any of the other lists?  Is anyone here on the BoD?  I've
>> been told that the "discuss@" list is a good place to reach the BoD
>> but i tend to find Marketing is reaches quite a lot of them.
>>
> The board has nothing to do here. The board is here to manage the
> foundation (administration, expenses, etc...) and eventually conflicts
> that may appear in the community. The request from Alex should be
> directed to the QA list because he his willing to bring some attention
> on a special area of the product, however this area belongs to the QA
> subproject, and may be he should be sent to the wiki for more
> information on how to fill a bug.
>
> Kind regards
> Sophie
> --
> Sophie Gautier 
> Tel:+33683901545
> Membership & Certification Committee Member - Co-founder
> The Document Foundation
>
> --
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Re: [libreoffice-accessibility] [Libreoffice-qa] Adding "Accessibility" component to Bug Assistant

[Alex Midence]

Hi,

As I've been rather vocal on this issue in the last couple of days in
particular, I'd really like to be in a better position to lend a hand
with any proceedings.  Can anyone point me to some docs to look over
for bug reporting in LO?  And, does the user account creation
mechanism for the bug reporting site have one of those abominable
captcha thingies on it?  It's always been a barrier to me before since
I can never, for the life of me make out the audio challenges.  After
the third or fourth time I replay it, I  am ready to toss the old pc
out the window to the accompaniment of mad cackling and jumping up and
down in maniacle glee.

Alex M

On 8/31/12, Tom Davies  wrote:
> Hi :)
> In bug-reports there are several drop-downs.  One has "feature request" and
> i think another has "Easy hack"?  Would one of those be better than the
> other?  Which of those was which option of the a, b, c etc?
> Regards from
> Tom :)
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>>
>> From: Ti tengo d'occhio 
>>To: libreoff...@bielefeldundbuss.de
>>Cc: Roman Eisele ; Marc Paré ;
>> libreoffice...@lists.freedesktop.org; accessibility@global.libreoffice.org
>>
>>Sent: Friday, 31 August 2012, 10:35
>>Subject: Re: [libreoffice-accessibility] [Libreoffice-qa] Adding
>> "Accessibility" component to Bug Assistant
>>
>>Hi Rainer,
>>
>>well, I didn't know that there were developers focused on specific
>> components; in this case adding an "accessibility component" won't be the
>> best thing to do, in my opinion…
>>
>>> At this point I think we could go for solution C or solution A; in case
>>> of solution A, would it be possible to view all issues with the
>>> pseudo-keyword "accessibility"?
>>
>>However I think that solution C could be very suitable; in drupal, for
>> instance, to report accessibility issues there are two special tags:
>>- Accessibility: it means that this is an accessibility issue (it could be
>> a bug, a feature request, a task, etc etc) ;
>>- "needs accessibility review": this means that the issue or the patch to
>> solve it needs to be tested by a blind user or an accessibility expert.
>>
>>Now we could choose to use only the "accessibility" keyword or maybe both
>> "accessibility" and "needs accessibility review", I don't know; but also
>> using just the first keyword would be a great thing…
>>
>>               Vincenzo.
>>
>>Il giorno 31/ago/2012, alle ore 06:36, Rainer Bielefeld
>>  ha scritto:
>>
>>> Ti tengo d'occhio schrieb:
>>>
 in my opinion it would be great to have a component for accessibility;
 it could let developers to better focus on accessibility bugs and, on
 the other hand, blind people to know that accessibility is important for
 this project and that submitting bug reports of this type is more than
 encouraged…
>>>
>>> Hi,
>>>
>>> the advantage of an "Accessibility" Component would be that it can easily
>>> be selected from a pulldown, no typos or other mistakes can happen.But a
>>> problem is that an "Accessibility" Component would not indicate what
>>> developer might be the one who can fix the problem. So it always would be
>>> replaced during the bug triaging and fixing process.
>>>
>>> An other possibility would be a Whiteboard entry, but that only can be
>>> done after a report in a second step, typos might happen, it is too
>>> modest.
>>>
>>> So I currently think about a Bug Submission Assistant enhancement. We can
>>> add a checkbox "Accessibility affected", and the Assistant will add
>>> "Accessibility"
>>> a) as additional pseudo key word to the Bug Summary line. The advantage
>>> of this solution is that the key word would be very visible.
>>> or
>>> b) as additional pseudo key word to the whiteboard
>>> or will
>>> c) set Key word "Accessibility" to the Keyword pane (it should not be a
>>> problem to get this new key word from FDO). The advantae of this solution
>>> is that it also eases and unifies handling in Bugzilla itself, not only
>>> via BSA.
>>>
>>> And of course
>>> d) New Component "Accessibility"
>>> still can be discussed.
>>>
>>> My order of preference (descending):
>>> c - a - b - d
>>>
>>> Your opinion?
>>>
>>> When we have a solution here, we can start to mark and process
>>> accessibility bugs with increased priority.
>>>
>>> Best regards
>>>
>>> Rainer
>>>
>>>
>>> --
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>>>
>>
>>
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RE: [libreoffice-accessibility] Elements of Libre Office writer document not accessible to Orca screen reader.

[Alex Midence]

I got quite a chuckle out of that one.  Isn't it ironic that the one factor
you can always always depend upon when it comes to man and machine is dear
old Murphy making an appearance?  I agree with you that LO devs would
probably do a much better job without all the legacy stuff getting in the
way.  The question now is, how do we make it happen?  What would it take to
get the ball rolling in spite of and despite all the symphony stuff?  Ought
to give the effort some sort of snazzy name preferably one that tweaks a
nose or two.  Maybe, the crescendo initiative or something like that.
Perhaps, something more challenging like Libreoffice Show-down (show-downs
are more exciting than symphonies).  It oculd have a tag line like "Join in
the show down to bring a11y up to speed for Libreofice."  Or, "Join your
code to the crescendo."  Yes, yes, yes, that sounded corny, I know.
Somebody fix it.

Alex M
-Original Message-
From: Tom Davies [mailto:tomdavie...@yahoo.co.uk] 
Sent: Thursday, August 30, 2012 1:15 PM
To: accessibility@global.libreoffice.org
Subject: Re: [libreoffice-accessibility] Elements of Libre Office writer
document not accessible to Orca screen reader.

Hi :)
+1

But from the devs point of view i think they think the Symphony stuff could
just happen tomorrow.  Murphy's Law suggests that it wont happen until just
after they have invested an annoying amount of time and resources into
duplicating the effort but to me that means it's got to be time to push at
TDF and encourage the devs to start working on accessibility stuff now.  


I think 'our' devs would do a better job and the results would be the envy
of other projects.  THe Symphony stuff probably has a lot of java dependancy
and legacy stuff that we would be better off without.  Plus we have more
experience of what NOT to do and wrong directions worth avoiding.  


Regards from
Tom :)  






>____
> From: Alex Midence 
>To: 'Tom Davies' ; 'Dattatray Bhat' 
>
>Cc: accessibility@global.libreoffice.org; 'sagun baijal' 
>; 'Leena Chourey' 
>Sent: Thursday, 30 August 2012, 18:20
>Subject: RE: [libreoffice-accessibility] Elements of Libre Office writer
document not accessible to Orca screen reader.
> 
>It sounds to me like the best thing to do will be to just write off the 
>Symphony code and just do it from scratch.  I know it's awfully 
>tempting to just sit back and wait for the issue to finally resolve 
>itself somehow and just reuse code others have written but, that could 
>take years and years and, in the meantime, there are accessibility 
>needs that just don't get addressed for fear of wasting time duplicating
what has already been done.
>So, then, you have twice as much time spent on it.  First, you have the 
>time to actually code the stuff but, on top of that, you have all the 
>time that was wasted waiting around for the whole symphony conundrum to 
>shake itself down and resolve itself a thing which, let's be honest, 
>may never truly happen.  For better of for worse, MS Windows has a user 
>community which is larger than that of Linux or Mac and any other OS 
>Libreoffice runs on.  It may even be bigger than that of all these 
>other OS's combined. That's a pretty big targeted audience that isn't 
>having its needs met.  While SOFTWARE freedom is being considered, user 
>freedom to avail oneself of the software one wants to use is given low
priority.
>
>Alex M
>
>-Original Message-
>From: Tom Davies [mailto:tomdavie...@yahoo.co.uk]
>Sent: Thursday, August 30, 2012 10:24 AM
>To: Alex Midence; Dattatray Bhat
>Cc: accessibility@global.libreoffice.org; sagun baijal; Leena Chourey
>Subject: Re: [libreoffice-accessibility] Elements of Libre Office 
>writer document not accessible to Orca screen reader.
>
>Hi :)
>I think the BoD have been working on trying to get the Symphony code 
>that was given to AOO but at that layer of the organisations there 
>seems to be a lot of tension and arguments between the projects.  Down 
>here we sometimes find people working on both projects at roughly the 
>same time or bouncing between the 2.
>
>If the LO devs start working on accessibility issues then their coding 
>is likely to be a rough duplicate of the Symphony coding and end-up 
>being a waste of their time (if we do ever get the Symphony stuff) or 
>end-up with Apache taking us to court or (more likely) some grumbly place
in-between.
>
>Devs generally get on with stuff that appeals to them and walking into 
>a political & possibly legal minefield is not attractive.
>
>The question is do we;
>1.  make it more attractive (how?  Are there some "Easy Hacks"?  Could 
>anyone here do bug-triaging and identify some?) 2.  d

[libreoffice-accessibility] RE: Ubuntu LiveCd & Wubi - was Java Nightmare

[Alex Midence]

Forgot to address the magnification question directly.  I know of three
magnification packages in Linux:

 

1.Gnome-mag

2.   KMag

3.   Compiz screen magnifier (not sure the name)

 

Alex M

 

From: Tom Davies [mailto:tomdavie...@yahoo.co.uk] 
Sent: Thursday, August 30, 2012 9:13 AM
To: Alex Midence; Tom Randall
Cc: accessibility@global.libreoffice.org
Subject: Ubuntu LiveCd & Wubi - was Java Nightmare

 

Hi :)
Ahhh, a LiveCd session of Ubuntu 12.04 sounds like a fast way to a quick
result.  

I guess a fresh install of 12.04 on a new partition would have things set up
right too?  About 10-20Gb is a comfortable amount of space for Ubuntu if you
can't share /home or Swap.  The fresh install sorts out a boot-menu so that
you can choose to use a pre-existing OS that you already have on your system
but by default it puts the new install of 12.04 at the top of that menu.  To
change that login to 12.04 and get to a command-line and paste in these
lines;

cd /etc/grub.d
sudo mv 30_os-prober 08_os-prober
sudo update-grub

If it makes a difference which side the minimise, full-screen and close
buttons are on the title-bar at the top of windows then you can change them
from left (like a Mac) to right (like Windows) by copy&pasting this line

gconftool-2 --set "/apps/metacity/general/button_layout" --type string
"menu:minimize,maximize,close"

Note that should be all on one line but it's wrapped-around on my monitor at
my resolution.  



