[Blindmath] [program-java] Announcing JWin - a program for installing the Java Access Bridge on Windows

Sat Dec 31 00:10:34 UTC 2011

Hello,
I also agree with the comments made by Michael on JAVA.  I have been 
trying to use the access bridge since 2008 or so.  The college I use to 
attend used a product called Illuminate live.  It is a voice over IP 
type of program.  It was hit and miss using it with the access bridge.  
the problems I always had was the fact that if you upgraded the JRE or 
the version of your screen reader, you would have to uninstall the 
bridge and reinstall it so it could hook into each of those again.  Most 
times it would not work with one version of the upgraded JRE and then it 
would with the next.  It was a very hit and miss.  I have since given up 
on using it for the most part.  I did however install the Math Trax 
64bit install recently and it seems to work.
thanks,
Greg W.

Yesterday is forever gone, tomorrow may never come, today is the day of all days.

On 12/30/2011 1:01 PM, John Gardner wrote:
> I second Michael's comments about Java.  I have tried for years to install
> and use the Java Bridge to access some Java application or other.  Or to use
> Window-Eyes or NVDA to access other Java applications.  I have never
> succeeded even once.  I am continually told that OpenOffice can be
> accessible, and I have tried repeatedly to access that app.  I have failed
> miserably.
>
> Admittedly it may be my own fault, because I didn't install the framus
> correctly into the Froomis location and then link to the jar application
> correctly.  I'm not the most competent computer user on earth, but then I
> know a lot more than the average user.  Perhaps there are blind people who
> can use OpenOffice, but I bet that most, like I, cannot.
>
> I intend to try Jamal's new stuff.  He can work miracles, and maybe I'll be
> using OpenOffice next week.
>
> But please don't ever assume that just because one has accessibility in
> principle that everyone will have it in practice.  No matter how easy it is
> to install and use Jamal's new technology, the vast majority of blind people
> are not gonna be able to do it.  But that same group can use something using
> SWT.  Assuming that the Java Swing or SWT application is written following
> the accessibility rules.  If not, neither is accessible.
>
> John
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: blindmath-bounces at nfbnet.org [mailto:blindmath-bounces at nfbnet.org] On
> Behalf Of Michael Whapples
> Sent: Friday, December 30, 2011 1:24 AM
> To: Blind Math list for those interested in mathematics
> Subject: Re: [Blindmath] [program-java] Announcing JWin - a program for
> installing the Java Access Bridge on Windows
>
> Java accessibility is a bit of a tricky thing. Plenty of the ideas of Java
> accessibility seemed good but in practice implementation can be quite poor.
> I will only focus on the accessibility stuff here, I am sure you either know
>
> about the other differences of SWT and Swing or you can easily find articles
>
> online about the differences.
>
> > From the developer side the Java accessibility API is the same on all
> platforms, you can rely on it being there and when you build the Java
> application you don't need differnt builds for different JVMs (a single JAR
> does for everyone).
>
> The not so good is that as it is its own API and does not map to the native
> platform accessibility APIs the assistive technology needs to specifically
> support Java accessibility. Window-eyes does not have built in support for
> Java accessibility although it does support it through scripting from a
> third party. Also sometimes as the Java accessibility API may differ from
> the platform one, support may not be wonderful, there seems to be some
> issues with the support on the Mac with voiceover (eg. the open dialog has a
>
> table control for selecting the file but voiceover always sees it as empty,
> don't know if this is the same for all table controls in Java swing). Java
> accessibility support on Linux is fairly good in comparison, may be due to
> Sun Micro (as it was then) having a big hand in both Java accessibility and
> gnome accessibility, however from time to time there have been issues there
> as well.
>
> Putting the quality of the support to one side, Java accessibility is more
> complicated for the user, you need to additionally install the Java access
> bridge. Hopefully good installers will help, however it still is a pain as
