Re: Iaccessible2 in OOo
Hi, I would like to add something to what Jean-Philippe Mengual already wrote. I am involved in the development of a few OpenOffice.org extensions that are related to accessibility: an extension that exports ODT to digital talking books in the DAISY format (odt2daisy on SourceForge), an extension that exports ODT to Braille (odt2braille, also on SourceForge) and a soon-to-be-released accessibility checker for ODT files. I have presented these extensions at various conferences, and the question I invariably get when there are people with disabilities in the audience (especially blind users) is: When will OpenOffice.org become accessible on Windows? I then explain that OpenOffice.org uses the Java Accessibility API on Windows and that this needs to be replaced with IAccessible2 code. Until then the extensions are not (or very poorly) accessible on Windows, the OS used by most people with disabilities. At the next conference I will be able to say that we can expect this to happen after the release of A00o 3.4. (After the integration of IAccessible2, I will need to check how this impacts UI created by the extensions, but that is for later.) Best regards, Christophe At 15:47 28-9-2011, you wrote: Hi, Very interesting answer, thanks: I say 'potentially' as the developers in the community will make it a priority if, and only if, it is clear there is a strong demand for IA2 and someone leads the work and use of it. So I would encourage you to continue your work of letting us know of the need and also suggest you guide other users and developers who require IA2 support in AOO to join in the discussion here. (...) I will try doing that. But I'd like to mention one problem and several elements which make me think I represent an enormous part of users who want IA2 to be integrated. The problem is that I have feedbacks essentially from France or French-speaking people, and they decided me to be intermediate between English-speaking community and them. So, they have difficulties to write here directly. The language is a problem for the major part of them. However, several things make me think there's a large demand: - In the public administrations in France, where OOo is choosen, we have thousands of people who work and who are blind or sight-impaired; - The workgroup Accessibilité et logiciel libre (A11y and Free software), from April (the main French organization which Promote the Free Software in France) asked for this evolution. It appeared in our bug tracker (used to enable not English-speaking users to report problems so that we forward, as I do now). 4 bugs appear about this issue. - The LibreOffice project expressed the desire to wait for AOOo integration to integrate itself IA2 in their utility. - The problems with OOo are very often denounced on French mailing list of blind people (for instance, ALLOS mailing list). - The CFPSAA, an official enormous organization which defends the blind people rights, published, this June, a newsletter where they explained that migrating a desktop to OOo was a mistake as it's not accessible (it's a pitty! ). I tried answering and communicating about this, but of course if such official organization has this approach, it proves the need. - I met 60 people in France IRL a few weeks ago, to show them what free software gives to accessibility. The cain problem where I had to fight was OOo. (...) -- 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
Re: Iaccessible2 in OOo
Hi Jean-Philippe Thanks for highlighting the need for IA2 support in AOO. I agree that IBM offering the Symphony support for the IA2 [1] accessibility API will 'potentially' make AOO available to a much wider user base by providing vital support to NVDA and other assistive technology running on Windows (incidentally, IA2 support will also make automated testing much easier on Windows and allows tasks traditionally done via UNO). As you point out the current limited support plus fact that the alternative Java Access Bridge is too complex for users to install themselves means that accessibility tool developers such as NVDA are forced to recommend Symphony as the accessible Office suite for Windows. I say 'potentially' as the developers in the community will make it a priority if, and only if, it is clear there is a strong demand for IA2 and someone leads the work and use of it. So I would encourage you to continue your work of letting us know of the need and also suggest you guide other users and developers who require IA2 support in AOO to join in the discussion here. A good approach would be to get folks to blog about why it is important and we can post links here. That way the AOO community will be encouraged to work on ensuring there is an open and accessible Office suite available for Windows. In fact there may eventually be even more choice for users if AOO becomes the core used by other projects, as indeed it has the potential to be. It's great to hear from Marcus that dev work is under way. It's up to us in the accessibility community to 'cheer them on'. So please do encourage the NVDA community to join in here. I'll ping the developers and let them know of your interest and this thread that you started. Thanks again 1: http://www.linuxfoundation.org/collaborate/workgroups/accessibility/iaccessible2 Steve Lee OpenDirective 2011/9/27 Jean-Philippe MENGUAL mengualjean...