- From: john_slatin <john_slatin@forum.utexas.edu>
- Date: Fri, 19 Apr 2002 10:34:17 -0500
- To: "'jim@jimthatcher.com'" <jim@jimthatcher.com>, "'Charles McCathieNevile'" <charles@w3.org>, "'jonathan chetwynd'" <j.chetwynd@btinternet.com>
- Cc: john_slatin <john_slatin@forum.utexas.edu>, "'w3c-wai-gl@w3.org'" <w3c-wai-gl@w3.org>
Thanks for all the responses. It's good to be reminded that there are indeed other browsers out there. But my post was prompted by a specific experience: Jim Allan and I spent about an hour sitting in my office the other day, looking at Opera and marveling at some of its features. But we were also strucky by the fact that JAWS 4.02 (the most recent version, released last month) read the pages very badly when it read them at all-- even after going into the Opera preferences and checking off the things designed specifically to support screen readers. For example there is a page that lists Opera's extensive keyboard support-- critical information for me and for other people who are blind/have low vision who use screen readers. But JAWS could not read all the items on the list; Jim told me that it seemed to be picking up "about every third itme." We spent some time looking at Opera's documentation, finding everything they had to say about screen readers and making the changes they recommended. Then we went to JAWS' help and looked for references to Opera. Not one. So I called Freedom Scientific tech support and asked if they had scripts for Opera. The short answer was "No." The long answer was also "No." And when I pushed the point, the guy on the phone said that he had "never seen" Opera, nor had anyone else in his unit. I asked if there were ways I could configure JAWS to improve performance. The short answer was "no." The long answer was that I might be able to do it if I knew how to write JAWS scripts. I got similar answers about Lynx, which JAWS also seems to handle pretty badly. My next move was to email GW Micro, publishers of Window-Eyes. The response was quick, and said that they simply had to concentrate all their resources on supporting IE. Period. I sent the same query to DolphinUSA and will report back when I hear from them. There's no conspiracy here. Just small companies in a small market doing their best to allocate resources where they and their customers get the most bang for the buck. Given Microsoft's market share, it makes good business sense for the vendors to focus on IE. But that just has the effect of continuing to narrow choices and driving innovation into tight dark corners. John -----Original Message----- From: Jim Thatcher [mailto:thatch@attglobal.net] Sent: Friday, April 19, 2002 8:40 am To: Charles McCathieNevile; jonathan chetwynd Cc: john_slatin; w3c-wai-gl@w3.org Subject: RE: Screen reader support for browsers Hi Charles, The statement of screen reader "support" is debatable. OutSpoken supports any browser just like other screen readers support any browser - reading the text written to the screen. Outspoken is not unique in that regard. But it is hopelessly inadequate for the web. It is inadequate support. Mercator never "supported" the web either. Emacspeak is great technology used by at least 4 people and is purely text. The way you write about these things makes it sound a lot better than it really is. I don't agree with your assertion about the way screen readers support browsers either. In fact, JFW parses the HTML, Window-Eyes uses MSAA, and only HPR uses the DOM ... as their main resource for getting web content and structure. Jim Accessibility Consulting http://jimthatcher.com 512-306-0931 Constructing Accessible Web Sites, is now available at Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1904151000/jimthatcherco-20/! I recommend it. It's a good book! -----Original Message----- From: w3c-wai-gl-request@w3.org [mailto:w3c-wai-gl-request@w3.org]On Behalf Of Charles McCathieNevile Sent: Thursday, April 18, 2002 11:09 PM To: jonathan chetwynd Cc: john_slatin; w3c-wai-gl@w3.org Subject: Re: Screen reader support for browsers well, an example of standardisation on the windows platform is using DOM and MSAA - apparently this is the critical part of making browsers accesible to the blind (I guess unless you use a directly accessible browser like websound or homepage reader). Netscape have been working hard on this recently and appear to be making very good progress. So next roll-outs should be better. I agree that the range of browsers which sighted people can use is valuable, and not being able to use the same range is a great shame. cheers Chaals On Fri, 19 Apr 2002, jonathan chetwynd wrote: Yes But this is an issue which needs raising. 'where is the standardisation?' its not much **** good if you only get one or two browsers, per reader, or visa-versa is it? especially if they stop working with the next roll-out. thanks ----- Original Message ----- From: "Charles McCathieNevile" <charles@w3.org> To: "john_slatin" <john_slatin@forum.utexas.edu> Cc: <w3c-wai-gl@w3.org> Sent: Thursday, April 18, 2002 11:21 PM Subject: Re: Screen reader support for browsers > As far as I know, Outspoken supports any browser, since they base their model > on what is pushed to the screen. Likewise I think mercator (Solaris) did > that. I am pretty sure Gnopernicus works with something other than IE (since > I am pretty sure there is no IE for GNOME, among other things). > > Emacspeak works like a new-generation screenreader - rather than strictly > reading the screen it hooks into the underlying system (in this case emacs) > to make an audio desktop. It can support at least emacs/W3 browser and Lynx, > although there are other browsers that can be run under emacs I believe. > > Cheers > > Charles > > On Thu, 18 Apr 2002, john_slatin wrote: > > For what it's worth, I just checked with both Freedom Scientific and GW > Micro and *neither* of them supports Opera or Lynx, or for that matter > anything other than IE. I have a query out to DolphinUSA about HAL. > > This strikes me as impoverished, to say the least. > > John > > John Slatin, Ph.D. > Director, Institute for Technology & Learning > University of Texas at Austin > FAC 248C, Mail code G9600 > Austin, TX 78712 > ph 512-495-4288, f 512-495-4524 > email jslatin@mail.utexas.edu <mailto:jslatin@mail.utexas.edu> > web http://www.ital.utexas.edu <http://www.ital.utexas.edu/> > > > > > -- > Charles McCathieNevile http://www.w3.org/People/Charles phone: +61 409 134 136 > W3C Web Accessibility Initiative http://www.w3.org/WAI fax: +33 4 92 38 78 22 > Location: 21 Mitchell street FOOTSCRAY Vic 3011, Australia > (or W3C INRIA, Route des Lucioles, BP 93, 06902 Sophia Antipolis Cedex, France) > > -- Charles McCathieNevile http://www.w3.org/People/Charles phone: +61 409 134 136 W3C Web Accessibility Initiative http://www.w3.org/WAI fax: +33 4 92 38 78 22 Location: 21 Mitchell street FOOTSCRAY Vic 3011, Australia (or W3C INRIA, Route des Lucioles, BP 93, 06902 Sophia Antipolis Cedex, France)
Received on Friday, 19 April 2002 11:34:19 UTC