I concurr about using MS Office if that is what it takes to get a good
result quickly.  Obviously i would prefer people use OpenOffice but if using
MS Office is what it takes to get the job done then do so.  Sometimes
migrating to OpenSource takes a while and until you've managed it you still
need to be able to get your main work done.  

As for Virtual Machines i think having Windows as the host and a Gnu&Linux
inside it is the 'wrong' way around.  One of the crucial advantages of
Gnu&Linux is lost because you would be using the flaky Ntfs file-system
rather than the solidly reliable Ext3.  I suspect that the ideal way around
would mean Orca wouldn't work (unless you ran a VM inside Windows inside the
main VM!) so again the 'wrong' way suddenly becomes the right thing to do.  

Ubuntu offers a better way than a Virtual Machine.  you can install Ubuntu
directly inside Windows using Ubuntu's "Wubi" installer.  Just put the
Ubuntu Cd in after booting into Windows and the option should pop-up.  Few
other distros offer this type of option so you would have to use a VM for
them.  With Ubuntu (or Puppy) you just get the extra possibility.  

Is there an alternative to Orca?  What do other people use with LO?
Regards from 
Tom :)  

 

 


  _  


From: Alex Midence 
To: Tom Randall  
Cc: accessibility@global.libreoffice.org 
Sent: Thursday, 30 August 2012, 14:21
Subject: Re: [libreoffice-accessibility] Java nightmare & FAQ wiki-page


Yes, I remember all that with Linux.  However, much progress has been
made in the last two years to get thing sworking out of the box.
Seriously, if you are pressed for time, the single fastest and best
way to go is to download an iso of Ubuntu Precise which has
acessibility out of the box, pop it into your cd rom drive, power up
your machine and hit control s when you hear the drumroll.  When Orca
starts talking, alt tab to the installation dialog and select the try
it out option so you can run it as a live installation.  It will come
up and Libre Office is already installed with all the extensions and
plugins and so forth to make it talk with Orca.  Save your files onto
a flash drive or your hard drive so you can pick up where you left off
next time you power up your pc.  When you are done working for that
day, simply power off your machine and take out the cd.  When it turns
back on, it's going to run windows and be none the wiser that you had
Ubuntu running things for a time.


I know this sounds complex but, if you are approaching a deadline, you
need to do something to get the ball rolling.  If this is not
something you want to tackle, I seriously advise you to put aside any
qualms you have about MS Office and load it up.  You need something
that will get the job done.  Period, end of story.  If your job is on
the line, it is no time to be making statements about software freedom
and so forth by sticking to Open or Libre Office in hopes that you'll
stumble on some magic setup combination that'll get you going.  I know
what I am saying will probably upset some people who read this list
but, frankly, if I have to choose between giving somebody advice that
will keep them employed or chant the party line, the party line will
just have to get on as best it can.  I like free and open source
software.  If it were up to me, I'd switch each and everything I use
to run a fully Libre system at work and at home.  Thing is, 

[libreoffice-accessibility] RE: Ubuntu LiveCd & Wubi - was Java Nightmare

[Alex Midence]

What you say is true but, I was going for simplicity and ease of setup for
someone unfamiliar with Linux.  I understood everything you wrote but,
that's just because I'm a Linuxoid who likes getting downand dirty with the
cli.  Somebody coming from Windows may not be.  Using a live CD is fast and
reasonly uncomplicated.  Just put in the cd, launch Orca decline
installation and boom, you're in.  All you do then is alt f2 to get the run
menu and type writer. Or, alt f1 and arrow to it in the Unity launcher list.
Stick a flash drive into the machine and save your files onto it and, yes,
I'm going to say it, "PRESTO!"  =)  NO long cli strings and no fancy mucking
around with hardware and grub menus and worrying about your main OS getting
superceeded by your cool new one. 

 

To address your point about the virtual machine, I have heard of people
installing Linux and then having Windows inside of it with a virtual machine
running NVDA.  They say it works well.  I haven't done it because I don't
relish the idea of uninstalling Windows, installing Linux and then
reinstalling Windows on the VM.  If you've already got Windows, my solution
will probably take you an hour to set up, maybe 2 if you need to learn your
way.  As for the ntfs versus ext3 issue for the file systems, the average
user won't know the difference.  I haven't noticed one.  It works very
nicely for me.  It's great because I still have all the different accessible
apps for Windows I am used to and then I get a whole host of new cool stuff
to use in Linux that is accessible.  It's a serious force multiplyer.  As
I've written before on this topic, nothing beats having cake and actualy
getting to eat it too.

 

Now then, if you really want a turnkey solution involving the virtual
machine, Vinux offers just that.  If you get the 3.0 version, it's based on
Ubuntu Lucid and has two magnifyers to choose from already installed, one
being Orca and the other is the Compiz screen magnification software.  The
live cd's of Vinux work nicely too.  However, 3.0 runs Open Office and not
Libreoffice.

 

Best regards,

Alex M

 

 

From: Tom Davies [mailto:tomdavie...@yahoo.co.uk] 
Sent: Thursday, August 30, 2012 9:13 AM
To: Alex Midence; Tom Randall
Cc: accessibility@global.libreoffice.org
Subject: Ubuntu LiveCd & Wubi - was Java Nightmare

 

Hi :)
Ahhh, a LiveCd session of Ubuntu 12.04 sounds like a fast way to a quick
result.  

I guess a fresh install of 12.04 on a new partition would have things set up
right too?  About 10-20Gb is a comfortable amount of space for Ubuntu if you
can't share /home or Swap.  The fresh install sorts out a boot-menu so that
you can choose to use a pre-existing OS that you already have on your system
but by default it puts the new install of 12.04 at the top of that menu.  To
change that login to 12.04 and get to a command-line and paste in these
lines;

cd /etc/grub.d
sudo mv 30_os-prober 08_os-prober
sudo update-grub

If it makes a difference which side the minimise, full-screen and close
buttons are on the title-bar at the top of windows then you can change them
from left (like a Mac) to right (like Windows) by copy&pasting this line

gconftool-2 --set "/apps/metacity/general/button_layout" --type string
"menu:minimize,maximize,close"

Note that should be all on one line but it's wrapped-around on my monitor at
my resolution.  



I concurr about using MS Office if that is what it takes to get a good
result quickly.  Obviously i would prefer people use OpenOffice but if using
MS Office is what it takes to get the job done then do so.  Sometimes
migrating to OpenSource takes a while and until you've managed it you still
need to be able to get your main work done.  

As for Virtual Machines i think having Windows as the host and a Gnu&Linux
inside it is the 'wrong' way around.  One of the crucial advantages of
Gnu&Linux is lost because you would be using the flaky Ntfs file-system
rather than the solidly reliable Ext3.  I suspect that the ideal way around
would mean Orca wouldn't work (unless you ran a VM inside Windows inside the
main VM!) so again the 'wrong' way suddenly becomes the right thing to do.  

Ubuntu offers a better way than a Virtual Machine.  you can install Ubuntu
directly inside Windows using Ubuntu's "Wubi" installer.  Just put the
Ubuntu Cd in after booting into Windows and the option should pop-up.  Few
other distros offer this type of option so you would have to use a VM for
them.  With Ubuntu (or Puppy) you just get the extra possibility.  

Is there an alternative to Orca?  What do other people use with LO?
Regards from 
Tom :)  

 

 


  _  


From: Alex Midence 
To: Tom Randall  
Cc: accessibility@global.libreoffice.org 
Sent: Thursday, 30 August 2012, 14:21
Subject: Re: [libreoffice-accessibility] Java nightmare & FAQ wiki-

RE: [libreoffice-accessibility] Elements of Libre Office writer document not accessible to Orca screen reader.

[Alex Midence]

It sounds to me like the best thing to do will be to just write off the
Symphony code and just do it from scratch.  I know it's awfully tempting to
just sit back and wait for the issue to finally resolve itself somehow and
just reuse code others have written but, that could take years and years
and, in the meantime, there are accessibility needs that just don't get
addressed for fear of wasting time duplicating what has already been done.
So, then, you have twice as much time spent on it.  First, you have the time
to actually code the stuff but, on top of that, you have all the time that
was wasted waiting around for the whole symphony conundrum to shake itself
down and resolve itself a thing which, let's be honest, may never truly
happen.  For better of for worse, MS Windows has a user community which is
larger than that of Linux or Mac and any other OS Libreoffice runs on.  It
may even be bigger than that of all these other OS's combined. That's a
pretty big targeted audience that isn't having its needs met.  While
SOFTWARE freedom is being considered, user freedom to avail oneself of the
software one wants to use is given low priority.

Alex M

-Original Message-
From: Tom Davies [mailto:tomdavie...@yahoo.co.uk] 
Sent: Thursday, August 30, 2012 10:24 AM
To: Alex Midence; Dattatray Bhat
Cc: accessibility@global.libreoffice.org; sagun baijal; Leena Chourey
Subject: Re: [libreoffice-accessibility] Elements of Libre Office writer
document not accessible to Orca screen reader.

Hi :)
I think the BoD have been working on trying to get the Symphony code that
was given to AOO but at that layer of the organisations there seems to be a
lot of tension and arguments between the projects.  Down here we sometimes
find people working on both projects at roughly the same time or bouncing
between the 2.  

If the LO devs start working on accessibility issues then their coding is
likely to be a rough duplicate of the Symphony coding and end-up being a
waste of their time (if we do ever get the Symphony stuff) or end-up with
Apache taking us to court or (more likely) some grumbly place in-between.  

Devs generally get on with stuff that appeals to them and walking into a
political & possibly legal minefield is not attractive.  

The question is do we;
1.  make it more attractive (how?  Are there some "Easy Hacks"?  Could
anyone here do bug-triaging and identify some?) 2.  deal with issues and
hassle the BoD 3.  make it even less pleasant for the devs to continue
dodging the issue errr, hopefully someone has a better option!  

