- From: Henri Sivonen <hsivonen@iki.fi>
- Date: Tue, 11 Sep 2007 14:40:56 +0300
- To: David Poehlman <david.poehlman@handsontechnologeyes.com>
- Cc: "Steven Faulkner" <faulkner.steve@gmail.com>, "HTMLWG" <public-html@w3.org>, <wai-xtech@w3.org>
On Sep 11, 2007, at 13:31, David Poehlman wrote: > What would you like jaws to do? I think that isn't quite the right question. I think the right question is, what blind Web users would prefer to hear with the constraint that another human can't be consulted and only software heuristics can be used. Without knowing the actual preferences blind users have, the following are guesses off the top of my head. I imagine each of these to surpass what JAWS does: * Saying "image". (Even this is better than reading the Flickr file names!) * Playing an beep or "aural icon" that takes less time to play than the speech engine takes to say "image". * Playing a different aural icon based on image dimensions, format, EXIF presence, color histogram and advance statistics on these properties so that the aural icon represents a probabilistic categorization as photo, thumbnail photo, illustration, icon, advertisement, etc. * Reading the file name if (and only if) the file name consists of segments that are words found in a dictionary of the language that the speech generator speaks. > Jaws is not a voice browser. I didn't mean to suggest it were. I was using "voice browsing" to refer to both browsing with browsers that are designed to talk and with graphical browser plus screen reader combinations. > If your question is: "what woulmost popular also which if we are is > a flawed > approach since as I said with jaws, html5 should not focus on internet > explorer but rather focus on what the community needs and how to > provide it. > If this is is the case, I am happy. I am asking what kind of improvements to screen readers are realistic within, say, the next 7 years. As a software developer, I can assess what kinds of problems are algorithmically solvable and I think I understand market dynamics as they relate to server-side development and to browser development. I don't understand the market dynamics of screen readers, though. > If we are focusing on IE, we need to back up and redirect. It would sure be nice if we had the freedom to think past the current versions of JAWS as used with IE. > The answer > is that when you see it in the ua parsing engine, if it is > propperly parced, > we'll see it soon after in the screenless desktop environments. The division of work between the browser and the speaking desktop environment is an implementation detail that should not be prescribed in the markup spec. However, if, due to market dynamics or whatever inertia, vendors of speaking desktop environments simply won't improve the treatment of images that lack alternative text, perhaps the spec should suggest that it would be good for the user experience if the browsers took over and faked an alt text. > The user agent is not mentioned here but it seems that we are > talking about > the It appears that the rest of your message got cut off. -- Henri Sivonen hsivonen@iki.fi http://hsivonen.iki.fi/
Received on Tuesday, 11 September 2007 11:41:18 UTC