[Blindmath] How useful is a GUI to blind users?

Sun Jan 8 22:38:36 UTC 2012

Hello

A few thoughts on this.
Richard, I very much applaud your enthusiasm to help think outside the
box and implement solutions.
Sure, I have not used your software yet (I am doing web accessibility
programming these days, but plan to go back to school, when I will
need all manner of math solutions), but it is genuinely refreshing to
see someone interested in making a difference in this field, someone
other than the "usual suspects".
I think the concern with cross-platform compatibility may be overblown.
If you look at webAIM's screen reader user survey (I don't have the
exact url, but if you go to www.webaim.org and there should be links
from there), you see that an overwhelming number of screen reading and
screen magnification users are Windows users. If you go to "power
users" who need more advanced computer processing, you'll see a big
drop in Voiceover users. Unless something has changed drastically from
when I did a comparison, VoiceOver still does not a particularly good
job of dealing with spreadsheet editing, programming and more advanced
things such as math. Besides, users who rely on software to do other
things, such as emboss braille, are still mostly confined to Windows,
software like Duxbury or MathPlayer are not cross-platform yet, and I
have no heard anything to indicate this is about to change
drastically.
I am in no way "pro Windows", I just use what gets the job done and I
am happy with more choice, but it seems logical with limited
resources, to reach the maximum number of users who will benefit, and
I still think Windows is the platform to go with.
If you decide to go "command-line" you need to study how Jaws and
other screen readers work in the interface. I find screen readers
slow, sluggish and annoying in that environment, and I avoid it at al
cost, even as someone who grew up using Dos and someone who did a lot
of Linux scripting and programming a few years back (again, take it
for what it's worth, as one guy's opinion).
Simulating a command-line style dialog in a Windows app might work
differently, as you can still utilize the power of screen readers with
the ease of editing and other things that we've gotten used to.
I used an app called Gauss back in 2003 and it was a Windows app, but
with a comman line style prompts and syntax, and I quite liked it.
Not sure I could dig it up today, but worth a try, though I'd have to
find out exactly what version I used, since it could've changed
drastically.
Cheers
-B

On 1/8/12, Ken Perry <kperry at blinksoft.com> wrote:
>
> Actually Richard I have programmed blind as far back as MsDos 5.0 and I have
> used Linux since the early days of slackware .9.  It is true that question
> and answer can be a good interface but It was never perfect you mentioned
> the file dialog I will point at a more important one and that is the Edit
> box.  Prior to current GUI's you never knew what you were going to get for
> an editor and even now you are not even sure.  The problem is not GUI's per
> say it's the problem of people not thinking of accessibility before they
> code something.  For example you would think that all buttons should be
> accessible but the problem is some coders think they must make a circle
> button using graphics only and then that button becomes inaccessible without
> work of someone using a screen reader that can label that graphic button.
> It gets worse when coders create a graphic out of text and while the program
> runs they change that text.  My wife has been known to look at my screen and
> say um its right there in text you should be able to read that.  Well I can
> now that I can OCR the screen with NVDA or Jaws but it's still an awe full
> interface.
>
> You are write that a console app is very accessible  but it depends on what
> you want to do you cannot really step back and make a command line editor.
> If that was something people wanted to use they would still be using sed,
> and Edlin.  I still use sed but not for serious editing.
>
> Another problem with making console apps is that you have to make it.
> Meaning we shouldn't have to depend on special made software and windows and
> Mac are both doing much better now making things more accessible.  Now that
> is not to say you cannot make specialized software but one thing to think of
> is many of the instructors that help students with the software are sighted.
> They expect to see a certain type of software and many are not willing to
> learn special software for one or two students.  It is always wise to make
> software universally accessible so that anyone can pick it up and use it
> rather than making a specialized bit of software for one type of person.
>
> Just my opinion though.
>
> Ken
> -----Original Message-----
> From: blindmath-bounces at nfbnet.org [mailto:blindmath-bounces at nfbnet.org] On
> Behalf Of Richard Baldwin
> Sent: Saturday, January 07, 2012 12:45 PM
> To: BlindMath Mailing List; accessibleimage at freelists.org
> Subject: [Blindmath] How useful is a GUI to blind users?
>
> It occurred to me the other day that prior to the advent of the Graphical
> User Interface (GUI), the user interfaces for all programs were accessible
> for blind users so long as they had a screen reader that would speak the
> information displayed on the command-prompt screen.
>
> For those who are too young to remember, programs in that day prompted the
> user for input and the user responded in a back-and-forth dialog fashion.
> Once all of the input data was provided, the program ran and did whatever
> it was supposed to do.
>
> Another way that information was provided to the program was in the form of
> typed information (commonly called switches) provided by the user when she
> started the program running. Batch files were often created with a simple
> text editor to make this procedure less prone to typing errors.
>
> The one area where I see the GUI being particularly useful for a blind user
> is the file selection dialog. The use of the GUI dialog eliminates the
> requirement to type long path and file names. However, if the disk is
> organized in such a way as to keep the paths short, even this doesn't
> appear to be a significant advantage.
>
> For those who don't know, and without getting into the technical details as
> to why, there are major problems associated with creating accessible user
> interfaces when programming in Java. Using the SWT to create accessible
> user interfaces significantly reduces the power of the Java programming
> environment because it precludes the use of many excellent programming
> libraries.
>
> This causes me to wonder if, for those programs that are primarily intended
> for use by blind and VI users, it might make sense to go backwards in time,
> forego the GUI, and write those programs using the "old-fashioned" prompt
> and reply style of user interface. I would be interested in seeing some
> discussion on this topic.
>
> Dick Baldwin
>
> --
> Richard G. Baldwin (Dick Baldwin)
> Home of Baldwin's on-line Java Tutorials
> http://www.DickBaldwin.com
>
> Professor of Computer Information Technology
> Austin Community College
> (512) 223-4758
> mailto:Baldwin at DickBaldwin.com
> http://www.austincc.edu/baldwin/
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