Regards from
Tom :)  





>____
> From: Alex Midence 
>To: Dattatray Bhat 
>Cc: accessibility@global.libreoffice.org; sagun baijal 
>; Leena Chourey 
>Sent: Thursday, 30 August 2012, 14:03
>Subject: Re: [libreoffice-accessibility] Elements of Libre Office writer
document not accessible to Orca screen reader.
> 
>Wow.  That long?  What, exactly, is the a11y priority for Libreoffice?
>Meaning, waht all gets looked at, attended to and discussed prior to 
>accessibility by persons in charge of projects and development goals?
>We are nearing the end of q3 in 2012.  This stuff was submitted near 
>the end of q1 in 2011.   Is all this stuf hard to code?  What is the 
>approximate cost in man hours and such that goes into this?
>
>Alex M
>
>On 8/30/12, Dattatray Bhat  wrote:
>> The Navigator feature in LibreOffice is not quite convenient for 
>> visually disabled users who use the Orca screen reader. Suppose I 
>> want to navigate to previous or next heading. This is what I do. If 
>> there is an easier way, please let me know.
>>
>>    1. Set up Navigator to traverse headings (5-6 keybindings)
>>       Press F5 to start Navigator
>>       Press F6 4 times (or Shift+F6 once) to activate Navigator 
>>window
>>       Press Tab to go the list box section
>>       Press Right to expand Headings node
>>       Press Down to go to first heading label
>>    2. From current heading, go to next or previous heading (4-5
>>    key-bindings)
>>       Press F6 4 times (or Shift+F6 once) to activate Navigator window.
>>       Press Tab to go to list box section
>>       Press Up or Down to to go to previous or next heading label
>>       Press Enter to go to previous or next heading
>>
>> If structural navigation feature of Orca worked in LibreOffice, I 
>> would be able to navigate to previous or next heading with a single 
>> key-binding. But it doesn't work;  due to some LibreOffice bugs. I 
>> submitted detailed bug reports (listed below) including screen shots 
>> to LibreOffice bug tracker in March 2011; but there is no progress so
far.
>>
>> 35105     A heading in writer document doesn't expose ROLE_HEADING to 
>&

Re: [libreoffice-accessibility] Java nightmare & FAQ wiki-page

[Alex Midence]

Yes, I remember all that with Linux.  However, much progress has been
made in the last two years to get thing sworking out of the box.
Seriously, if you are pressed for time, the single fastest and best
way to go is to download an iso of Ubuntu Precise which has
acessibility out of the box, pop it into your cd rom drive, power up
your machine and hit control s when you hear the drumroll.  When Orca
starts talking, alt tab to the installation dialog and select the try
it out option so you can run it as a live installation.  It will come
up and Libre Office is already installed with all the extensions and
plugins and so forth to make it talk with Orca.  Save your files onto
a flash drive or your hard drive so you can pick up where you left off
next time you power up your pc.  When youa re done working for that
day, simply power off your machine and take out the cd.  When it turns
back on, it's going to run windows and be none the wiser that you had
Ubuntu running things for a time.


I know this sounds complex but, if you are approaching a deadline, you
need to do something to get the ball rolling.  If this is not
something you want to tackle, I seriously advise you to put aside any
qualms you have about MS Office and load it up.  You need something
that will get the job done.  Period, end of story.  If your job is on
the line, it is no time to be making statements about software freedom
and so forth by sticking to Open or Libre Office in hopes that you'll
stumble on some magic setup combination that'll get you going.  I know
what I am saying will probably upset some people who read this list
but, frankly, if I have to choose between giving somebody advice that
will keep them employed or chant the party line, the party line will
just have to get on as best it can.  I like free and open source
software.  If it were up to me, I'd switch each and everything I use
to run a fully Libre system at work and at home.  Thing is, there are
too many a11y gaps all over the place for you to do that productively
and efficiently without investing a large amount of time in learning
all sorts of workarounds when there are ways to do what needs toing in
proprietary software that you can meld with your open source stuff.  I
have found this approach to be much more powerful than the sum of its
parts.

Best regards,
Alex M

On 8/29/12, Tom Randall  wrote:
> Hi Alex and all.
>
> Well that certainly might be something I will consider doing at some point.
>
> Truthfully I've played with Linux on and off over the years and if I really
>
> thought it could replace winblows for me I would probably switch in a new
> york minute.  However when looking into it it looked like you had to damn
> near be a computer science major to get it fully up and accessible, you had
>
> to install extensions for this, front ends for that, read through reams of
> docs to figure out how to do all this, and so on and so on.  It just looked
>
> like it was going to take way more time and effort than I was or am willing
>
> to put into it.  So maybe when I can pick up a little bigger hd for this
> system running both Linux and windows on here might be the way to go.
>
> This is not the place to start a windows vs. Linux debate and I assure you
> all I am not trying to start one, if people have the time and patience to
> get Linux up and running and it works for them believe me I think that is
> great and wish I could go that route.  As to which platform is better
> there's not much of a debate about that as far as I am concerned, in many
> ways Linux is superior.  Alex as you said in another message and I agree
> with this, to me the platform is secondary, however I need something that
> works, that is the bottom line.  I hope I don't end up having to install
> more MS bloatware on this system, it runs pretty decent the way it is, but
> I'm running out of time and excuses about getting this paperwork done and
> need a reliable and accessible way to do it.
>
> I may try going back to open office, the thing that worries me is the calc,
>
> that is what seems to be the most problematic for me at the moment.  These
> guys where I work are XL freaks and I absolutely have to have a way to work
>
> with XL spreadsheets.  I do also have a MacBook with LO on it so I may see
> if the calc is any better on there.
>
> Best regards,
>
> Tom
>
> -Original Message-
> From: Alex Midence
> Sent: Wednesday, August 29, 2012 1:46 PM
> To: Tom Randall
> Subject: Re: [libreoffice-accessibility] Java nightmare & FAQ wiki-page
>
> Very sorry, Tom.  I'm fresh out.  Open office may just be your last
> bet.  I understand they sucked in all the Lotus Symphony code.
> Symphony has a reputation for being quite accessible.  I don't know if
> Libreoffice got this code or not.

Re: [libreoffice-accessibility] Elements of Libre Office writer document not accessible to Orca screen reader.

[Alex Midence]

Wow.  That long?  What, exactly, is the a11y priority for Libreoffice?
 Meaning, waht all gets looked at, attended to and discussed prior to
accessibility by persons in charge of projects and development goals?
We are nearing the end of q3 in 2012.  This stuff was submitted near
the end of q1 in 2011.   Is all this stuf hard to code?  What is the
approximate cost in man hours and such that goes into this?

Alex M

On 8/30/12, Dattatray Bhat  wrote:
> The Navigator feature in LibreOffice is not quite convenient for visually
> disabled users who use the Orca screen reader. Suppose I want to navigate
> to previous or next heading. This is what I do. If there is an easier way,
> please let me know.
>
>1. Set up Navigator to traverse headings (5-6 keybindings)
>   Press F5 to start Navigator
>   Press F6 4 times (or Shift+F6 once) to activate Navigator window
>   Press Tab to go the list box section
>   Press Right to expand Headings node
>   Press Down to go to first heading label
>2. From current heading, go to next or previous heading (4-5
>key-bindings)
>   Press F6 4 times (or Shift+F6 once) to activate Navigator window.
>   Press Tab to go to list box section
>   Press Up or Down to to go to previous or next heading label
>   Press Enter to go to previous or next heading
>
> If structural navigation feature of Orca worked in LibreOffice, I would be
> able to navigate to previous or next heading with a single key-binding. But
> it doesn't work;  due to some LibreOffice bugs. I submitted detailed bug
> reports (listed below) including screen shots to LibreOffice bug tracker in
> March 2011; but there is no progress so far.
>
> 35105 A heading in writer document doesn't expose ROLE_HEADING to
> AT-SPI.
> 35107 A hyperlink in writer document doesn't expose correct role and
> URL to AT-SPI.
> 35110 A list box in writer document doesn't expose correct role to
> AT-SPI.
> 35111 A combo box in writer document doesn't expose ROLE_COMBO_BOX to
> AT-SPI.
> 35112A section in writer document is not visible to AT-SPI.
> 35129 A spin button in spreadsheet doesn't expose ROLE_SPIN_BUTTON to
> AT-SPI.
> 35652 AT-SPI accessible tree omits objects which are not visible on the
> screen.
> 35654 A writer document doesn't implement the Collection interface of
> AT-SPI.
>
> Can somebody look into these bug reports please?
>
> Regards.
>
> --
> Dattatray Bhat
>
> --
> Unsubscribe instructions: E-mail to
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Re: [libreoffice-accessibility] Java nightmare & FAQ wiki-page

[Alex Midence]

Oh, I'm sure there are myriads and myriads of tools that are much
better for presentations as you say.  Trouble is, regardless of how
good the tool is, how wonderful the coding that went into it and how
sterling the values of the project that creates it, the overarching
question for me wil always be, "Can I use it?"  If the answer is "no"
then, it doesn't really matter how good that package is.  From my
point of view it's useless.  Now, if a technically inferior package
with what many perceive as execrable values held by those who produced
it answers the question with a resounding "yes" then, I fear it
sprouts a set of the wings angelic and soars to the very top of my
best of the best list.  It may not have all the great features, run on
as many platforms ETC. ETC. but, by God, I can use it and that makes
all the difference in the world.

Alex M


On 8/29/12, Tom Davies  wrote:
> Hi :)
> I think of OpenOffice under Apache as a brother or sister.  We fight and
> grumble about each other but we both do better when we work together.
> Moving from one to the other and then maybe back again later is much less
> hassle than moving to something with a completely opposite ethos on so many
> things.
>
> As for presentation software i think there are better alternatives that make
> Impress and PowerPoint.  I'm not sure how usable they are.  The Users List
> occasionally makes suggestions but i've never taken note of what they
> suggest.
>
> Regards from
> Tom :)
>
>
> --- On Wed, 29/8/12, Alex Midence  wrote:
>
> From: Alex Midence 
> Subject: Re: [libreoffice-accessibility] Java nightmare & FAQ wiki-page
> To: "Tom Davies" 
> Cc: accessibility@global.libreoffice.org, "Tom Randall"
> 
> Date: Wednesday, 29 August, 2012, 19:22
>
> Hi,
>
> Sorry to hear you are having such a time of it.  I don't know how open
> you are to this suggestion but, I've had success with Open Office in
> Windows.  Libreoffice has not worked for me.  I use Jaws and NVDA.  I
> have never used Supernova so, I don't know how it will react but
> Openoffice 3.6 (I think that's the latest release), worked ok in
> writer.  Jaws even read Writer ok.  NVDA did just wonderfully with it.
>  Calc was usable in NVDA but not in Jaws so, I don't know how it'll do
> in Supernova.  Impress was totally unusable pretty much all around.
> It was a bummer for me.  I'm a corporate trainer.  I get up in front
> of groups of people with presentations up on a projecter and gas away
> at them about this and that.  Thus far, I hate to say it but Microsoft
> Powerpoint is the best and most accessible presentation product for
> someone in my situation.  Impress has yet to Impress me in either
> Libre or Open Office.
>
> hth,
> Alex M
>
>
>
> On 8/29/12, Tom Davies  wrote:
>> Hi :)
>> I am not sure if Tom Randall is on this list.  You guys seem to have
>> solved
>> a lot of these java issues so i thought forwarding the thread here just
>> in
>> case you can help hi8m where others can't.
>>
>> Also i made a rough wiki-page that is intended to help people solve java
>> issues.
>> https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Faq/Java
>> I think it might need sub-pages to deal with issues such as the bridge.
>> If
>> you are able to radically rewrite the wiki-page to make it useful and
>> need
>> me to make extra sub-pages then please just let me know through this
>> list.
>> It sometimes takes me a couple of days to react so my apologies for being
>> so
>> slack!  If you are new to wiki-editing then i might be able to help with
>> formatting and other issues.
>> Regards from
>> Tom :)
>>
>>
>> --- On Mon, 27/8/12, Tom Randall  wrote:
>>
>> Hi Bob and all.
>>
>> I've been through the wringer on this and have still not got much of
>> anywhere.  It seems some people have major problems with this and some
>> just
>> don't seem to.  I spent well over an hour going through the steps listed
>> on
>> bugzilla that were supposed to fix this, e.g. uninstalling java
>> completely,
>> cleaning the registry, installing the new java, setting the javahome
>> variable and path, re-installing the JAB, etc. etc.
>>
>> This did sort of fix my problem, LO at least no longer says that my JRE
>> is
>> defective when I try to enable accessibility.  However from what I can
>> tell
>> the accessibility is still not working correctly.  Supernova still does
>> not
>> read my menus or the state of checkboxes.  NVDA doesn't either so I know
>> it
>> is not a Su

