Adding ATs to the menus

[Calum Benson <calum benson sun com>]

Ok, so as you know, we're hoping GOK and Gnopernicus are going to make
it into GNOME 2.4.  Even if they don't, we need to figure this one out
anyway :)

GNOME applications generally add themselves to the Applications menu.
Assuming that's a reasonable thing to do for ATs[1], we have three items
to add: "Magnifier", "On-Screen Keyboard" and "Screenreader".  Which
gives us two choices:

- Add them to one of the existing Applications categories
("Accessories"?)

- Add a new Accessibility sub-menu, which would be more consistent with
the Accessibility preferences sub-menu (and which will soon have more
than one item in it, you'll all be pleased to hear!)

Of those two, what would be peoples' preferred solution?

With regard to the second alternative, I remember there was some unease
when we added the Accessibility preferences sub-menu, partly because it
only had one item it at the time, and partly because it appeared right
at the top of the list-- as would the Accessibility applications
sub-menu.  I think Bill's said in the past he'd be happy to call these
menus "Universal Access" or something instead, though, so that's always
something we can consider if that turned out to be the only
objection[2].

Cheeri,
Calum.

[1] A user who needs ATs will normally  turn them on in the
(forthcoming) AT Preferences window, which will add them to their
session until they turn them off again.  So is there a pressing need to
add them to the Applications menu at all?  Probably yes, at least for
the magnifier which I could imagine you might want to turn on and off
during the course of a session, but I could be wrong...

[2] Although that might not help much in those languages that choose to
place their adjectives after their nouns :)

-- 
CALUM BENSON, Usability Engineer       Sun Microsystems Ireland
mailto:calum benson sun com            GNOME Desktop Group
http://ie.sun.com                      +353 1 819 9771

Any opinions are personal and not necessarily those of Sun Microsystems