> you need it installed in every JVM which will be used for Java swing,
> including ones bundled with applications. Also strictly speaking the Java
> access bridge is not the only way to access Java accessibility, other people
>
> can write implementations for accessing Java accessibility, I think this is
> how the window-eyes support works and so for someone who uses different
> screen readers depending on what they are doing they may need to keep
> switching the accessibility provider in accessibility.properties (eg. a user
>
> of window-eyes and NVDA would need to do this).
>
> Having said all that, SWT isn't perfect as I think you have found out, but
> for the user it generally is less trouble as the assistive technology needs
> to do nothing special as SWT uses native widgets and APIs. Which is better
> probably depends on what is being done and I will leave that final choice to
>
> you.
>
> Finally as a side note: Personally I am currently having trouble getting the
>
> Java access bridge working on a windows7 64-bit system with a 64-bit JVM
> with NVDA. I am using NVDA 2011.3 which is meant to support 64-bit Java and
> I have tried manually installing the Java access bridge and using the
> installer posted about here, neither seem to have worked (NOTE: The
> installer worked in the sense it placed everything where it should have, it
> didn't work in the sense that I still do not have a working java access
> bridge). In comparison I downloaded eclipse and it worked with no issues
> with the same set up.
>
> Michael Whapples
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Richard Baldwin
> Sent: Friday, December 30, 2011 4:30 AM
> To: program-java at freelists.org
> Cc: guispeak at freelists.org ; sec508 at trace.wisc.edu ; program-l at freelists.org
>
> ; blindmath at nfbnet.org ; uaccess-l at trace.wisc.edu
> Subject: Re: [Blindmath] [program-java] Announcing JWin - a program for
> installing the Java Access Bridge on Windows
>
> It would definitely make me happy if this would eliminate the need to
> program using the SWT for accessibility.
>
> Besides being unfamiliar territory, using the SWT effectively eliminates
> the use of many very good existing Java libraries that have been developed
> over the past ten or so years.
>
> As near as I can tell, even though it is possible to incorporate a Java
> Frame object into an SWT GUI, there are no provisions for similarly
> incorporating a JFrame object. If that is not the case, I would like to
> hear how to incorporate a JFrame object from someone who knows how..
>
> Dick Baldwin
>
> On Thu, Dec 29, 2011 at 9:03 PM, Jamal Mazrui<empower at smart.net>  wrote:
>
>> Now available at
>>
>>
> http://EmpowermentZone.com/**JWin_setup.exe<http://EmpowermentZone.com/JWin_
> setup.exe>
>> or for a developer distribution
>>
>>
> http://EmpowermentZone.com/**JWin_setup.zip<http://EmpowermentZone.com/JWin_
> setup.zip>
>> I hope that JWin helps to open up more Java applications on Windows by
>> making it easy to add accessibility support.  More info about the program
>> is below, including a link to the full documentation.
>>
>> Jamal
>>
>> ----------
>>
>> JWin is a free, open source program for detecting and installing the Java
>> Runtime Environment (JRE) on Windows, together with the Java Access Bridge
>> (JAB), which is needed for full accessibility of Java-based applications
>> to
>> assistive technologies used by persons with disabilities.
>>
>> After confirming user intent, the program will create a directory
>> containing JAB reference material, a log file, and an uninstallation
>> program to later remove the JAB, if desired.  It looks for locations of
>> the
>> JRE and offers to install the JAB into them.  Three possible directories
>> are identified:  (1) the directory of a 32-bit JRE; (2) the directory of a
>> 64-bit JRE; and (3) the directory referenced by the JAVA_HOME environment
>> variable.
>>
>> The program will open a log file when complete, detailing the actions
>> taken.  The JAB may be installed into any JRE location on the computer by
>> first setting the JAVA_HOME environment variable to point to the relevant
>> directory before running the executable.
>>
>> If no JRE is found by the program, it will offer to go to the web page for
>> installing Java.
>>
>> Full documentation for this program is also available online at
>>
>> http://EmpowermentZone.com/**JWin.htm<http://EmpowermentZone.com/JWin.htm>
>>
>>
>>
>