Re: [libreoffice-accessibility] Java nightmare & FAQ wiki-page

[Alex Midence]

Hi,

Sorry to hear you are having such a time of it.  I don't know how open
you are to this suggestion but, I've had success with Open Office in
Windows.  Libreoffice has not worked for me.  I use Jaws and NVDA.  I
have never used Supernova so, I don't know how it will react but
Openoffice 3.6 (I think that's the latest release), worked ok in
writer.  Jaws even read Writer ok.  NVDA did just wonderfully with it.
 Calc was usable in NVDA but not in Jaws so, I don't know how it'll do
in Supernova.  Impress was totally unusable pretty much all around.
It was a bummer for me.  I'm a corporate trainer.  I get up in front
of groups of people with presentations up on a projecter and gas away
at them about this and that.  Thus far, I hate to say it but Microsoft
Powerpoint is the best and most accessible presentation product for
someone in my situation.  Impress has yet to Impress me in either
Libre or Open Office.

hth,
Alex M



On 8/29/12, Tom Davies  wrote:
> Hi :)
> I am not sure if Tom Randall is on this list.  You guys seem to have solved
> a lot of these java issues so i thought forwarding the thread here just in
> case you can help hi8m where others can't.
>
> Also i made a rough wiki-page that is intended to help people solve java
> issues.
> https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Faq/Java
> I think it might need sub-pages to deal with issues such as the bridge.  If
> you are able to radically rewrite the wiki-page to make it useful and need
> me to make extra sub-pages then please just let me know through this list.
> It sometimes takes me a couple of days to react so my apologies for being so
> slack!  If you are new to wiki-editing then i might be able to help with
> formatting and other issues.
> Regards from
> Tom :)
>
>
> --- On Mon, 27/8/12, Tom Randall  wrote:
>
> Hi Bob and all.
>
> I've been through the wringer on this and have still not got much of
> anywhere.  It seems some people have major problems with this and some just
> don't seem to.  I spent well over an hour going through the steps listed on
> bugzilla that were supposed to fix this, e.g. uninstalling java completely,
> cleaning the registry, installing the new java, setting the javahome
> variable and path, re-installing the JAB, etc. etc.
>
> This did sort of fix my problem, LO at least no longer says that my JRE is
> defective when I try to enable accessibility.  However from what I can tell
> the accessibility is still not working correctly.  Supernova still does not
> read my menus or the state of checkboxes.  NVDA doesn't either so I know it
> is not a Supernova problem.  I have no idea what to do at this point and am
> frankly about to give up on this.  Don't misunderstand me, the folks on this
> list have been very helpful trying to help me figure this out.  However
> while telling me that LO isn't the problem and that it's Windows and Java is
> all good and fine and I actually do believe this is the case, it does not
> fix this and I still have a productivity suite that does not allow me to be
> productive.  This is not something I am fooling around with as some sort of
> project, I depend on it for getting paperwork done for my work.  I used to
> recommend this package for my students especially
>  those on a limited income and I probably still will for the very few tech
> savvy ones I get but for most of them if you start talking to them about
> Javahome variables and setting paths they're going to ask you what the
> living hell you're blabbering about.  I swore I'd never give Microshaft
> another dime for an Office package but that's what they use where I work and
> unless I get someplace with this pretty quick I may not have a choice.
>
> Apologies to the list for the rant, I realize this thing is a work in
> progress and it's free and all that, however this is a serious issue for me.
> I really want to be able to offer people an alternative to shelling out 150
> bucks for a word processor and spreadsheet but I won't be able to unless I
> find a reasonable way to fix this.
>
> Best regards,
>
> Tom
>
> -Original Message- From: Bob McDonald
> Sent: Friday, August 24, 2012 5:22 AM
> To: us...@global.libreoffice.org
> Subject: [libreoffice-users] Libreoffice and Java
>
> I'm having a bit of a bother with any version of Libreoffice installed with
> JRE 1.7 on Windows 7.
>
> Libreoffice crashes on start with any version of Java JRE greater than 1.6.
> If I go back to 1.6 I'm O.K.
>
> Anyone else having issues?
>
> If so and this is a new bug, what do you want to see?
>
> Regards,
>
> Bob
>
>
> Bob McDonald
> Sr. IPAM Engineer
>
> (P) 267-236-0145
> (F) 267-236-0016
> (C) 215-370-3411
> bob.mcdon...@pcn-inc.com
>
> PCN
> Technical Expertise. Tangible Results.
> www.PCN-Inc.com
>
>
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> Posting guideli

RE: [libreoffice-accessibility] 3.6 on Windows

[Alex Midence]

Use open office and not libre office.  Libre Office did not work at all well
for me with either screen reader.  Open Office worked well with NVDA.
Writer worked with Jaws but nothing else in the suite did.  And yes, you
will need the Java access bridge from Oracle.  

Alex M


-Original Message-
From: Jean-Philippe MENGUAL [mailto:mengualjean...@free.fr] 
Sent: Tuesday, August 14, 2012 10:02 PM
To: accessibility@global.libreoffice.org
Subject: [libreoffice-accessibility] 3.6 on Windows

Hi,

Can someone tell me the state of a11y stack now? Always Java bridge? Or
Iaccessible2 was implemented? Is it easier today to use libreoffice on
Windows with a screen reader, in particular NVDA?

Thanks for your answer.

Regards,

Jean-Philippe MENGUAL



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Re: [libreoffice-accessibility] Does Java Access Bridge Work in 3.5.4?

[Alex Midence]

Hi, list,

Did a small test drive of Libre Office on Windows with Jaws yesterday.
 Writer appears to work for basic documents.  There is a bit of a
delay before the text you type appears to the screen reader but I
think someone who knows how to write jaws scripts in the jaws
scripting language can work with it and make it fully accessible.  I
haven't gotten a chance to work with Calc or Impress or any of the
others yet.  One thing I did notice is the menus and things are much
snappier than Open Office was.  That was nice.

Alex M

On 6/1/12, David Goldfield  wrote:
> OK, Libo 3.5.4 seems to work with JAB 2.0.2.  I haven't done exhaustive
> testing but menus read and I can use arrow keys to read text within a
> Writer
> document.  If JAB wasn't working menus and arrow keys would be silent.
> David
>
> -Original Message-
> From: David Goldfield [mailto:dgold...@asb.org]
> Sent: Friday, June 01, 2012 8:36 AM
> To: accessibility@global.libreoffice.org
> Subject: RE: [libreoffice-accessibility] Does Java Access Bridge Work in
> 3.5.4?
>
> Hi.
> The issue with JAB not working in 3.5.0 was fixed in 3.5.1 and I'm
> currently
> running 3.5.3 on a 32-bit Win7 machine with JAB 2.0.2.  I installed JAB
> 2.0.2 using a nifty lieelt program called Jwin written by Jamal Mazrui.
> Jwin automatically downloads and installs the correct version of JAB 2.0.2
> since Oracle no longer offered an executable installer.  I don't have the
> Url but if you search for Jwin Jamal Mazrui You're sure to find it.
> I can try it with 3.5.4 if there's a chance that accessibility might be
> working and can report back to you if you'd like.  I guess I'd just rather
> know if it works or whether it will fail if someone knows for certain.
> David
>
> -Original Message-
> From: V Stuart Foote [mailto:vstuart.fo...@utsa.edu]
> Sent: Thursday, May 31, 2012 9:42 AM
> To: accessibility@global.libreoffice.org
> Subject: Re: [libreoffice-accessibility] Does Java Access Bridge Work in
> 3.5.4?
>
> Hello David,
>
> Another user was having issues with Java Access Bridge version 2.0.1 and
> version 2.0.2  and also with NVDA
>
> The Bugzilla report 46114 that  you submitted appeared to be the most on
> topic but did not mention a resolution or workaround,  so it was reopened.
>
> That is why you received recent emails.
>
> The Java Access Bridge 2.0.2 does not seem to work correctly with
> LibreOffice 3.5.4 if installed using instructions provided by Oracle.
>
> But it is not clear that JAB 2.0.1 works either if installed using Oracle
> instructions.
>
> So could you explain how you were able to configure  your installation of
> Java Access Bridge 2.0.1 to work in LibreOffice 3.5.3?
>
> Thank you.
>
>
> --
> View this message in context:
> http://nabble.documentfoundation.org/libreoffice-accessibility-Does-Java-Acc
> ess-Bridge-Work-in-3-5-4-tp3987035p3987044.html
> Sent from the Accessibility mailing list archive at Nabble.com.
>
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Re: [libreoffice-accessibility] Does Java Access Bridge Work in 3.5.4?

[Alex Midence]

Hi, all,

Well, since it works on the Dolphin, I'm wondering how well it does
with the shark.  Going to fire it up tonight with Jaws 11 and see how
it goes.  OpenOffice worked better, especially Writer though Impress
would have Jaws for lunch and render it speechless.  I'll report
findings on Libreoffice.

