[Blindmath] How useful is a GUI to blind users?
Ken Perry
kperry at blinksoft.com
Tue Jan 10 12:17:37 UTC 2012
I am mainly answering your first and last statements because I think we both
agree. My opinion as a coder is that all access should be in the
development libraries. For example a control should not be allowed to work
if it doesn't have the correct accessibility fields in. For example if you
want a graphical button that only has mouse access fine but you need to have
the access roles filled in or it's a compiler error. That is the only way
we are going to end up with all applications made accessible. You might
think that programmers will just put stupid in formation in the field just
to quickly get done but that is even ok because as long as the information
is there one or two things can happen. The first being a screen reader can
make special labels so that the stupid information don't show or people can
post the software somewhere and point out the programmers intentionally did
not fill the fields in correctly. I personally believe that with as easy as
it would be to fill in some access fields most programmers would do it. The
fact that Mac programs are mostly accessible and so are .net if they don't
do unusual graphic stuff is what is making most software accessible now. If
we go that extra step and force programmers to add accessibility as part of
the language then it I think it would be shocking how fast programs would
become accessible..
So I guess what I am saying is people who make these development libraries
like swt, wxWidgets, .net coco. Need to make it more than just a suggestion
when you build your controls. It could be done. I think we should drop
this thread before it drifts farther away from math though but it's an
important topic.
Ken
-----Original Message-----
From: blindmath-bounces at nfbnet.org [mailto:blindmath-bounces at nfbnet.org] On
Behalf Of Jose Tamayo
Sent: Monday, January 09, 2012 2:23 PM
To: 'Blind Math list for those interested in mathematics'
Subject: Re: [Blindmath] How useful is a GUI to blind users?
My comments are inserted using my initials [JT] throughout the e-mail
threads:
-----Original Message-----
From: blindmath-bounces at nfbnet.org [mailto:blindmath-bounces at nfbnet.org] On
Behalf Of Ken Perry
Sent: Sunday, January 08, 2012 5:14 PM
To: 'Blind Math list for those interested in mathematics'
Subject: Re: [Blindmath] How useful is a GUI to blind users?
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.
[JT]: Frankly, it would be too cumbersome to write apps that give a slew of
prompts to end users. Especially the more complex programs / applications.
Furthermore, I don't think that all developers will ever thingk of
accessibility as one of their development goals if the primary users of the
technology are sighted users. The technology must already have the built-in
accessibility out of the box. If it is left up to the developers, then we
are still left with the question of why developers don't think of
accessibility. The providers of APIs a are the ones that must include
accessibility out of the box just as they include certain requirements for
controls and objects.
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.
[JT]: Wow, edlin, I remember that one. What is being proposed is an app
that prompts the user for all requirements and then performs a task. What
we are describing is batch processing. It is inevitable that technologies
will change and we must insist of companies such as Microsoft et all that
they provide accessibility built-in out of the box. However, the evolution
will continue and this argument of accessibility will forever be present in
some form or other. The question I ask is How do I take software that is
inaccessible and make it accessible? Well, companies such as Freedom
Scientific are answering many of those questions with technology offerings
such as Screen OCR.
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.
[JT]: Universally accessible anything is amouth full and I agree with you!
I just don't know how we can make something universal right now without
bringing in the argument of who makes it universal and where does funding go
for such an endeavor. I guess my question is who will be willing to openly
share ideas and come up with a system that works for all without the
almighty dollar being the driving force. Academically, it is feasible.
What group, however, is willing to openly share ideas and come up with
solutions that address the need? I don't really know because I have no
experience in any of these areas. I do know that there are smaller projects
and large projects that are working separately in Silo's where progress is
halted and information is protected by the many complexities associated with
academic work and private sector work. In other words, if a small group is
working on solving a problem, it becomes the problem of that small group to
solve it because there is private sector moneys involved or there are ideas
to protect.
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.
[JT]: Wow, we are talking about many years past!
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.
[JT]: This reminds me of the Mainframe days when COBOL and JCL were used to
generate reports based on entered information or data files stored in DASD
drives. However, we are past that era and onto a new era which we must
adapt to. There is still a place for such technologies but not in the rich
GUI interfaces that we all demand today.
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.
[JT]: There are many other advantages of using a GUI. For example, before
the creation of Long File names, we were forced to use 8 or 11 characters
for filenames (in the PC world). When long file names were introduced
because we needed friendly names to remind us of content within files and
folders (called directories in the past), we all became much more productive
because we no longer had to keep reference index files to ttell us what our
files had in them. We could name our files and directories (called folders
today) and we would know what the files contained. Of course, there
are other benefits to Graphical User interfaces for all.
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.
[JT]: when Java was first invented by James Gosling, we were concerned with
the performance of the JAVA environment because it was slow and the PCs of
the time simply were not able to interpret JAVA fast enough. Java was
built to be portable and hence its portability generated many headaches for
PC vendors. The promise of portability made JAVA very elegant. And JAVA
became ubiquitous. Now we must learn to make those libraries that are not
accessible available to everyone. In due time, we will make it all work.
I suspect that more libraries will be developed with such challenges and
many other challenges. Accessibility is another challenge that we have to
work to make better.
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.
[JT]: while this sounds intriguing, we cannot go backwards. We must move
forward with an effort to make the technology accessible. Perhaps there is
a an area of industry in which this is viable. However, we are making leaps
forward and I think we should use the past to learn to make future
technologies better.
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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