SMS> Greetings, my name is Steve...
Welcome to the group.
Good luck using The Bat! It is a fantastic program and I believe that
everyone who uses it has some issue with it, so you're no different in
that regard.
By the way, can your screen-reader interpret the colon-dash-parenthesis
sequence as a smiley face somehow?
One issue you might have with the messages TB outputs is the
quoted-line prefix. Most mailers use a greater-than sign, but TB (as
you may have noticed by know) outputs an "attribution" of sorts in
front of the quote indicator. As Tom Fernandez mentioned, my
installation of TB outputs your initials followed by the quote
"delimiter" if that's not a terrible name for it.
Anyhow, onto your stated problem...
SMS> This next question might seem a bit odd as it probably wouldn't have any
SMS> effect on anyone who isn't using screen-reading software. When
SMS> screen-reading software encounters an object, it makes a determination
SMS> on how to treat that object based partially uppon its windows
SMS> classification.
Well those of us here who are programmers know what you're talking
about, and now I realize things that I might do myself that could
throw off screen readers. One more thing to be compatible with. :)
TB! has an "interesting" editor as far as mail clients are concerned.
The good folks at RIT Labs have implemented an edit window that allows
for "free caret", allowing the user to place the cursor anywhere on
the screen with arrow keys or a mouse click. Undoubtedly, they
couldn't use "standard Windows controls" to implement this edit
window. I would presume that they may have used a stripped-down
version of that for their message viewer window, in which case it
doesn't have the tags that make it appear to be a "standard" Windows
view/edit window.
It might not be terrible to send them (RIT Labs) a "bug report" with
the name of your screen-reader software vendor so that they may
investigate what it would take to make TB screen-reader friendly.
That sort of thing could only help RIT sell more copies of TB!
SMS> Subsequently, if I arrow up and down through my various messages,
SMS> the software isn't sure what it should speak e.g. subject,
SMS> sender, etc...
Hmm, for that I'd think that some configuration would be necessary as
it is possible to rearrange what shows up in the message list window.
I don't know why they'd implement their own version of that, but
perhaps it ended up being easier for them...
In any event, the message list can be configured completely: you can
rearrange the order in which the fields appear and you can indicate
whether or not they appear at all.
SMS> More importantly, can anyone think of why the message list might
SMS> appear to the screen reader to be different than the text of the
SMS> message itself, and the folder list i.e. is it perhaps in a
SMS> different color, is the cursor a different shape, do the lines
SMS> get highlighted differently, etc...?
Oops I guess I was confused above; first time I read through your
message I thought for sure that you had mentioned that it couldn't
read the messages. My mistake. :)
Anyhow, the message list appears to be a "standard" feature in
Windows, it appears on the surface to be the same object that appears
in the "found" list when you do find files in Windows Explorer.
Good luck!
-tom!
--
Bah, ridiculous thing.
--
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