Alex M

On 5/31/12, Tom Randall  wrote:
> Hi David and all.
>
> Well I don't know about NVDA, but 3.54 is working fine here with the Dolphin
>
> access suite, formerly Supernova.  Although I love NVDA and I have it on all
>
> my systems I've frankly had very little luck in getting it to work with
> Libre office.  I guess others have had more luck with this.
>
> Hope this helps.
>
> Tom
>
> -Original Message-
> From: David Goldfield
> Sent: Thursday, May 31, 2012 6:04 AM
> To: accessibility@global.libreoffice.org
> Subject: [libreoffice-accessibility] Does Java Access Bridge Work in 3.5.4?
>
> Hello.
> I'm a visually impaired user running Libo 3.5.3 with the NVDA screen reader
>
> with Java Access Bridge 2.0.2.  I received some emails from Bugzilla
> regarding an issue with 3.5.0 which I reported involving JAB not working
> with that release.  this was fixed in 3.5.1 but some emails indicated there
>
> might have been some issues with 3.5.4 before its release.  I'm just
> wondering if it's properly working with 3.5.4 before I install it and risk
> breaking accessibility.
> Thanks in advance.
>
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Re: [libreoffice-accessibility] configuring libreoffice for accessibility

[Alex Midence]

Libre office won't work for you with Jaws.  Neither will Open Office.
You need to get NVDA if you want to use this program in Windows.
Since you are beta testing Jaws, bug Freedom Scientific to see if they
can improve support for it.  You are in a position to have more
likelihood of being listened to.

Thanks.
Aelx m

On 2/8/12, Tom Davies  wrote:
> Hi :)
> Apparently the best version of java is the 6u21 version. The 20 and 22 are
> next best.  After 24 LO might run into problems unless you are using LO
> 3.5.0 which is still not yet officially released but you might be able to
> use the pre-release.  The 3.5.0 can use java 7 at last.
>
> Hopefully whichever java you are using is working fine but if there are
> difficulties then checking the jave version might help
>
> Tools - Options - Java
>
> Regards from
> Tom :)
>
> --- On Wed, 8/2/12, Christophe Strobbe 
> wrote:
>
> From: Christophe Strobbe 
> Subject: Re: [libreoffice-accessibility] configuring libreoffice for
> accessibility
> To: accessibility@global.libreoffice.org
> Date: Wednesday, 8 February, 2012, 19:58
>
> Hello Don,
>
> Some configuration is necessary, but:
> 1) I don't know how easy they are to undertake with a screen reader, and
> 2) the benefit may not be what you expect.
>
> My comment about the benefit of the configuration is that LibreOffice
> accessibility on Windows relies on Java Accessibility, which is not very
> well supported by screen readers. For better results, LibreOffice would need
> a different accessibility system called IAccessible2, but as long as
> OpenOffice.org has not integrated this, LibreOffice can't or won't integrate
> IAccessible2 either (in order to avoid duplication of the same work).
>
> Now to the configuration:
> 1. First, you need Java and the Java Access Bridge, which you already have.
> However, if there is more than one Java Runtime Environment on your machine,
> you need to make sure that the Access Bridge is installed in the Runtime
> used by LibreOffice, or in all your Java Runtime environments. You can check
> which Runtime LibreOffice is using by going to the Options dialog (go to
> Tools menu, then Options) and navigating to the Java pane; you need to wait
> a few seconds while LibreOffice fetches the info about the available
> runtimes. The list of runtimes also says if the Access Bridge is installed
> in them. (If the text next to the vendor and version info says: "with
> accessibility support", then the runtime has the Access Bridge.)
> 2. After checking the runtimes and the Access Bridge, you need go to
> "Accessibility" in the Options dialog (it is the item above or before Java).
> The Accessibility pane contains a checkbox that says: "Support assistive
> technology tools (restart required)". You need to check this and restart
> LibreOffice.
>
> However, because of the lacking support for Java Accessibility in screen
> readers, some people use IBM Lotus Symphony instead. Lotus Symphony uses
> IAccessible2 instead of Java Accessibility; it is free but not open source.
> Some people have compared JAWS and NVDA for accessing LibreOffice and found
> NVDA somewhat better. You can download NVDA for free; if you use the
> portable version, you can even run it from a USB stick or your hard disk
> without an installation procedure (some unpacking is needed, but nothing
> more).
>
> I hope this helps.
>
> Best regards,
>
> Christophe
>
>
> At 19:45 8-2-2012, Don Raikes wrote:
>> I ma using jaws 13.0.638 (beta), windows7 64-bit jdk 1.7.0U02 with
>> accessbridge 2.0.2, and I downloaded and installed libreoffice 3.4.5
>> yesterday.
>>
>> After the installation completed, I tried using the libreoffice calc
>> program but jaws didn't read anything in the spreadsheet. I couldn't even
>> tell that I was in a spreadsheet.
>>
>> Also jaws does not seem to be reading the menus properly, nor is it
>> reading any of the buttons in the tools -> options dialog.
>>
>> Are there any things I need to do to configure libreoffice for
>> accessibility?
>
>
> -- Christophe Strobbe
> K.U.Leuven - Dept. of Electrical Engineering - SCD
> Research Group on Document Architectures
> Kasteelpark Arenberg 10 bus 2442
> B-3001 Leuven-Heverlee
> BELGIUM
> tel: +32 16 32 85 51
> http://www.docarch.be/
> Twitter: @RabelaisA11y
> ---
> Open source for accessibility: results from the AEGIS project
> www.aegis-project.eu
> ---
> Please don't invite me to Facebook, Quechup or other "social networks". You
> may have agreed to their "privacy policy", but I haven't.
>
>
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Re: [libreoffice-accessibility] Question about mouse pointer positioning

[Alex Midence]

Hmm.  I didn't know LibreOfice was accessible in Windows.  I thought
it was about as accessible as Open Office which is to say, it is very
much a work in progress.  Has this changed?

Alex M
Screen Reader User

On 9/24/11, Astron  wrote:
> Hello,
>
> I am Astron, I am usually found on the design and ux-advice lists and
> am currently working with Regina and Matm on a proposal for an
> improved options dialogue [1]. We are wondering how many people are
> using the automatic mouse cursor positioning [2] for dialogues and how
> and why you are using it.
> Do you use the function to center the cursor in the dialog?
> Do you use the function to position the cursor over the default button?
> If you use the latter, how would you like to enable it: via your
> operating system (note, that I don't know if any OS besides Windows
> has this option) or via LibO?
>
> Best Regards,
>
>
> Astron.
>
>
> [1] http://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Design/Whiteboards/OptionsRework
> [2] available under Tools > Options / LibreOffice > View > Mouse.
>
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Re: [libreoffice-accessibility] Should Writer export taggedPDF and bookmarks by default?

[Alex Midence]

Hi,

I for one would be very glad to know that Libre Office has this
feature.  It is not a complete and sure fire way to make a document
accessible but, I think it goes quite a long way.  It will probably
make the simpler pdf documents much easier to navigate for screen
reader users right out of the box since the navigation quick keys
which software like Jaws, Orca and NVDA have are pretty universal for
jumping through documents.  h for heading, t for table, p for
paragraph, etc.  In untagged pdf's these don't work.

Thanks.
Alex M



On 7/26/11, Tom Davies  wrote:
> Hi :)
> Yes, the more bug-reports the better.  Especially very specific ones that
> might
> be fairly easy to fix.  There is a fork called NeoOffice that is targeted at
> Macs and doesn't use the X system.
> Regards from
> Tom :)
>
>
>
>
> 
> From: titengodocchio.it 
> To: accessibility@global.libreoffice.org
> Sent: Tue, 26 July, 2011 14:37:28
> Subject: Re: [libreoffice-accessibility] Should Writer export taggedPDF and
> bookmarks by default?
>
> Hi guys,
> I'm reading this tread with great interest.
> I am not an expert-user of Libreoffice (the mac os X' version is still very
> inaccessible!), but I wonder if libreoffice is able to perform a "serious"
> accessibility check on PDF documents, not limited, of course, to the tags...
> If it isn't, it should be great if this feature could be implemented in this
> suite...
> Libreoffice needs really more work on accessibility (I tested the MAC OS X'
> version)...
> By the way, about two months ago we were talking about the "accessibility
> issues" in the mac OS X' version of LO. I would like to help to fix them..Do
> you
> think i should report them as bugs?
>
>  Vincenzo.
> - Original Message - From: "Christophe Strobbe"
> 
> To: 
> Sent: Tuesday, July 26, 2011 3:24 PM
> Subject: Re: [libreoffice-accessibility] Should Writer export taggedPDF and
> bookmarks by default?
>
>
>> Hi Tom,
>>
>> At 14:44 26-7-2011, Tom Davies wrote:
>>> Hi :) Can you post a bug-report about it?
>>>http://wiki.documentfoundation.org/BugReport
>>
>> Sure.
>>
>>> Perhaps add "[wishlist]" to the subject-line?
>>
>> OK, I did not know that tag existed.
>>
>>> I think post the bug-report now rather than leaving it.  Any small
>>> improvement
>>>in accessibility should be a priority in my opinion. Sometimes the
>>> defaults are
>>>not really thought about and are easy to change which helps new devs learn
>>> how
>>>to do coding :)  A good win for everyone.
>>>
>>> Is there a down-side to having Pdfs tagged by default?  What does the
>>> tagged
>>>option do?
>>
>> "Tagged PDF contains information about the structure of the document
>> contents.
>>This can help to display the document on devices with different screens,
>> and
>>when using screen reader software. "
>>()
>>
>> Exporting an inaccessible document as "tagged PDF" may give people the
>>impression that a document is accessible when they do only a superficial
>> check
>>(e.g. Adobe Reader's so-called accessibility check only checks whether the
>> PDF
>>is tagged or not).
>> I would also want to avoid that authors get the false idea that checking
>>"tagged PDF" is all they need to do to produced accessible PDF. (Although I
>>
>>doubt that changing the default setting will make a difference to this type
>> of
>>authors.)
>>
>> Best regards,
>>
>> Christophe
>>
>>
>>> Regards from Tom :)
>>>
>>> 
>>> From: Christophe Strobbe 
>>> To: accessibility@global.libreoffice.org
>>> Sent: Tue, 26 July, 2011 12:28:35
>>> Subject: [libreoffice-accessibility] Should Writer export tagged PDF and
>>>bookmarks by default?
>>> Hi, I have been thinking about ways to improve accessible authoring in
>>>LibreOffice Writer. As far as I know, Writer (in OpenOffice.org and in
>>>LibreOffice) is the only open source office software that can export
>>> tagged PDF,
>>>which is important for accessibility. When you open the PDF Options dialog
>>> (File
>>>-> Export as PDF...), the options "Tagged PDF" and "Export bookmarks" on
>>> the
>>>General tab and the option "Bookmarks and page" on the Initial View tab
>>> are
>>>unchecked by default. When you check them, they remain checked for later
>>> export
>>>commands. However, wouldn't it be better if these options were checked by
>>>default? Checking these options does not magically make your PDF documents
>>>
>>>accessible, because that depends on the quality of the ODF source. So
>>> should we
>>>request this feature now or should we wait until an accessibility checker
>>> for
>>>Writer becomes available? Best regards, Christophe
>>
>> -- Christophe Strobbe
>> K.U.Leuven - Dept. of Electrical Engineering - SCD
>> Research Group on Document Architectures
>> Kasteelpark Arenberg 10 bus 2442
>> B-3001 Leuven-Heverlee
>> BELGIUM
>> tel: +32 16 32 85 51
>> http://www.docarch.be/
>> Twitter: @RabelaisA11y
>> ---
>> Open

Re: [libreoffice-accessibility] OpenOffice and LibreOffice accessibility

[Alex Midence]

That was very informative.  I didn't realize the Java accessibility
api was used this way in Windows.  I am one who thought the app was
written using the java swing classes and this was responsible for the
poor accessibility of the tool.  This was very illucidating.

