Re: Can the community work with Gnome to improve GTK+ a11y?

[Joanmarie Diggs <jdiggs igalia com>]

Hey Bill.

Regarding this one:

> - Menus that are greyed out seem to not exist for screen reader users.

Well, in terms of navigation, they don't exist for anyone. I see them,
but I can't get at them physically. Whether or not greyed-out menus and
menu items should be navigable by all users is a question for the Gtk
developers. 

The fact that Orca should present greyed-out menus and menu items but
fails to do so is nonetheless a valid concern. Given that Orca's normal
mode of operation is to present the focused item as the user interacts
with it, and given that these creatures are (at the moment) not
focusable items, I think the most appropriate means to make these items
"exist" for screen reader users would be via Flat Review since that's
the "what's visible on the screen" mode. I've just opened the following
bug against Orca and will try to address it in the very near future:
https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=667087

> - Navigation of combo boxes is difficult for screen reader users, who
> expect to be able to type the first letters of an entry and move to it
> directly,

For what it's worth, this bothers me too. It's a long way down to "New
York" (aka Eastern Time). Seems this bothers other users as well. See
for instance: https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=643853

In my opinion, the above two issues are issues which impact all users
and just so happen to bite users who are blind or visually impaired even
harder. Therefore, I wonder if the thing to do is not treat them as
"accessibility" issues, but instead as "usability" issues. There's a
list for that: https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/usability.

Take care.
--joanie