@free.fr: Ok thanks very much for this interesting answer. If you need some dialogue with NVDA or Orca (Linux), and if I can help as intermediate, no problem, don't hesitate. I follow the situation as I consider it's a very important progress to promote better free software in general. Thanks for your interest. Regards, Jean-Philippe MENGUAL Le mercredi 28 septembre 2011 à 00:05 +0200, Marcus (OOo) a écrit : Am 09/27/2011 08:58 PM, schrieb Jean-Philippe MENGUAL: Hi Jean-Philippe, As ordinary blind user, I work very much to promote OOo and accessibility free software for blind people. The current problem is that public administrations, in France, choose OOo, but blind people are thanks a lot for your effort to promote OOo. :-) complaining, as they consider it's not perfectly accessible with NVDA (Free screen reader for Windows). And migrating to Linux isn't always easy in a network (active directory features, ...). However, IBM Symphony works fine. My problem is that's not a really free software. Nethertheless, IBM, according I was told, gave to the Apache Foundation Iaccessible2, which is the code which enables Symphony to be perfectly accessible with NVDA. That's correct. Could someone study Iaccessible2 and integrate it in OOo? It'd be great if OOo could be accessible with NVDA in the next stable releases. As no developper, I'd appreciate if you could tell me when it's integrated, if someone accepts to do it. I don't know if it's already completely arrived or if there are still some things to fix before it can be integrated into the code. However, we are really working on taking advantage of the IA2 technology. Maybe Rob can say more about the current status. It's very unlikely that it will be part of the first AOO release because of this and nobody knows the side effects that could occur. So, IMHO expect it not for the coming release but for the following one. HTH Marcus
Re: Iaccessible2 in OOo
On Tue, Sep 27, 2011 at 6:05 PM, Marcus (OOo) marcus.m...@wtnet.de wrote: Am 09/27/2011 08:58 PM, schrieb Jean-Philippe MENGUAL: Hi Jean-Philippe, As ordinary blind user, I work very much to promote OOo and accessibility free software for blind people. The current problem is that public administrations, in France, choose OOo, but blind people are thanks a lot for your effort to promote OOo. :-) complaining, as they consider it's not perfectly accessible with NVDA (Free screen reader for Windows). And migrating to Linux isn't always easy in a network (active directory features, ...). However, IBM Symphony works fine. My problem is that's not a really free software. Nethertheless, IBM, according I was told, gave to the Apache Foundation Iaccessible2, which is the code which enables Symphony to be perfectly accessible with NVDA. That's correct. Could someone study Iaccessible2 and integrate it in OOo? It'd be great if OOo could be accessible with NVDA in the next stable releases. As no developper, I'd appreciate if you could tell me when it's integrated, if someone accepts to do it. I don't know if it's already completely arrived or if there are still some things to fix before it can be integrated into the code. However, we are really working on taking advantage of the IA2 technology. Maybe Rob can say more about the current status. Accessibility is something IBM has taken very seriously with Symphony, as with our other products. We've worked with standards bodies, assistive technology vendors and others to advance the state of accessibility in this area. We'd love to see this same support in OOo and LO and in every other derivative product. That is why we contributed the code to OOo several years ago. Of course, integrating this into the current AOOo (or LO) trunk is non-trivial. IMHO, we're unlikely to integrate IAccessible2 for AOOo 3.4.0. But it is something we should look at for the next major release. As mentioned elsewhere, we have good IAccessible2 support in Symphony today. And we've already announced that we will be contributing the Symphony source code to Apache. Something we'll need to figure out is the least complicated way to merge IAccessible2 support, as well as other desired UI and other enhancements from Symphony, into future Apache releases. Maybe we can consider this to be a dress rehearsal for an eventual merge with LibreOffice? Reconciling the Symphony and AOOo codebases will have much of the same technical complications as an eventual merger of the LO fork will have. Not easy. But not impossible either. -Rob It's very unlikely that it will be part of the first AOO release because of this and nobody knows the side effects that could occur. So, IMHO expect it not for the coming release but for the following one. HTH Marcus
Re: Iaccessible2 in OOo