On 2/7/11, Christophe Strobbe  wrote:
> Hi,
>
> Some time ago we had a discussion that mentioned the use of the Java
> accessibility API on Windows. However, the use of the Java
> accessibility API does not imply that OpenOffice.org and LibreOffice
> use Swing (at least that is my understanding). I think LibreOffice
> and OpenOffice are still similar enough to use Malte Timmermann's
> presentation from last year's OOoCon [1] as a source of information.
> (Malte Timmermann has been working on OpenOffice since 1991, when it
> was still owned by StarOffice; he works mainly on accessibility and
> security.) Malte gave an update of this presentation yesterday at the
> FOSDEM Conference in Brussels [3].
>
> OpenOffice.org doesn't use the system's standard widgets, which
> (should) already implement an accessibility API. When OpenOffice
> started work on accessibility (after Sun took over StarDivision), the
> only usable APIs where those in Java and GNOME. MSAA was OK for UI
> accessibility, but too limited for document content (especially in
> complex documents). Sun specified the UNO Accessiblity API, with the
> intention of creating bridges between this API and the
> platform-specific APIs on Windows, Linux etctera.
>
> Since the Java Accessibility API was the only API that was rich
> enough on Windows, OpenOffice pretended to be a Java application on
> Windows. This created a complex accessibility architecture:
> OpenOffice UI elements (in C or C++) expose accessibility metadata to
> the Java Accessibility API through a bridge; the Java Accessibility
> API is then exposed to Windows AT through the Java Access Bridge.
> (For comparison: on GNOME, OpenOffice.org exposes accessibility
> metadata through a bridge beteen the UNO Accessibility API and ATK,
> so OpenOffice "looks" like a GNOME application to Orca.)
>
> Since 2001, new APIs have become available on Windows: Microsoft's UI
> Automation, and IAccessible2 (which IBM donated to the Linux
> Foundation)[2]. IAccessible2 is not a full API but complements
> Microsoft's older MSAA.
> For a long time, the OpenOffice.org developers wanted to replace the
> Java-based accessibility with a system based on MSAA and
> IAccessible2. In his FOSDEM presentation [3], Malte said that IBM had
> donated the code that replaced the Java-based accessibility with an
> IAccessible2 implementation. IBM's donation was not based on the most
> recent version of OpenOffice.org, and some work has been necessary to
> find out where the changes should go (code had been moved, things had
> been renamed, OpenOffice code had moved from its previous code
> control system to Mercurial, ...) and to check for any issues related
> to intellectual property rights (IPR). These changes are in a "child
> work space"; Malte could not say when the IAccessible2 implementation
> would be released; in other words: It will be done when it's done.
>
> On Windows, you can use NVDA to access the OpenOffice UI, but the
> support for document content is incomplete. For example, I can't find
> a way to access the alt text of an image in a Writer document when
> using NVDA (and I am not the only one). The NVDA developers are
> probably waiting until the IAccessible2 implementation is available
> in OpenOffice before completing their support of this office suite.
>
> This is basically my understanding of OpenOffice accessibility, and I
> think that it also applies to LibreOffice. I can't guarantee that is
> 100% correct; please let me know if anything I wrote is inaccurate or
> even wrong.
>
> This summary raises a few questions:
> 1. As far as I understand, IBM donated the IAccessible2
> implementation to Sun or Oracle (I don't know when this happened, but
> Malte didn't mention any of this in his slides for OOoCon 2010). I
> don't know how the Document Foundation can benefit from this, if at
> all. However, this donation is relevant to LibreOffice for reasons I
> discuss below.
> 2. The IAccessible2 implementation significantly reduces
> OpenOffice.org's dependence on Java (Java is still used in one or two
> wizards, I heard). The Document Foundation wishes to reduce
> LibreOffice's dependence on Java as well, although for very different
> reasons (Oracle being more strict about Java as demonstrated by its
> legal action against Google?). If LibreOffice wants to get rid of
> Java, it will also need to implement another accessibility API on
> Windows, i.e. either MSAA and IAccessible2, or Microsoft's UI
> Automation[4]. I don't know if LibreOffice developers have thought
> about this already.
>
> Thoughts, comments?
> I would like to start a discussion with LibreOffice developers at
> some point, but I would like to get some feedback before I do t

Re: [libreoffice-accessibility] Laws and standards

[Alex Midence]

hi, Joanie,


Open office works fine for me as long as I am not in Impress.  It
works better, by an order of magnitude, with Orca than it does with
Jaws or even NVDA.  It was Eclipse that kept crashing on me but, as
you said, that is for another list.  Eclipse is in SWT, you see.  I
was under the impression that Open Office and now, Libre Office use
the swing classes for the portions of the application that are written
in Java.


Thanks.
Alex M
On 1/3/11, Joanmarie Diggs  wrote:
> Hi Alex.
>
>> disappointed at the time since I had looked forward to being able to
>> use Eclipse with Orca.
>
> I think and hope you'll find that Orca+Eclipse works well, but that's
> beyond the scope of this list.
>
> If this statement applies to LibreOffice crashing:
>
>>   I even downloaded it and set it up on my Vinux
>> 3.0 machine running Orca 2.3? (running 2.91.3 now, sorry) but ran into
>> trouble.  It kept crashing on me.
>
> That might be this bug:
> https://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=31973
>
> I've not re-built LibreOffice since my last comment. So perhaps the
> issue is indeed gone now. I shall have to re-check.
>
> Speaking of that bug... It raises a related question I've been
> wondering: At the moment, how much -- if any -- of the accessibility
> work (features and bug fixes) done by the OOo a11y team is getting
> incorporated into LibreOffice?
>
>> Also, I
>> would like to apologize to the list and take back my uninformed post.
>> I promise to be less gullable  in future about such things.
>
> Alex, don't be silly.  Discussion lists are for discussion and
> sharing of information. I don't have all the answers either. And you
> have nothing to apologize for.
>
> Take care.
> --joanie
>
>
> --
> E-mail to accessibility+h...@libreoffice.org for instructions on how to
> unsubscribe
> List archives are available at
> http://listarchives.libreoffice.org/www/accessibility/
> All messages you send to this list will be publicly archived and cannot be
> deleted
>

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Re: [libreoffice-accessibility] Laws and standards

[Alex Midence]

That's great news!  I had been told that swing worked better in Gnome
because of something to do with at-spi.  I remember being rather
disappointed at the time since I had looked forward to being able to
use Eclipse with Orca.  I even downloaded it and set it up on my Vinux
3.0 machine running Orca 2.3? (running 2.91.3 now, sorry) but ran into
trouble.  It kept crashing on me.  When I inquired of a friend, this
is what he told me and I wound up looking into Emacspeak for this
task.  I hope you don't mind, but, I took the liberty of Googling you.
 I will take what you say over my obviously uninformed friend any day
of the week and twice on Sunday. Allow me, please to take a moment to
thank you personally for all that you do with regard to Orca.  Also, I
would like to apologize to the list and take back my uninformed post.
I promise to be less gullable  in future about such things.

Thanks.
Alex M

On 1/3/11, Joanmarie Diggs  wrote:
> Hi all.
>
> I'm new to this list and haven't yet gone back to catch up on everything
> I missed including with respect to this thread. But I did see this:
>
>> > > - Original Message -
>> > > From: "Alex Midence" 
>> > > To: 
>> > > Sent: Tuesday, December 07, 2010 5:37 PM
>> > > Subject: Re: [libreoffice-accessibility] Laws and standards
>
> 
>
>> > > see them rewriting the code to use swt classes though.  Besides, I
>> > > think this creates issues in Gnome since swt is less accessible there
>> > > than swing.
>
> For what it's worth, swt seems to actually work better for us (Orca)
> too. What issues do you think it creates?
>
> Take care.
> --joanie (Orca project lead, GNOME Accessibility Team)
>
>
> --
> E-mail to accessibility+h...@libreoffice.org for instructions on how to
> unsubscribe
> List archives are available at
> http://listarchives.libreoffice.org/www/accessibility/
> All messages you send to this list will be publicly archived and cannot be
> deleted
>

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Re: [libreoffice-accessibility] Laws and standards

[Alex Midence]

It is so nice to know that you are aware of these issues.  Over the
years, I have learned to resign myself to settle for such suboptimal
solutions as the ones I described in my posting and put the best face
on it that I could.  If Libre Office could be made accessible out of
the box for all screen readers regardless of the platform, it would be
a truly fantastic thing!

