I need some quick feedback from the folks on the list for an upcoming accessibility consideration in Pro Tools

[Slau Halatyn]

The programming team reached out to me with a question regarding the upcoming new folder tracks feature and the ramifications of a new option. I gave them my personal opinion and I'm confident that others will agree. That said, I told them I'd get some quick feedback from the community just in case.

Currently, if track numbers are checked under the View menu, track numbers appear next to all shown tracks. If a track is subsequently hidden or shown, the numbers rearrange to reflect an incrementing number for each shown track. There's an option in the Preferences for track numbers to remain with hidden tracks. When selected, obviously, all track numbers stick with tracks regardless of whether they're showing or not.

So, if i may quickly interject, track numbers would generally be of no particular concern to VoiceOver users except if they use a control surface, in which case, one would generally opt to have track numbers rearrange and not remain with hidden tracks. In other words, if a track is shown, you'd normally want the number in the track list or Mix window to equal the position of the track on a control surface so that track 7 is fader 7 or track 16 is fader 8 in the second bank, etc.

OK, now there's a new issue. With the new folder tracks option, a folder can be open or closed. When a folder is closed, its tracks are hidden. This hidden state is not explicit but a result of the folder being closed. In other words, you can choose to explicitly hide tracks 2, 4, 6 and 8 within a folder, close the folder and tracks 1 through 8 will be hidden and not even appear in the Mix window. Upon opening the folder, only tracks 1, 3, 5 and 7 would be shown because the even-numbered tracks were explicitly hidden. This is simply to illustrate that there's a new layer of track numbering to contend with.

Now, there was a suggestion in the beta to have an option for track numbers to remain with closed folders. There's perhaps an argument to be made that this might be helpful to some users. The question posed was whether this potential option might have any implications for blind users.

Again, to offer my personal take, I think it makes no difference whatsoever to blind users whether track numbers remain with closed folders as it is theoretically no different than what the behavior is with explicitly shown or hidden tracks. In other words, if a track is hidden (be it because of a closed folder or because of its show/hide status), if your preference is for tracks to always increment sequentially, based on their visibility, it will still behave as it always has. If, on the other hand (for whatever reason), you prefer to have track numbers remain with hidden tracks (regardless of whether it's because you've explicitly hidden them or because you've closed a folder, you can still have that behavior as well.

This may all seem like a very obvious non-issue and I've essentially indicated that much to Avid. However, if there's anyone who sees a potential oversight, please make your argument here within the next 24 hours.

Thanks,

Slau

[Michael Holmes]

Sounds good to me. Pass on my thanks to the team for their ongoing attention to detail for our community.

Thanks Slau,
Mike


Sent from my iPhone

> On Feb 24, 2020, at 18:56, Slau Halatyn <slauh...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> The programming team reached out to me with a question regarding the upcoming new folder tracks feature and the ramifications of a new option. I gave them my personal opinion and I'm confident that others will agree. That said, I told them I'd get some quick feedback from the community just in case.

> --
> You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Pro Tools Accessibility" group.
> To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to ptaccess+u...@googlegroups.com.
> To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/ptaccess/2988DA30-2EEC-46F0-A52F-1243D3167405%40gmail.com.

[Martin (Punky) Sopart]

Hello Slau!

Your thoughts sound sensible to me.

Thanks and best! / Martin

[Steve Sparrow]

yep makes sense to me Slau. Actually I didn’t know that track numbering feature was there. I tried that out strait away. how much easier it makes things. I wish i’d known about this before. What a time saver.
Steve