Mozilla/Firefox Accessibility Extension Version 0.98 available
Jon Gunderson
now available:
http://www.disability.uiuc.edu/cita/software/mozilla/download.html
We are hoping this will be our last release before we release
version 1.0. So please test and comment on the extension.
Thanks,
Jon
Jon Gunderson, Ph.D., ATP
Director of IT Accessibility Services
Campus Information Technologies and Educational Services (CITES)
and
Coordinator of Assistive Communication and Information Technology
Disability Resources and Education Services (DRES)
Voice: (217) 244-5870
Fax: (217) 333-0248
E-mail: jon...@uiuc.edu
WWW: http://cita.rehab.uiuc.edu/
WWW: https://netfiles.uiuc.edu/jongund/www/
Aaron Leventhal
support, and support for accessibility in rich
internet applications (DHTML).
Here's the official announcement:
http://www-306.ibm.com/able/news/firefox.html
Luke Yelavich
> Of particular interest: JAWS & Window-Eyes
> support, and support for accessibility in rich
> internet applications (DHTML).
So what does this mean for GNOME/GTK accessibility users?
Luke
Nagappan
I would also be very happy to see the same for GNOME environment. In
my point of view this will improve in writing automation scripts using
Linux Desktop Testing Project (LDTP -
http://gnomebangalore.org/ldtp/index.php/Main_Page).
Thanks
Nagappan
Luke Yelavich wrote:
>On Wed, Aug 17, 2005 at 10:56:10AM EST, Aaron Leventhal wrote:
>
>
>>Of particular interest: JAWS & Window-Eyes
>>support, and support for accessibility in rich
>>internet applications (DHTML).
>>
>>
>
>So what does this mean for GNOME/GTK accessibility users?
>
>Luke
>_______________________________________________
>mozilla-accessibility mailing list
>mozilla-ac...@mozilla.org
>http://mail.mozilla.org/listinfo/mozilla-accessibility
>
>
--
Nagappan A <anag...@novell.com>
Novell Software Development (I) Pvt. Ltd.
Aaron Leventhal
them to be, especially with respect to screen
reader use. For example, we don't believe that it
will be based on using the built-in caret
navigation mode, and we believe significant work
remains ahead in order to make it work really well.
That said, I believe the GOK support (Gnome
Onscreen Keyboard) in Firefox is very good,
although I don't know of any ongoing testing with
Firefox 1.5 beta and GOK, which could be a problem.
Gnome does get the benefit of some of the DHTML
accessibility work, although ATK did not support
some of the things we needed, such as events for
alerts that are not top level windows and not
focusable.
All in all, IBM had to focus in on a set of doable
problems for this release. We focused on getting
Firefox fully accessible on Windows first for a
couple of reasons. First, Firefox needed to prove
that it could be accessible at all, and Windows
still has more mature assistive technologies.
Second, Windows is where the majority of users
with disabilities currently are, and our goal is
to get as many people with disabilities to use
Firefox.
I apologize for those who are still waiting for
quality Linux screen reader support in Firefox.
In the long term IBM is interested in Firefox
accessibility under Linux, and we are still
planning how to get there.
- Aaron
Peter Korn
Aaron Leventhal wrote:
> Things under Gnome are not where IBM would like them to be, especially
> with respect to screen reader use. For example, we don't believe that it
> will be based on using the built-in caret navigation mode, and we
> believe significant work remains ahead in order to make it work really
> well.
There have been many discussions about this in the W3C Web Accessibility
Initiative meetings, as well as in e-mail on this list some months ago. The
conclusion seems to be browser extensions which provide structural content
navigation (e.g. to next/previous header, table cell, table row). Jon
Gunderson of the University of Illinois at Urbana/Champaign has been working
on these with his graduate students. You can try out their explorations at:
http://cita.rehab.uiuc.edu/software/mozilla/ Because of issues with
AccessKeys, this extension uses a dialog box to present the navigation
options, which is not how users would want to us it in practice. Nontheless,
it illustrates the power of browser extensions to provide structural content
navigation, beyond the basic character navigation which I believe is still
very much desired by many in the disability community, including blind users.