Regards,
Alex M
On 1/3/11, Christophe Strobbe  wrote:
>
> At 03:15 8/12/2010, Alex Midence wrote:
>>Thing is, some apps that can only be navigated with the Jaws cursor
>>can be scripted such that they become accessible.  If the Jaws cursor
>>can see it, the invisible cursor can too, usually.  I managed to make
>>some progress wtih Open Office this way.
>
> This is great to hear, even though it is not the best solution. There
> are several reasons for this:
> * scripts can break when the user interface changes,
> * JAWS scripts are specific to JAWS and don't help users of other
> screen readers,
> * scripts are not part of the standard download of
> OpenOffice/LibreOffice, not are they downloadable from
> http://www.openoffice.org/ or http://www.documentfoundation.org/ so
> users need to actively search for them [1].
>
>
>
>>Some of the controls I could
>>only access with the jaws cursor might be made accessible through
>>hotkeys set to change from pc to invisible and then back to pc again
>>at the click of a key.  In the end, what may happen is that Libre
>>Office is made to be scriptably accessible  which is ok, I guess
>>though out of the box accessibility would be nice.
>
> In my opinion, built-in accessibility is not just "nice", it should
> be the default.
>
>
> [1] Moreover: "Freedom Scientific does not typically accept
> unsolicited offers of scripts for third party applications."
> <http://www.freedomscientific.com/fs_support/BulletinView.asp?QC=792>.
> JAWS users are referred to sites such as <http://www.JFWlite.com/>
> and <http://www.BlindProgramming.com/>.
>
> Best regards,
>
> Christophe Strobbe
>
>
>
>>Alex M
>>
>>
>>On 12/7/10, Octavian Rasnita  wrote:
>> > Well, if an interface is accessible only by using the JAWS cursor, we
>> > can
>> > say that it is really inaccessible, because it is not an application
>> > that
>> > can be currently used.
>> > The edit fields where we should type strings are not accessible and the
>> > other controls are very hard to find with the JAWS cursor...
>> >
>> > Octavian
>> >
>> > - Original Message -
>> > From: "Alex Midence" 
>> > To: 
>> > Sent: Tuesday, December 07, 2010 5:37 PM
>> > Subject: Re: [libreoffice-accessibility] Laws and standards
>> >
>> >
>> > SWT is indeed more accessible.   I think the only parts of Libre
>> > Office that are in Java are those tied to the database.  Most of the
>> > code is in c and c++, I heard.  Btw, QT is somewhat supported.  I
>> > wouldn't call it stellar but it's not impossible to navigate witha
>> > jaws cursor.  (Mouse simulator)  Idle, for instance, is in QT.  I dn't
>> > see them rewriting the code to use swt classes though.  Besides, I
>> > think this creates issues in Gnome since swt is less accessible there
>> > than swing.
>> >
>> > alex M
>> >
>> > On 12/7/10, Octavian Rasnita  wrote:
>> >> From: "Christophe Strobbe" 
>> >>> Hi Alex,
>> >>>
>> >>> At 02:25 7/12/2010, Alex Midence wrote:
>> >>>>Well, my thinking is and always will be that Libre Office is better
>> >>>>off making itself accessible no matter what screen reader is used.
>> >>>
>> >>>
>> >>> That is why LibreOffice (like OpenOffice.org) needs to support
>> >>> accessibility APIs, keyboard access, desktop themes, etcetera. For a
>> >>> screen reader to work with an application, the application needs to
>> >>> implement the accessibility API (for example the Java Accessibility
>> >>> API, which is not tied to a specific operating system), and the
>> >>> screen reader needs to support that API. As far as I know, screen
>> >>> readers on Windows have generally weak support for the Java
>> >>> Accessibility
>> >>> API.
>> >>
>> >>
>> >> True, although the screen readers for Windows have a weak support for
>> >> SWING
>> >> API. The support for SWT is much

Re: [libreoffice-accessibility] Laws and standards

[Alex Midence]

Thing is, some apps that can only be navigated with the Jaws cursor
can be scripted such that they become accessible.  If the Jaws cursor
can see it, the invisible cursor can too, usually.  I managed to make
some progress wtih Open Office this way.  Some of the controls I could
only access with the jaws cursor might be made accessible through
hotkeys set to change from pc to invisible and then back to pc again
at the click of a key.  In the end, what may happen is that Libre
Office is made to be scriptably accessible  which is ok, I guess
though out of the box accessibility would be nice.

Alex M


On 12/7/10, Octavian Rasnita  wrote:
> Well, if an interface is accessible only by using the JAWS cursor, we can
> say that it is really inaccessible, because it is not an application that
> can be currently used.
> The edit fields where we should type strings are not accessible and the
> other controls are very hard to find with the JAWS cursor...
>
> Octavian
>
> - Original Message -
> From: "Alex Midence" 
> To: 
> Sent: Tuesday, December 07, 2010 5:37 PM
> Subject: Re: [libreoffice-accessibility] Laws and standards
>
>
> SWT is indeed more accessible.   I think the only parts of Libre
> Office that are in Java are those tied to the database.  Most of the
> code is in c and c++, I heard.  Btw, QT is somewhat supported.  I
> wouldn't call it stellar but it's not impossible to navigate witha
> jaws cursor.  (Mouse simulator)  Idle, for instance, is in QT.  I dn't
> see them rewriting the code to use swt classes though.  Besides, I
> think this creates issues in Gnome since swt is less accessible there
> than swing.
>
> alex M
>
> On 12/7/10, Octavian Rasnita  wrote:
>> From: "Christophe Strobbe" 
>>> Hi Alex,
>>>
>>> At 02:25 7/12/2010, Alex Midence wrote:
>>>>Well, my thinking is and always will be that Libre Office is better
>>>>off making itself accessible no matter what screen reader is used.
>>>
>>>
>>> That is why LibreOffice (like OpenOffice.org) needs to support
>>> accessibility APIs, keyboard access, desktop themes, etcetera. For a
>>> screen reader to work with an application, the application needs to
>>> implement the accessibility API (for example the Java Accessibility
>>> API, which is not tied to a specific operating system), and the
>>> screen reader needs to support that API. As far as I know, screen
>>> readers on Windows have generally weak support for the Java Accessibility
>>> API.
>>
>>
>> True, although the screen readers for Windows have a weak support for
>> SWING
>> API. The support for SWT is much better.
>>
>> But the screen readers for Windows have a non-existent support for other
>> GUIs like Tk, GTK, QT...
>>
>>
>>> (Note: Java accessibility on Windows requires the Java Access Bridge.
>>> Oracle is working on a new version of this bridge that will be part
>>> of the Java Runtime Environment instead of a separate download.)
>>
>> This will be great, but hopefully the screen readers manufacturers will
>> also
>> offer a better support for SWING.
>>
>> JAWS for Windows offer some support for Java Access Bridge as it is now,
>> but
>> only in a virtual buffer, so the apps are seen like web pages.
>>
>> SWING is slower than SWT anyway, and that weak support offered by JAWS
>> makes
>> the apps much less responsive, but what's the most important for blind
>> programmers is that it is very hard if impossible to make the design of
>> the
>> GUI, because in the SWING apps, JAWS doesn't offer that "JAWS cursor" for
>> allowing us to "see" the position of each window control on the screen.
>>
>> I heard that Window Eyes started to offer a better support for SWING than
>> JAWS but I haven't tested it.
>>
>> By the way, what interface is LibreOffice using? I've tested OpenOffice
>> and
>> it was pretty accessible although I don't remember if I had Java Access
>> Bridge installed. Does it use something else than SWING?
>>
>> Thanks.
>>
>> Octavian
>>
>>
>> --
>> E-mail to accessibility+h...@libreoffice.org for instructions on how to
>> unsubscribe
>> List archives are available at
>> http://www.libreoffice.org/lists/accessibility/
>> All messages you send to this list will be publicly archived and cannot be
>> deleted
>>
>
> --
> E-mail to accessibility+h...@libreoffice.org for instructions on how to
> unsubscribe
> List archives are available at
> http:

Re: [libreoffice-accessibility] Laws and standards

[Alex Midence]

SWT is indeed more accessible.   I think the only parts of Libre
Office that are in Java are those tied to the database.  Most of the
code is in c and c++, I heard.  Btw, QT is somewhat supported.  I
wouldn't call it stellar but it's not impossible to navigate witha
jaws cursor.  (Mouse simulator)  Idle, for instance, is in QT.  I dn't
see them rewriting the code to use swt classes though.  Besides, I
think this creates issues in Gnome since swt is less accessible there
than swing.

alex M

On 12/7/10, Octavian Rasnita  wrote:
> From: "Christophe Strobbe" 
>> Hi Alex,
>>
>> At 02:25 7/12/2010, Alex Midence wrote:
>>>Well, my thinking is and always will be that Libre Office is better
>>>off making itself accessible no matter what screen reader is used.
>>
>>
>> That is why LibreOffice (like OpenOffice.org) needs to support
>> accessibility APIs, keyboard access, desktop themes, etcetera. For a
>> screen reader to work with an application, the application needs to
>> implement the accessibility API (for example the Java Accessibility
>> API, which is not tied to a specific operating system), and the
>> screen reader needs to support that API. As far as I know, screen
>> readers on Windows have generally weak support for the Java Accessibility
>> API.
>
>
> True, although the screen readers for Windows have a weak support for SWING
> API. The support for SWT is much better.
>
> But the screen readers for Windows have a non-existent support for other
> GUIs like Tk, GTK, QT...
>
>
>> (Note: Java accessibility on Windows requires the Java Access Bridge.
>> Oracle is working on a new version of this bridge that will be part
>> of the Java Runtime Environment instead of a separate download.)
>
> This will be great, but hopefully the screen readers manufacturers will also
> offer a better support for SWING.
>
> JAWS for Windows offer some support for Java Access Bridge as it is now, but
> only in a virtual buffer, so the apps are seen like web pages.
>
> SWING is slower than SWT anyway, and that weak support offered by JAWS makes
> the apps much less responsive, but what's the most important for blind
> programmers is that it is very hard if impossible to make the design of the
> GUI, because in the SWING apps, JAWS doesn't offer that "JAWS cursor" for
> allowing us to "see" the position of each window control on the screen.
>
> I heard that Window Eyes started to offer a better support for SWING than
> JAWS but I haven't tested it.
>
> By the way, what interface is LibreOffice using? I've tested OpenOffice and
> it was pretty accessible although I don't remember if I had Java Access
> Bridge installed. Does it use something else than SWING?
>
> Thanks.
>
> Octavian
>
>
> --
> E-mail to accessibility+h...@libreoffice.org for instructions on how to
> unsubscribe
> List archives are available at
> http://www.libreoffice.org/lists/accessibility/
> All messages you send to this list will be publicly archived and cannot be
> deleted
>

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Re: [libreoffice-accessibility] Laws and standards

[Alex Midence]

Well, my thinking is and always will be that Libre Office is better
off making itself accessible no matter what screen reader is used.
This way, all of the effort and all of the testing that is required to
get this job done right does not run the risk of being wasted on one
solution that may or may not be around for the foreseeable future.  it
is a sad truth that not all open source projects are as long lived as
Open Office and hopefully Libre Office is shaping up to be.  Take the
case of Firevox.  It was a very promising talking extension for
firefox that offered excelent support for live regions and math ml.
Unfortunately, no work appears to have been done on it since 2008.  It
will not work with current versions of Firefox.  It is sad to think of
how much work must have gone into such a program only to have it fall
by the wayside like that.  If Libre Office avoids this pitfall and
aims for optimizing accessibility on all assistive technologies,
including proprietary ones and open source alike, then the work we do
as members of this list will be long-lasting and do a lot of good for
a lot of people around the world.

Thanks.

