Re: the keyboard accessibility capplet

[Havoc Pennington <hp redhat com>]

Jody Goldberg <jody gnome org> writes:
> I suspect we all dislike it (lets avoid pejorative phrases like
> 'broken').  The problem is that given N people there are N+2
> proposed solutions.  If we create the 'make Havoc happy keyboard
> accessibility capplet' then I'll be thwaped from 3 sides by several
> irate people.

If it's just "make Havoc happy" of course we shouldn't do it. (I don't
think I'm alone in my opinion but will let others speak for
themselves.)

We have a base, fundamental requirement throughout the desktop:
present a clear, simple, comprehensible user interface. This places
upper limits on the complexity of _any_ feature.

My view is that this requirement is more important than most other
requirements, because if you don't follow this requirement, then you
end up with an unusable result for _everyone_. Disabled users need to
stay below a basic complexity threshold just as much as the next user.

Concretely here, it may be true that sliders are more useful
sometimes. It may be true that spinbuttons are more useful
sometimes. But *both* quite possibly makes the big picture *less
useful*.

i.e. the utility of feature A and feature B does not add up to A+B, it
adds up to A+B-C, where C = price of complexity.
 
> - Moving the capplet into Advanced. 

It's not Advanced, though. Just not used by all users.
I've got no problem with just having it in toplevel Preferences.
 
> Havoc the reality here is that neither of us are accessibility
> users.  Therefore we should defer to the insights of people familiar
> with that domain. 

I am willing to defer to arguments that depend on domain-specific
knowledge, but the justifications I've heard for the design of this
dialog have not been dependent on domain-specific knowledge, they've
just been saying "A good, B good, A+B good" with inadequate
consideration for C.

Microsoft has oceans of accessibility experts and has done major
accessibility work in Windows XP, and their accessibility dialog has
similar features to ours but presented in a better way.

I believe we can do better.
 
Havoc