[gui-talk] Appeal for info on other screen readers

[Doug Lee]

Warning to SkypeEnglish:  This is a pretty technical message.  Author
not responsible for eye glazing. <silly grin>

For various reasons, including some ideas brewed during this week's
visit I made to Skype headquarters in Tallinn, I have a few
questions for users of screen readers other than JAWS (I think I know
JAWS well enough to answer these questions for that one :-) ).

Screen readers of interest:  Window-Eyes, SAToGo, Hal, NVDA, and any
others currently in use for Windows.

Questions:

1.  Can the reader be made to present a virtual view of a window that
supports MSAA, and if so, are there special requirements for any MSAA
roles?  For example, what makes something get called a "link" if not
just the role of Role_System_Link?

2.  What are the requirements for making an HTML control appear in a
virtual view.  For example, JAWS can handle IE HTML controls, and I
assume any other HTML control that (1) answers
WM_GetObject/ObjID_NativeOM with a standards-compliant Document Object
Model (DOM) root node, and possibly (2) provides reasonable MSAA
information.

3.  Same question for RichEdit-style controls:  Can they be
virtualized and, if so, any special needs or restrictions?  I'm
particularly interested here in support for subobjects such as
buttons.  (I know RichEdits can have embedded objects, but I don't yet
know what kinds.)

Users of Skype 4 Beta will undoubtedly have noticed that Skype 4
currently boasts some rather unusual "list items" in conversations
(formerly called "chats"), such as file transfers with Save and Cancel
buttons, voicemails with Play buttons, etc.  I am trying to determine
what to recommend as a way to grant us full access to these structures
without a lot of work, for them or for us.

But this set of questions is also aimed at providing a general idea of
what is now possible from our side.  JAWS allows me to tell it to
virtualize windows of a certain class, though there are restrictions
on how well that can work depending on what MSAA the window offers.
JAWS can also virtualize HTML and RichEdit windows.  I'm looking for a
solution that isn't based on just one screen reader though.

Thanks for any info.


-- 
Doug Lee                 dgl at dlee.org                http://www.dlee.org
SSB BART Group           doug.lee at ssbbartgroup.com   http://www.ssbbartgroup.com
"All these years, the people said, 'He's acting like a kid.'
He did not know he could not fly, so he did."
--Guy Clark, "The Cape" (Dublin Blues)