Hi, Very interesting answer, thanks: I say 'potentially' as the developers in the community will make it a priority if, and only if, it is clear there is a strong demand for IA2 and someone leads the work and use of it. So I would encourage you to continue your work of letting us know of the need and also suggest you guide other users and developers who require IA2 support in AOO to join in the discussion here. A good approach would be to get folks to blog about why it is important and we can post links here. That way the AOO community will be encouraged to work on ensuring there is an open and accessible Office suite available for Windows. In fact there may eventually be even more choice for users if AOO becomes the core used by other projects, as indeed it has the potential to be. I will try doing that. But I'd like to mention one problem and several elements which make me think I represent an enormous part of users who want IA2 to be integrated. The problem is that I have feedbacks essentially from France or French-speaking people, and they decided me to be intermediate between English-speaking community and them. So, they have difficulties to write here directly. The language is a problem for the major part of them. However, several things make me think there's a large demand: - In the public administrations in France, where OOo is choosen, we have thousands of people who work and who are blind or sight-impaired; - The workgroup Accessibilité et logiciel libre (A11y and Free software), from April (the main French organization which Promote the Free Software in France) asked for this evolution. It appeared in our bug tracker (used to enable not English-speaking users to report problems so that we forward, as I do now). 4 bugs appear about this issue. - The LibreOffice project expressed the desire to wait for AOOo integration to integrate itself IA2 in their utility. - The problems with OOo are very often denounced on French mailing list of blind people (for instance, ALLOS mailing list). - The CFPSAA, an official enormous organization which defends the blind people rights, published, this June, a newsletter where they explained that migrating a desktop to OOo was a mistake as it's not accessible (it's a pitty! ). I tried answering and communicating about this, but of course if such official organization has this approach, it proves the need. - I met 60 people in France IRL a few weeks ago, to show them what free software gives to accessibility. The cain problem where I had to fight was OOo. Anyway I'll forward your appeal, but I'd like you to know that even if I'm alone to write, it's a time and language problem. But thousands of people asked me to do that. It's really major, that's why I try speaking directly to the dev today. Because when that is fixed, a major limitation will be removed to migrating to Free software with NVDA and other assistive technologies. If you want some tests, of course tell me. I can test, make other tests, as intermediate. It's great to hear from Marcus that dev work is under way. It's up to us in the accessibility community to 'cheer them on'. So please do encourage the NVDA community to join in here. I'll ping the developers and let them know of your interest and this thread that you started. Ok I'll write to NVDA too. I stay available, Best regards, Thanks again 1: http://www.linuxfoundation.org/collaborate/workgroups/accessibility/iaccessible2 Steve Lee OpenDirective 2011/9/27 Jean-Philippe MENGUAL mengualjean...@free.fr: Ok thanks very much for this interesting answer. If you need some dialogue with NVDA or Orca (Linux), and if I can help as intermediate, no problem, don't hesitate. I follow the situation as I consider it's a very important progress to promote better free software in general. Thanks for your interest. Regards, Jean-Philippe MENGUAL Le mercredi 28 septembre 2011 à 00:05 +0200, Marcus (OOo) a écrit : Am 09/27/2011 08:58 PM, schrieb Jean-Philippe MENGUAL: Hi Jean-Philippe, As ordinary blind user, I work very much to promote OOo and accessibility free software for blind people. The current problem is that public administrations, in France, choose OOo, but blind people are thanks a lot for your effort to promote OOo. :-) complaining, as they consider it's not perfectly accessible with NVDA (Free screen reader for Windows). And migrating to Linux isn't always easy in a network (active directory features, ...). However, IBM Symphony works fine. My problem is that's not a really free software. Nethertheless, IBM, according I was told, gave to the Apache Foundation Iaccessible2, which is the code which enables Symphony to be perfectly accessible with NVDA. That's correct. Could someone study Iaccessible2 and integrate it in OOo? It'd be great if OOo could be accessible with NVDA in the next stable releases. As
Re: Iaccessible2 in OOo
2011/9/28 Jean-Philippe MENGUAL mengualjean...@free.fr I will try doing that. But I'd like to mention one problem and several elements which make me think I represent an enormous part of users who want IA2 to be integrated. The problem is that I have feedbacks essentially from France or French-speaking people, and they decided me to be intermediate between English-speaking community and them. So, they have difficulties to write here directly. The language is a problem for the major part of them. However, several things make me think there's a large demand: - In the public administrations in France, where OOo is choosen, we have thousands of people who work and who are blind or sight-impaired; - The workgroup Accessibilité et logiciel libre (A11y and Free software), from April (the main French organization which Promote the Free Software in France) asked for this evolution. It appeared in our bug tracker (used to enable not English-speaking users to report problems so that we forward, as I do now). 