Re: Lack of AT implementors participation (was Comments on IRC log)

In its early days I used to actively hunt down and  flame people
who dared call Emacspeak a screenreader:-) I dont do that as
actively any more, but Emacspeak still remains a  talking
application, not a screenreader.

But you raise an important point with respect to the state of
screenreaders and HTML/CSS -- as you point out, their focus has
been traditionally  in some ways less than, and in others more
than "Web pages" -- they look at the screen, not at content.

Robert Burns writes:
 > 
 > 
 > On Jul 29, 2007, at 10:12 PM, Robert Burns wrote:
 > 
 > >
 > >
 > > On Jul 29, 2007, at 9:09 PM, Sander Tekelenburg wrote:
 > >
 > >>
 > >> At 08:56 +0900 UTC, on 2007-07-30, Karl Dubost wrote:
 > >>
 > >>> Le 28 juil. 2007 à 03:39, Sander Tekelenburg a écrit :
 > >>>> I've suggested before that perhaps the chairs can actively approach
 > >>>> those parties to get them involved. I haven't seen a response to  
 > >>>> that. I
 > >>>> don't know if that means my suggestion went by unnoticed, was  
 > >>>> dimissed for
 > >>>> whatever reason, or is being acted upon? :)
 > >>>
 > >>> AT as in Authoring Tools and/or Assistive Technologies
 > >>
 > >> I meant Assistive Technologies, sorry.
 > >>
 > >> We have a list of developers of Assitive Technolgies in the wiki:
 > >> <http://esw.w3.org/topic/HTML/UAs>.
 > >
 > > Quickly looking at the list I would say we have some of the few key  
 > > representative participating already. The screen reader  
 > > representation might be a challenge since it is often focussed on  
 > > other tasks than HTML and CSS. However, we have Apple and Microsoft  
 > > represented: both making screen readers of varying abilities.  
 > > Representation by Freedom Scientific (JAWS), Dolphin (HAL),  
 > > Emacspeak, Orca, and WindowEyes would be nice.
 > >
 > > In terms of aural browsing, Opera, IBM (Home Page Reader  
 > > (discontinued)) and Fire Vox are probably among the leaders: all  
 > > represented in our WG. For aural browsers, Emacspeak is probably  
 > > the only missing contender.
 > >
 > > Obviously, we may not always have representatives from these  
 > > companies that are involved with those areas of the business, but  
 > > the companies/projects themselves are represented.
 > 
 > My apologies, but I missed Emacspeak. We already have participation  
 > from the Emacspeak author / originator within our WG. It's possible  
 > I'm missing some others too. Freedom Scientific, Dolphin, Orca,  
 > WindowEyes would be the only other big screen reader players we might  
 > be missing. It looks to me like we have the major aural browser  
 > players already participating. Getting some of the screen readers  
 > interested in our WG is probably a similar problem to getting those  
 > players interested in providing extra support for aural browsing:  
 > i.e., going beyond "screen" reading. IIRC, these screen readers  
 > (other than Emacspeak) often do not do too much specifically with web  
 > content other than read what can be displayed visually on the screen.  
 > For example, Apple's VoiceOver does not really integrate too tightly  
 > with the browser and the DOM as we've discussed in previous threads.
 > 
 > Also, remember that Josh has graciously offered to make his testing  
 > facilities available to our WG [1] for testing some of the major  
 > screen readers and aural browsers. It would be helpful if someone  
 > (not necessarily our WG) has documented screen reader and aural  
 > browser support (by version and release date, etc) for various HTML  
 > and CSS features. HTML features would be like support for fallback in  
 > OBJECT, CANVAS, VIDEO, AUDIO, (and IMG in XML), @longdesc, @alt,  
 > TABLE@summary, TD@abbr, TH@abbr, TD@scope, TH@scope, TD@headers,  
 > TH@axis, TD@axis, TD@headers, ABBR and ACRONYM pronunciation support  
 > and many other features (form and UI related, @role support, etc.).
 > 
 > Take care,
 > Rob
 > 
 > [1]: <http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-html/2007Jul/1059.html>

-- 
Best Regards,
--raman

Title:  Research Scientist      
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Received on Tuesday, 31 July 2007 22:41:43 UTC