Amaya with Window-Eyes 4.0

Haven't had too much time; we're preparing for a meeting next week of
committee AQ of the National Information Standards Organization, here at
the National Library Service, to wrap up our standard for digital talking
books, which includes plenty of XML, SMIL, hierarchical navigation
structures and compressed audio.  

I got a sighted person to look on for a while as I tried some things in
Amaya.  Window-Eyes can recognize and properly use the cursor in dialog
boxes such as the ctrl-O dialogue; I'd guess that part is from a Microsoft
library.  (This is the Win95 version of Amaya 4.2.1 in Windows 98 SE).  

Window-Eyes is like JFW in that you can use the numeric keypad to move the
mouse around and read by lines, words, characters, etc.  Graphics on the
toolbar had tooltips, and Window-Eyes was able to use these to
automatically label them.  Menus are a little unusual, since you must hit
Alt, then V, then a view option; the combination Alt-V or Alt-F does not
work as it would work in most Windows programs.  Pull-down menus and the
status bar read properly.

The formatted view window seems to have the text drawn to the screen one
word at a time; this means that Window-Eyes sees each line as a long series
of separate "clips", and this causes a speech synthesizer to stutter or
pause noticeably between words when reading a line or a whole window.  This
means that it's much more comfortable to read the HTML documentation in
Lynx/32 or in IE5.

I found that I could position the mouse pointer on any character in a
window, use the W-E left-click keystroke, and the caret moved to that
position.  But Window-Eyes could never recognize this caret.  I would be
able to use this left-click method to position my cursor within a window
and insert some text, which Window-Eyes can then read, but this is pretty
unhandy.

I didn't try "reclassing" the nonstandard window to an "MDI Frame" or "MDI
Client" but doubt this would affect much.  

Except for the fact that a cursor is visible, I have some similar issues
with XML Spy, which I have been testing out.  It's a challenge.  If I had
more time, I might be able to hack into a few more things and find Amaya to
be really useful; at this point I'm not convinced.

At 09:54 AM 1/5/01 -0500, you wrote:
>Hi Lloyd, thanks for that Data.
>
>(It is getting to be a pile of it - I'll put it on a Web page.)
>
>Do you have a few minutes to answer some questions about Amaya (feel free to
>ignore this if you're busy - I realise that I am simply asking you to spend
>time...)
>
>How easy/hard is it to read stuff using teh mouse pointer? And how do you go
>about using the menus and buttons like that?
>
>Can you read the structure view? (it might be difficult to know without
>a visual check...)
>
>I assume that the Table of Contents View, Links View, and Alternative
>(text-only) View are more or less like reading the Formatted (default) View.
>
>Do you get alternatives provided for images in the formatted view (the alt is
>rendered instead in the alternative view...)
>
>cheers
>
>Charles McCN

Braille is the solution to the digital divide.
Lloyd Rasmussen, Senior Staff Engineer
National Library Service f/t Blind and Physically Handicapped
Library of Congress    (202) 707-0535  <lras@loc.gov>
<http://www.loc.gov/nls>
HOME:  <lras@sprynet.com>       <http://lras.home.sprynet.com>

Received on Friday, 5 January 2001 14:31:39 UTC