4 bugs appear about this issue. - The LibreOffice project expressed the desire to wait for AOOo integration to integrate itself IA2 in their utility. - The problems with OOo are very often denounced on French mailing list of blind people (for instance, ALLOS mailing list). - The CFPSAA, an official enormous organization which defends the blind people rights, published, this June, a newsletter where they explained that migrating a desktop to OOo was a mistake as it's not accessible (it's a pitty! ). I tried answering and communicating about this, but of course if such official organization has this approach, it proves the need. - I met 60 people in France IRL a few weeks ago, to show them what free software gives to accessibility. The cain problem where I had to fight was OOo. Anyway I'll forward your appeal, but I'd like you to know that even if I'm alone to write, it's a time and language problem. But thousands of people asked me to do that. It's really major, that's why I try speaking directly to the dev today. Because when that is fixed, a major limitation will be removed to migrating to Free software with NVDA and other assistive technologies. If you want some tests, of course tell me. I can test, make other tests, as intermediate. even though the fact and the necessity of better accessibility is known it is very good that you raise this point again and make clear the situation. I think with the whole transition of OpenOffice.org to Apache that is still ongoing and not finished we lose important time to work on this but we can't change it. We can only try to work harder to provide something usable asap. Juergen
Re: Iaccessible2 in OOo
Hi; There was an interesting cross-posting by Malte Timmermann not long ago: http://mail-archives.apache.org/mod_mbox/incubator-ooo-dev/201109.mbox/ajax/%3c4e6dc5c3.9050...@gmx.com%3E I am not suggesting it should be done now but perhaps committing accfixes2 would help the IBM IA2 integration. cheers, Pedro. --- On Wed, 9/28/11, Jürgen Schmidt jogischm...@googlemail.com wrote: ... even though the fact and the necessity of better accessibility is known it is very good that you raise this point again and make clear the situation. I think with the whole transition of OpenOffice.org to Apache that is still ongoing and not finished we lose important time to work on this but we can't change it. We can only try to work harder to provide something usable asap. Juergen
Re: Iaccessible2 in OOo
Am 09/28/2011 03:47 PM, schrieb Jean-Philippe MENGUAL: Hi, Very interesting answer, thanks: I say 'potentially' as the developers in the community will make it a priority if, and only if, it is clear there is a strong demand for IA2 and someone leads the work and use of it. So I would encourage you to continue your work of letting us know of the need and also suggest you guide other users and developers who require IA2 support in AOO to join in the discussion here. A good approach would be to get folks to blog about why it is important and we can post links here. That way the AOO community will be encouraged to work on ensuring there is an open and accessible Office suite available for Windows. In fact there may eventually be even more choice for users if AOO becomes the core used by other projects, as indeed it has the potential to be. I will try doing that. But I'd like to mention one problem and several elements which make me think I represent an enormous part of users who want IA2 to be integrated. The problem is that I have feedbacks essentially from France or French-speaking people, and they decided me to be intermediate between English-speaking community and them. So, they have difficulties to write here directly. The language is a problem for the major part of them. However, several things make me think there's a large demand: - In the public administrations in France, where OOo is choosen, we have thousands of people who work and who are blind or sight-impaired; - The workgroup Accessibilité et logiciel libre (A11y and Free software), from April (the main French organization which Promote the Free Software in France) asked for this evolution. It appeared in our bug tracker (used to enable not English-speaking users to report problems so that we forward, as I do now). 4 bugs appear about this issue. - The LibreOffice project expressed the desire to wait for AOOo integration to integrate itself IA2 in their utility. - The problems with OOo are very often denounced on French mailing list of blind people (for instance, ALLOS mailing list). - The CFPSAA, an official enormous organization which defends the blind people rights, published, this June, a newsletter where they explained that migrating a desktop to OOo was a mistake as it's not accessible (it's a pitty! ). I tried answering and communicating about this, but of course if such official organization has this approach, it proves the need. - I met 60 people in France IRL a few weeks ago, to show them what free software gives to accessibility. The cain problem where I had to fight was OOo. Anyway I'll forward your appeal, but I'd like you to know that even if I'm alone to write, it's a time and language problem. But thousands of people asked me to do that. It's really major, that's why I try speaking directly to the dev today. Because when that is fixed, a major limitation will be removed to migrating to Free software with NVDA and other assistive technologies. If you want some tests, of course tell me. I can test, make other tests, as