[Accessibility] Three Screen Readers and Braille Display Emulation with Windows

Gladhorn Frederik Frederik.Gladhorn at digia.com
Mon Jun 2 11:35:24 CEST 2014


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





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