RE: Screen-reader behaviour

Remark: NetFront is represented in this WG.

Regarding screen-reader behaviour:
I would await here more input from WAI people and screen-reader developers and users than from the browser vendors. And this should be in terms of "what" is required and not "how" it is to be realized.
My understanding is that a screen-reader operates on the DOM abstraction layer (structure/collections, but what about CSS?) and - indeed - this depends on the browser (the APIs are usually available). Here the role of the pure browser technology usually ends. 
"How" the above abstraction is presented to the user is usually "special-cased", I agree. It's up to the final implementation/integration whether e.g. collections are available within the UI.

>From the general point of view I assume there is a group of features required by both a screen-reader and a mobile browser that is usually operated by means of the 5/6-key-navigation. Focus management [1] is one of those and may need more attention.

[1] http://www.w3.org/html/wg/html5/#focus

Kind regards,
Marcin

Marcin Hanclik  |  Department Manager
Product Development
Access Systems Europe GmbH
Tel: +49-208-8290-6452  |  Fax: +49-208-8290-6465
Mobile: +49-163-8290-646
E-Mail: marcin.hanclik@access-company.com 



-----Original Message-----
From: public-html-request@w3.org [mailto:public-html-request@w3.org] On Behalf Of Maciej Stachowiak
Sent: Monday, September 03, 2007 7:04 AM
To: Charles McCathieNevile
Cc: public-html@w3.org
Subject: Re: Screen-reader behaviour



On Sep 2, 2007, at 7:27 PM, Charles McCathieNevile wrote:

>
> cc- wai-xtech. They know this stuff.
>
> On Sun, 02 Sep 2007 18:27:42 +0200, Sander Tekelenburg <st@isoc.nl>  
> wrote:
>
>> At 10:48 -0400 UTC, on 2007-09-02, Al Gilman wrote:
>>> To: public-html@w3.org, wai-xtech@w3.org
>>> At 3:58 AM +0200 31 08 2007, Sander Tekelenburg wrote:
>
>>>> At 13:18 -0400 UTC, on 2007-08-30, Al Gilman wrote:
>>>> Are you saying you have input from real actual flesh and blood  
>>>> developers of
>>>> Jaws and such?
> ...
>>>> Can you get them to participate in the HTML WG?
>>>
>>> I seriously doubt it.
>>
>> Why? Why would a HTML UA be unwilling to contribute to HTML5?
>
> Because is it expensive (very expensive to try and deal with this  
> group - I know of several HTML UAs where nobody is interested in  
> participating. How many of the major phone browsers are represented  
> here?

At least Opera Mini, Safari, Opera Mobile, Pocket IE, S60 Browser.

Blazer and NetFront are not represented. I don;t know what other major  
phone browsers there are.　＜http://marketshare.hitslink.com/report.aspx?qpr 
id=6＞ does not indicate any obvious other choices.
>
>
>>>> The theory is
>>>> important, but without input from the practice side, we aren't  
>>>> going to get anywhere.
>>>
>>> I'm sorry, the accessibility APIs are practice
>>
>> Sure, but what does authoring HTML (with universality and  
>> accessibility in mind) have to do with OSs' accessibility APIs?  
>> We're trying to
>> improve HTML such that it becomes easier and more attractive to  
>> authors
>> to produce content that provides universality and accessibility.
>
> In the real world, the way to present information to assistive  
> technology is via OS accessibility APIs. An HTML list, or checkbox,  
> is related to the OS' notion of a checkbox so the AT can figure out  
> what to do with it. Some ATs have special handling for Web browsers,  
> but this makes them much more expensive to produce and maintain, and  
> less likely to be overall compatible with browsers, instead relating  
> to one or two specifically.

I don't know of any screen reader that doesn't special case the  
browser to some extent.

Regards,
Maciej

Received on Monday, 3 September 2007 10:14:25 UTC