intermediate. Thanks a lot for underlining your position with some details. I did't know this and hadn't thought about such a hugh impact. As I wrote the IA2 technology is coming (AFAIK) from IBM. With Rob and the other guys we have some employees that can push the integration of the IA2 code now better than in the past. So, I'm very confident that we can see big parts but hopefully the complete code in a AOO relase. However, I think you have to wait after the 3.4 release. I hope that we'll have a rough timeline and roadmap for things after the 3.4 release. Please have a look for it and shout when you see that IA2 has not the priority that it should have. I hope the time to wait is not to long for you. ;-) Marcus It's great to hear from Marcus that dev work is under way. It's up to us in the accessibility community to 'cheer them on'. So please do encourage the NVDA community to join in here. I'll ping the developers and let them know of your interest and this thread that you started. Ok I'll write to NVDA too. I stay available, Best regards, Thanks again 1: http://www.linuxfoundation.org/collaborate/workgroups/accessibility/iaccessible2 Steve Lee OpenDirective 2011/9/27 Jean-Philippe MENGUALmengualjean...@free.fr: Ok thanks very much for this interesting answer. If you need some dialogue with NVDA or Orca (Linux), and if I can help as intermediate, no problem, don't hesitate. I follow the situation as I consider it's a very important progress to promote better free software in general. Thanks for your interest. Regards, Jean-Philippe MENGUAL Le mercredi 28 septembre 2011 à 00:05 +0200, Marcus (OOo) a écrit : Am 09/27/2011 08:58 PM, schrieb Jean-Philippe MENGUAL: Hi Jean-Philippe, As ordinary blind user, I work very much to promote OOo and accessibility free software for blind people. The current problem is that public administrations, in
Re: Iaccessible2 in OOo
Am 09/27/2011 08:58 PM, schrieb Jean-Philippe MENGUAL: Hi Jean-Philippe, As ordinary blind user, I work very much to promote OOo and accessibility free software for blind people. The current problem is that public administrations, in France, choose OOo, but blind people are thanks a lot for your effort to promote OOo. :-) complaining, as they consider it's not perfectly accessible with NVDA (Free screen reader for Windows). And migrating to Linux isn't always easy in a network (active directory features, ...). However, IBM Symphony works fine. My problem is that's not a really free software. Nethertheless, IBM, according I was told, gave to the Apache Foundation Iaccessible2, which is the code which enables Symphony to be perfectly accessible with NVDA. That's correct. Could someone study Iaccessible2 and integrate it in OOo? It'd be great if OOo could be accessible with NVDA in the next stable releases. As no developper, I'd appreciate if you could tell me when it's integrated, if someone accepts to do it. I don't know if it's already completely arrived or if there are still some things to fix before it can be integrated into the code. However, we are really working on taking advantage of the IA2 technology. Maybe Rob can say more about the current status. It's very unlikely that it will be part of the first AOO release because of this and nobody knows the side effects that could occur. So, IMHO expect it not for the coming release but for the following one. HTH Marcus
Re: Iaccessible2 in OOo
Ok thanks very much for this interesting answer. If you need some dialogue with NVDA or Orca (Linux), and if I can help as intermediate, no problem, don't hesitate. I follow the situation as I consider it's a very important progress to promote better free software in general. Thanks for your interest. Regards, Jean-Philippe MENGUAL Le mercredi 28 septembre 2011 à 00:05 +0200, Marcus (OOo) a écrit : Am 09/27/2011 08:58 PM, schrieb Jean-Philippe MENGUAL: Hi Jean-Philippe, As ordinary blind user, I work very much to promote OOo and accessibility free software for blind people. The current problem is that public administrations, in France, choose OOo, but blind people are thanks a lot for your effort to promote OOo. :-) complaining, as they consider it's not perfectly accessible with NVDA (Free screen reader for Windows). And migrating to Linux isn't always easy in a network (active directory features, ...). However, IBM Symphony works fine. My problem is that's not a really free software. Nethertheless, IBM, according I was told, gave to the Apache Foundation Iaccessible2, which is the code which enables Symphony to be perfectly accessible with NVDA. That's correct. Could someone study Iaccessible2 and integrate it in OOo? It'd be great if OOo could be accessible with NVDA in the next stable releases. As no developper, I'd appreciate if you could tell me when it's integrated, if someone accepts to do it. I don't know if it's already completely arrived or if there are still some things to fix before it can be integrated into the code. However, we are really working on taking advantage of the IA2 technology. Maybe Rob can say more about the current status. It's very unlikely that it will be part of the first AOO release because of this and nobody knows the side effects that could occur. So, IMHO expect it not for the coming release but for the following one. HTH Marcus signature.asc Description: Ceci est une partie de message numériquement signée
