From: Mark D. <sof...@ki...> - 2003-12-17 06:09:03
|
This is a response to that email Herman forwarded from the Sun guy working on Gaim accessibility. The forwarded message is below all of this. It looks all wonky because I wanted to paste it inline rather than as an attachment. Marc, Sorry it's taken us so long to respond. I was kind of waiting for Sean to reply, but I guess he's busy or something. Anyhoo, we're interested in making Gaim more accessible, and patches are very welcome :-) Personally I prefer smaller autonomous patches rather than things that touch have of the universe, but your changes mostly sound pretty straight-forward, so I don't think it'd be a problem. I can't give you a definite answer on the conversation changes--I'm more of a backend guy (*cough*), and major changes usually have to go through Sean. I can say for sure that having a preference for something like "always focus input box in convo windows" is definitely NOT desired. The rationale for making the input box always have focus is so people can click anywhere on a convo window and begin typing text. I feel that this functionality should remain. I'm a little unclear on the reasons you would need to give other widgets focus (I'm pretty unfamiliar with accessibility). They should be shortcuts for sending a message, getting info, adding to buddy list, etc., right? Sean probably has more to add to that. If you want to submit a patch with the stuff you have so far (without changes to the convo windows) I'll be able to look at it within a week from today. I'm hoping 0.75 will be released on New Years Day, but that's just me. We don't really have a release schedule. -Mark -- O O Mark Doliner \ | ma...@ki... \ | www.kingant.net "There needs to be a better word for weird." Forwarded message follows... Date: Tue, 09 Dec 2003 20:57:55 -0700 From: Marc Mulcahy <Marc.Mulcahy@Sun.COM> Subject: Gaim Accessibility Hi, My name is Marc Mulcahy-- I'm a blind developer working for Sun Microsystems on the GNOME Accessibility project. Gaim is a great project, and I'm interested in submitting a patch to make it more accessible, and specifically, to make it work better with Gnopernicus, the GNOME Screen Reader. I have finished a few of the easier points. I have used the accessibility framework to associate labels with their associated text boxes or menu items, where the accessibility framework didn't do it automatically. I have also added shift-f10 (right click keyboard equivillent) functionality to the treeview buddy list and the treeview list of participants in a chat room. Now for the complicated part-- the conversation window itself is not accessible for a few reasons. Because keyboard focus is programatically forced to always stay in the outgoing text entry field, it is not possible for a blind person to review the message log. The message log window also doesn't have a caret, so it isn't possible for a blind person to select, copy, and paste text from it using only the keyboard. So, what I'm wondering is if you have any thoughts on how we could make this more accessible and not compromise your UI goals. My working patch reworks the focus chain in the conversation window to include the tab control, the outgoing text entry and message log. I allow the user to tab and shift tab between these items, and I've also enabled a caret in the message log to allow the user to review the text using standard text navigation keys, as well as select, cut, and paste it. I realize that this represents a change to the UI-- would it be possible for us to make these changes or settings configurable? Do you have any other thoughts about this? Thanks, Marc |