From Frederik.Gladhorn at digia.com  Mon Jun  2 11:35:24 2014
From: Frederik.Gladhorn at digia.com (Gladhorn Frederik)
Date: Mon, 2 Jun 2014 09:35:24 +0000
Subject: [Accessibility] Three Screen Readers and Braille Display
 Emulation	with Windows
In-Reply-To: <1418644.6i0p4CC0Bg@crunchie>
References: <1418644.6i0p4CC0Bg@crunchie>
Message-ID: <C9CE6AFF-5A23-442E-A127-0761091C61CA@digia.com>

Hello Steve,

thanks a lot for joining and sharing how to get started testing accessibility on Windows :)
I started looking at some of the text handling and QLineEdit issues you were mentioning on bugreports.qt-project.org<http://bugreports.qt-project.org>.

Welcome aboard, I’m really happy about so much quality feedback!

Cheers,
Frederik

On 26 May 2014, at 22:14, Steve Clarke <trumpton13 at trumpton.org.uk<mailto:trumpton13 at trumpton.org.uk>> wrote:

Dear All,



It's great to see positive work being done in enabling and enhancing QT application accessibility.



My name is Steve Clarke, and I'm an electronic engineer in the Space industry by day, but by night, I find myself tinkering with various bits of software.



My other half is blind, and uses Windows, Jaws screen-reader and a Pacmate braille display, and I do whatever I can to make her life easier - this currently means developing applications using QT.



I thought I'd share different ways QT applications can be tested for accessibility, particularly with the screen readers and braille displays - most of which are extraordinarily expensive (you won't get much change out of €3500 for a reasonable display and screen reader, and that only lets you see a 40 character window of the entire page at any one time! - it's like looking at the internet through a letterbox).





WINDOWS SCREEN READERS



There are several screen-readers available, each of which can drive a large number of braille displays, in addition to speaking the menus / screen positions - I'll quickly introduce three of them ...



NVDA (Non Visual Desktop Access) - www.nvaccess.org<http://www.nvaccess.org/>



This is a comprehensive screen-reader written by two blind enthusiasts, who were appalled by the cost of accessibility features / applications. It supports the IAccessible2 protocol, and is a free download / install / use.



Jaws - www.freedomscientific.com<http://www.freedomscientific.com/>



This is a professional screen-reader, that is not at all cheap. I believe this to use the MSAA protocol. The demonstration version is a free download, and runs for 40 minutes at a time.



Windows Eyes - www.gwmicro.com<http://www.gwmicro.com/>



This is another professional screen-reader. It also has a demonstration version, which runs for 60 days.







DEBUGGING AND DEVELOPMENT



Unfortunately, each of the screen-readers shown above, presents information differently / works to different levels of success with different widgets, and, may work correctly with the spoken output, then promptly fails when reading on a braille display.



As the programs and displays are expensive, an alternative approach to testing must be sought - taking these in reverse order ...







Windows Eyes



This program has a simulator, that can be enabled. This simulator shows what comes up on the braille display.



https://bugreports.qt-project.org/secure/attachment/40350/BrailleEmulatorExample_XP_WindowsEyes.png







Jaws



If you use version 14, rather than version 15, you can also use the braille emulator.



https://bugreports.qt-project.org/secure/attachment/40348/BrailleEmulatorExample_XP_Jaws14_BrailleViewer.png







Non Visual Desktop Access



This one is much more complex. It doesn't have a simulator, and the only way to see what would be output to a braille display is to look at the log files, but nothing is written in the log files unless a braille display is connected.



A work-around is to use BRLTTY, which is a braille emulator/driver for console terminals, and you can enable the simulator in BRLTTY. The problem that most then discover is that BRLTTY only displays the text if the terminal is active - NVDA, however, does log everything it is trying to send to the braille display.



https://bugreports.qt-project.org/secure/attachment/40349/BrailleEmulatorExample_XP_NVDA_BRLTTY.png







That's it from me - hopefully, I can get back to doing some useful testing - just got a bathroom suite to install - there just aren't enough hours in the day :-(



Steve





_______________________________________________
Accessibility mailing list
Accessibility at qt-project.org<mailto:Accessibility at qt-project.org>
http://lists.qt-project.org/mailman/listinfo/accessibility

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.qt-project.org/pipermail/accessibility/attachments/20140602/8db0f082/attachment.html>

From frederik.gladhorn at digia.com  Fri Jun 20 13:23:12 2014
From: frederik.gladhorn at digia.com (Frederik Gladhorn)
Date: Fri, 20 Jun 2014 13:23:12 +0200
Subject: [Accessibility] Status update
Message-ID: <3912867.53VUR93RB4@varney>

Hi all,

the last weeks have been busy with various things, amongst them the Qt 
Contributors' Summit. One point raised there was that we could often do a 
better job at letting people know what's going on. Here's my attempt. I hope 
it's interesting for you :)

One big thing that I'm extremely happy about is that we have the iOS work for 
Qt accessibility merged, it will be part of Qt 5.4 (due late this year).

Another interesting bit for Linux users is that with the help of the Orca 
folks we finally figured out what blocked various keyboard combinations 
(already in the 5.4 branch) and why flat review wasn't working properly (flat 
review is the virtual cursor that Orca has, not in yet, will also be 5.4 
eventually).

Another topic ongoing in adding increase/decrease actions to all accessible 
elements that expose value interfaces automatically.

There is also a new blog post out for those curious about testing on OS X. 
http://blog.qt.digia.com/blog/2014/06/20/qt-weekly-14-testing-accessibility-on-os-x/

-- 
Best regards,
Frederik Gladhorn
Senior Software Engineer - Digia, Qt
Visit us on: http://qt.digia.com



From leos at uvic.ca  Fri Jun 20 16:11:19 2014
From: leos at uvic.ca (Leo Spalteholz)
Date: Fri, 20 Jun 2014 14:11:19 +0000
Subject: [Accessibility] Status update
In-Reply-To: <3912867.53VUR93RB4@varney>
References: <3912867.53VUR93RB4@varney>
Message-ID: <4758E653-6F9C-46C2-822B-413E18E744F3@uvic.ca>


> On Jun 20, 2014, at 4:23 AM, "Frederik Gladhorn" <frederik.gladhorn at digia.com> wrote:
> 
> Hi all,
> 
> the last weeks have been busy with various things, amongst them the Qt 
> Contributors' Summit. One point raised there was that we could often do a 
> better job at letting people know what's going on. Here's my attempt. I hope 
> it's interesting for you :)

Certainly is, thank you for the update!

> 
> One big thing that I'm extremely happy about is that we have the iOS work for 
> Qt accessibility merged, it will be part of Qt 5.4 (due late this year).

Brilliant.  This will make a huge difference to our users.  We'll start testing also with switch control once the first betas are out.

Thanks,
Leo Spalteholz
Engineering Manager
CanAssist at UVic