Re: How accessible should Firefox be?

[Bill Haneman <Bill Haneman Sun COM>]

I would have expected Mozilla 1.7 to be best.  Perhaps your copy isn't
configured properly somehow?

There are also, or at least were, special "accessibility builds" of
mozilla 1.7 available with all the Sun patches for accessibility in.  I
was hoping those were no longer needed but your experience sounds as
though perhaps they still are.

Bill

On Sat, 2006-02-25 at 00:02, Adam Myrow wrote:
> Hi, I'm attempting to use Firefox 1.5.0.1 with Gnopernicus.  Are there any 
> special tricks to making it as accessible as possible?  Basically, it is 
> hardly in a usable state, but before I start reporting bugs, I want to 
> know what the "normal" state of accessibility for this browser under 
> Gnopernicus is.
> 
> For example, while I can navigate through the menus, some controls don't 
> speak consistently.  The "caret browsing" mode hardly works.  Once in 
> awhile, I can move around a page, and Gnopernicus will read some text.  It 
> tends to repeat a line over and over, while the Braille display (running 
> under BRLTTY) will show new lines.  Most of the time, however, I get no 
> feedback of any sort.  The times it works are seemingly random.  Also, 
> hitting tab will usually not say links when I land on them.  It will read 
> "single line text," "tool bar," and will say the title of a web page 
> followed by "HTML container."  Once in a blue moon, a link or two will 
> speak, but most of the time, they are either silent, or tab never gets to 
> the links.  Finally, in the few instances that I can get around on a page, 
> none of the labels on a form are being read.  For example, If a form has a 
> username and password field followed by a "login" button I will be told 
> that I am on the fields, but not the labels.  The login button will never 
> be spoken.
> 
> One thing I've noticed is a strange assertion failure showing up on the 
> virtual console that I started X from.
> 
> (Gecko:3985): CRITICAL **: impl_getLink: assertion `link != NULL' failed
> 
> The "3985" in the above message is the PID of firefox.bin itself.  I 
> quickly get a whole screen of these when attempting to navigate a page. 
> Is this a normal error, or an indication of a problem?  If this is the 
> current level of support in Firefox, what browser is the most usable 
> at this time?  I've tried Mozilla 1.7.12, and get absolutely nothing from 
> it.  Epiphany is slightly better, reading menus, and some buttons on web 
> pages, but appears to have no caret browsing mode.  Gallion is as useless 
> as Mozilla.  The Gnome help files come up in something that calls itself 
> Mozilla, but appears to have caret tracking.  However, like Firefox, it 
> usually doesn't work.
> 
> So, I am just trying to get a handle for what to expect, so I know what 
> are genuine bugs, and what are configuration problems on my end.  Thanks.
> 
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