Re: [Accessibility] Re: [Kde-accessibility] focus tracking

[Joseph Scheuhammer <clown utoronto ca>]

On 07/07/10 7:54 PM, Jason White wrote:
> Also, I don't understand what problem you're trying to solve. Magnification
> relies on Orca now to provide focus details; what practical problem does this
> introduce, and might there be other ways of solving it that don't involve
> separating out code and functionality in the proposed way?
>    
The key phrase here is "Magnification relies on Orca now to provide 
focus details".  A longer term goal is to break that dependency.  
Already, GS-mag does not require Orca; GS-mag can run "stand-alone".  
One can do relatively simple changes to preferences such as 
magnification factor, cross hairs, mouse tracking modes, and viewport 
position, all without Orca.  But, it can't do anything as complicated as 
focus tracking.  At this point in its development, it's fine to rely on 
Orca for that, since there is more important intrinsic magnification 
functionality to implement (e.g., colour inversion).  But, requiring 
Orca for focus tracking strikes me as a relatively heavy-weight solution 
in the long term -- as a user, if all I want is to magnify the UI, but 
don't care about speech, nor braille, nor other screen reader functions, 
why should I have to launch Orca for decent keyboard access?

Also, although this thread is about focus tracking and magnification, 
focus tracking can be thought of as a more general issue.  It is a 
perennial a11y/AT problem:  where is keyboard focus now?  where was it?  
where is going to be?  If there could be a general solution, that 
everyone could tap into, that would be a Good Thing(tm).  But, perhaps 
that's pie in the sky.

> >  Can you explain thisdifficulty?
>    
> It's deeply integrated into the Orca scripts specific to applications. While
> it could be abstracted, I assume this would involve writing separate extension
> modules per application

Are those specific to applications in general?  Or specific to specific 
applications -- a script for FireFox, another for OpenOffice, and so 
on?  If the latter, then I agree that it would be very difficult, if not 
impossible, to create a separate *general* focus tracking module.

--
;;;;joseph

'Clown control to Mao Tse Tung.'
 - D. Bowie (misheard lyric) -