> That said, I believe the GOK support (Gnome Onscreen Keyboard) in
> Firefox is very good, although I don't know of any ongoing testing with
> Firefox 1.5 beta and GOK, which could be a problem.
>
> Gnome does get the benefit of some of the DHTML accessibility work,
> although ATK did not support some of the things we needed, such as
> events for alerts that are not top level windows and not focusable.
One of the great things about ATK and AT-SPI (and of course the Java
Accessibility API from which these came from) is that they are extensible. In
fact, there are several proposals for AT-SPI extensions being discussed right
now in the Free Standards Group Accessibility Working Group.
> All in all, IBM had to focus in on a set of doable problems for this
> release. We focused on getting Firefox fully accessible on Windows first
> for a couple of reasons. First, Firefox needed to prove that it could be
> accessible at all, and Windows still has more mature assistive
> technologies. Second, Windows is where the majority of users with
> disabilities currently are, and our goal is to get as many people with
> disabilities to use Firefox.
>
> I apologize for those who are still waiting for quality Linux screen
> reader support in Firefox.
> In the long term IBM is interested in Firefox accessibility under Linux,
> and we are still planning how to get there.
After working for a couple of years on accessibility on a branch of Mozilla
1.7 (shipping in our recent Solaris 10 OS release), we've returned to CVS head
with our accessibility work. Roughly 80% of the accessibility fixes we've
down are back in CVS head. The remainder cannot be applied directly because
the codebase they would go into has changed too significantly. We are now
testing Firefox accessibility, and are tracking the bugs we've found. See:
https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/buglist.cgi?query_format=advanced&short_desc_type=allwordssubstr&short_desc=&product=Firefox&component=Disability%20Access&version=Trunk&long_desc_type=substring&long_desc=&bug_file_loc_type=allwordssubstr&bug_file_loc=&status_whiteboard_type=allwordssubstr&status_whiteboard=&keywords_type=allwords&keywords=&resolution=---&op_sys=Linux&emailassigned_to1=1&emailtype1=exact&email1=&emailassigned_to2=1&emailreporter2=1&emailqa_contact2=1&emailtype2=exact&email2=&bugidtype=include&bug_id=&votes=&chfieldfrom=&chfieldto=Now&chfieldvalue=&field0-0-0=noop&type0-0-0=noop&value0-0-0=&order=bugs.bug_id&query_based_on=
to get a bugzilla report of them.
Aaron - IBM's DHTML accessibility work is great stuff. I enjoyed the demos
you guys gave at the W3C conference in Boston earlier this year, and was glad
to see a fair amount of functionality working with Gnopernicus even at that
time. Please be sure to connect with Louie Zhao and the rest of the Sun
accessibility team so we can coordinate getting this stuff working in Firefox
on UNIX/Linux.
Regards,
Peter Korn
Sun Accessiblity team
>
>
> Luke Yelavich wrote:
>
>> On Wed, Aug 17, 2005 at 10:56:10AM EST, Aaron Leventhal wrote:
>>
>>> Of particular interest: JAWS & Window-Eyes support, and support for
>>> accessibility in rich internet applications (DHTML).
>>
>>
>> So what does this mean for GNOME/GTK accessibility users?
>>
>> Luke
>
Thomas Ward
I just grabbed the Firefox for Windows and ran it with Window eyes 5.0.
I am very amazed at how far access has come so far.
As soon as i put caret browsing on it is almost, but not quite as
accessible as Internet Explorer.
Pratik Patel
release. It will have IE equivalent functionality from what I am told.
Pratik
Pratik Patel
Interim Director
Office of Special Services
Queens College
Director
CUNY Assistive Technology Services
The City University of New York
ppa...@qc.edu
Aaron Leventhal
amazed when the Window-Eyes 5.5 beta comes out
with Firefox 1.5. Or JAWS 7.
All of these products are due out this Fall.
That's what the announcement was about! :)
If you try the current stuff (Firefox 1.0 /
Window-Eyes 5.0, JAWS 6.1) you will also be amazed
at how much is broken :)
- Aaron