Alex M

On 12/6/10, Octavian Rasnita  wrote:
> The same danger from the perspective of the blind computer users also appear
> in other EU countries where the governments prefer paying for screen readers
> made in EU, even though none of them are as good as JAWS.
>
> The governments don't care that just a few computer users need to use
> complex applications like Visual Studio, Eclipse or even a simple text
> editor like TextPad which is absolutely inaccessible with NVDA (or at least
> it was inaccessible a few months ago).
>
> Octavian
>
> - Original Message -
> From: "Christophe Strobbe" 
> To: 
> Sent: Monday, December 06, 2010 8:59 PM
> Subject: Re: [libreoffice-accessibility] Laws and standards
>
>
>> Hi Alex,
>>
>> At 18:53 6/12/2010, Alex Midence wrote:
>>>(...)  I use Jaws and NVDA as my screen readers in
>>>windows and Orca in Linux.
>>
>> It is good to hear that there are screen reader users on this list!
>>
>>
>>>(...)  I am relieved to see mention of
>>>closed source, non-free screen readers in this thread.  Believe it or
>>>not, very few people in government agencies (at least the ones here in
>>>Texas) with whom I have spoken have heard of NVDA. (...)
>>
>> Do you mean agencies that refund (in whole or in part) assistive
>> technologies? It is true that these agencies are not always aware of
>> free and open-source alternatives. This is also the case in Belgium,
>> where I live.
>> Informing these agencies about free and open-source assistive
>> technologies is not without risk, unfortunately: they might just say,
>> for example: "Now that free screen readers are available for Windows,
>> we will stop refunding JAWS, Window-Eyes, Hal, Supernova, etctera",
>> without checking if the free alternatives are good enough to replace
>> the commercial ones.
>> (I heard this from someone who provides technical advice to such an
>> agency in Belgium.)
>> For example, JAWS and Window-Eyes support language switching inside a
>> document; free alternatives do not necessarily support this and
>> require the user to switch the TTS language manually.
>>
>> Best regards,
>>
>> Christophe
>>
>>
>> --
>> Christophe Strobbe
>> K.U.Leuven - Dept. of Electrical Engineering - SCD
>> Research Group on Document Architectures
>> Kasteelpark Arenberg 10 bus 2442
>> B-3001 Leuven-Heverlee
>> BELGIUM
>> tel: +32 16 32 85 51
>> http://www.docarch.be/
>> Twitter: @RabelaisA11y
>> ---
>> "Better products and services through end-user empowerment"
>> www.usem-net.eu - www.stand4all.eu
>> ---
>> Please don't invite me to Facebook, Quechup or other "social
>> networks". You may have agreed to their "privacy policy", but I haven't.
>>
>>
>> --
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>> unsubscribe
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>> http://www.libreoffice.org/lists/accessibility/
>> All messages you send to this list will be publicly archived and cannot be
>> deleted
>>
>
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Re: [libreoffice-accessibility] Laws and standards

[Alex Midence]

Hi, Christophe,

Yes, I mean those very same agencies.  The agencies that assist with
employment and with funding for assistive technology.  In the matter
of fearing that it is a chancy thing to make these people aware of
things like NVDA because they might decide not to purchase software on
the grounds that free alternatives are available, I would have to say
that this is so very very true!  Honestly, this was a fear of mine for
a time.  This is why the people with whom I did discuss these
technologies were only a very few individuals.  All were themselves
blind and all were told that NVDA has many limitations.  They
downloaded it and found out for themselves.  They also found all the
very good things it does like outstanding support for Firefox, partial
support for Open Office and propper handling of Scintilla-based
editors.  On the matter of language switching, Jaws has excelent
support for this, as you say.  The speech synthesizer provided with
it(the software that makes it talk) is quite good and multilingual.
English (UK and American), Spanish, (Euro and Latin american), French
(Canadian and that of France), German, Finnish, Italian, and Brazilian
Portuguese are all well supported.  NVDA uses Espeak as its primary
synthesizer.  This synth is open source and does ok in English.  I was
not impressed with how it sounded in other languages.   This is
important to me because I speak other languages besides English and I
like to access information in them from time to time.  Espeak is
difficult for me to understand in French, German and Spanish.  And,
you are correct, it does not switch automatically.  With Jaws, I can
visit a website for a company based in Madrid, the official site of a
city in Germany, and a travel site for visiting Paris.  In all cases,
Jaws will automatically switch to the language indicated in the html
tags found in the head of the document.  It will even switch dialects
such as going from UK English to American or, in the case of the sapi
5 voices, American to Australian or Indian English.  Its nice features
notwithstanding, I do think NVDA will eventually surpass Jaws in
functionality most especially when NVDA is set up such that every
application loads it's own configuration file and speech settings.
This is because NVDA uses Python as a scripting language and for much
of its core code whereass Jaws uses a proprietary scripting language
unique to itself which is not as easy to learn as Python and, by
definition is not as widely known as Python.  That is still some time
away though.  Also, NVDA is translated into many more languages than
Jaws so, once Espeak's pronunciation gets cleaned up, and scripts are
written to load the different languages when certain conditions are
met, it'll beat Jaws on that score too.

Alex M


On 12/6/10, Christophe Strobbe  wrote:
> Hi Alex,
>
> At 18:53 6/12/2010, Alex Midence wrote:
>>(...)  I use Jaws and NVDA as my screen readers in
>>windows and Orca in Linux.
>
> It is good to hear that there are screen reader users on this list!
>
>
>>(...)  I am relieved to see mention of
>>closed source, non-free screen readers in this thread.  Believe it or
>>not, very few people in government agencies (at least the ones here in
>>Texas) with whom I have spoken have heard of NVDA. (...)
>
> Do you mean agencies that refund (in whole or in part) assistive
> technologies? It is true that these agencies are not always aware of
> free and open-source alternatives. This is also the case in Belgium,
> where I live.
> Informing these agencies about free and open-source assistive
> technologies is not without risk, unfortunately: they might just say,
> for example: "Now that free screen readers are available for Windows,
> we will stop refunding JAWS, Window-Eyes, Hal, Supernova, etctera",
> without checking if the free alternatives are good enough to replace
> the commercial ones.
> (I heard this from someone who provides technical advice to such an
> agency in Belgium.)
> For example, JAWS and Window-Eyes support language switching inside a
> document; free alternatives do not necessarily support this and
> require the user to switch the TTS language manually.
>
> Best regards,
>
> Christophe
>
>
> --
> Christophe Strobbe
> K.U.Leuven - Dept. of Electrical Engineering - SCD
> Research Group on Document Architectures
> Kasteelpark Arenberg 10 bus 2442
> B-3001 Leuven-Heverlee
> BELGIUM
> tel: +32 16 32 85 51
> http://www.docarch.be/
> Twitter: @RabelaisA11y
> ---
> "Better products and services through end-user empowerment"
> www.usem-net.eu - www.stand4all.eu
> ---
> Please don't invite me to Facebook, Quechup or other "social
> networks". You may have agreed to their "privacy policy", but I haven't.
>
>
> --
> E-mail 

Re: [libreoffice-accessibility] Laws and standards

[Alex Midence]

Hello, list,

I am a recent subscriber and felt I might have something of use to
contribute on this topic.  I use Jaws and NVDA as my screen readers in
windows and Orca in Linux.  I will attest to the above-mentioned
statements that Jaws works poorly with Open Office and NVDA has less
than optimal accessibility with it.  I have found it to be
particularly weak in Impress.  Orca works exponentially better in
LInux than these two solutions do in Windows.  I have a demo copy of
Window Eyes on my hard drive which did not do much better than Jaws
when I tried using it in the past.  Please feel free to contact me
whenever you need someone to test features for you in any one of these
solutions.  I think it is enormously important that Libre Office be as
accessible as possible to anyone who uses a screen reader regardless
of which one they choose to use.  I am relieved to see mention of
closed source, non-free screen readers in this thread.  Believe it or
not, very few people in government agencies (at least the ones here in
Texas) with whom I have spoken have heard of NVDA.  Also, NVDA does
not appear to be as configurable as Jaws or Window Eyes are where
special scripts can be created to customize the speech output it gives
out in different applications.  Orca is quite scriptable in Linux,
incidentally.

Regards,

Alex M



On 12/6/10, Christophe Strobbe  wrote:
> Hi Marc,
>
> At 20:42 2/12/2010, you wrote:
>>Le 2010-12-02 11:27, Christophe Strobbe a écrit :
>> > (...)
>> > At 07:41 2/12/2010, Marc Paré wrote:
>> >> (...)
>> >>
>> >> This seems like quite an important developer detail to work out right
>> >> from the very start. Are the developers aware of accessibility
>> >> concerns? Also from a marketing point of view, if we are to market
>> >> the suite to governmental agencies subscribing to accessibility rules
>> >> in their procurement of software applications, then we should  be
>> >> discussing this sooner than later.
>> >
>> > I don't know to what extent the LibreOffice developers are aware of
>> > accessibility.
>> > As far as I understand, LibreOffice accessibility doesn't start from
>> > scratch. See .
>> > However, the problem with using the Java Accessibility API on Windows
>> > is that screen readers don't support it very well. NVDA and
>> > Window-Eyes are said to provide better support than JAWS (which many
>> > consider to be the dominant screen reader in the English-speaking
>> > world), but even access with NVDA is not considered excellent. The
>> > OpenOffice.org accessibility page mentions plans to implement the
>> > IAccessible2 API, but I don't know if the project ever got started on
>> > this.
>> > Access to OpenOffice.org (I don't know if LibreOffice has changed the
>> > UI) with VoiceOver on Mac OS and with Orca on GNOME seems to work
>> > better.
>> > (...)
>>
>>Hi Christophe: Thanks for the great information.
>>Yes there is need for a wiki on this.
>>
>>Re: windows and java, there was some talk of
>>trying to move the suite away from java
>>dependency. I don't know how much this would affect AT on LibreOffice.
>
>
> I don't know where all the Java dependencies are.
> I think the Java Accessibility API is just one of
> them; extension development is another one that I
> know, but there may be other areas that I don't know.
> Moving away from Java for anyting in the UI (and
> some extensions also use Java to create a UI)
> means that LibreOffice would need to implement
> another accessibility API, like IAccessible2
> (maintained by the Linux Foundation
> ;
> this API complements the old MSAA) or Microsoft
> User Interface Automatin (UIA). I have absolutely
> no idea how much work this would require.
>
> Best regards,
>
> Christophe
>
>
> --
> Christophe Strobbe
> K.U.Leuven - Dept. of Electrical Engineering - SCD
> Research Group on Document Architectures
> Kasteelpark Arenberg 10 bus 2442
> B-3001 Leuven-Heverlee
> BELGIUM
> tel: +32 16 32 85 51
> http://www.docarch.be/
> Twitter: @RabelaisA11y
> ---
> "Better products and services through end-user
> empowerment" www.usem-net.eu - www.stand4all.eu
> ---
> Please don't invite me to Facebook, Quechup or
> other "social networks". You may have agreed to
> their "privacy policy", but I haven't.
>
>
> --
> E-mail to accessibility+h...@libreoffice.org for instructions on how to
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> List archives are available at
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