Speaking out...
Tuesday, 30. January 2007, 19:51:50
Screen readers allow blind people to use the web (and computers in general). We have just got Opera working with screen readers again, and in a major way...
Internally we have had a bug whose number I forget, but which I have been following at a distance for a while. It was about working with screen readers.
(I suspect most people who read here know what "screen reader" means, but basically they are programs that tell a person by speaking out loud what their computer is doing or showing. For blind people they are the most common way to use computers, although they are also very helpful for people with dyslexia and others who have problems reading).
Last week, skimming through my mail (I am travelling and working hard, so I haven't been able to give all my mail the attention I would like as fast as I like) I noticed a subject line that forced me to look into it...
Yes! We have closed the bug, because Opera now works with screen readers. And in the Opera way, that means we have code to work across platforms - I can fire up the screen reader built into my Mac and try it out, while the G-man (a blind friend I am staying with who is an Opera tester) can fire up JAWS on Windows, and another tester can use Window-Eyes or HAL, according to their particular preferences.
There is, of course, a long way to go. Screenreaders are notoriously complicated programs and difficult to work with (I always recall Bob Regan, then head of accessibility for Flash, explaining in a tutorial that if your screen reader only crashes the computer three times per day while working with complex applications like a browser, then you are lucky - this is just part of the life of people who are relying on them).
But being able to watch Gregory download and install the browser, and start browsing with it, without needing any assistance from someone who can see (like me), is a good start. Screen Readers are in practical terms only used in a very small segment of accessibility, but they are generally regarded as a litmus test. I have often spoken about why that isn't very clever, nor even very helpful to accesibility as a whole, but they are still important and it is nice to be getting abck on track with them.
I apologise to the folks who are not internal Opera testers and will have to wait a little longer before they can actually take advantage of this, but at least I can say that we have made significant progress, and in an upcoming major release (I don't know what version number - that's a decision made by others in the company) you will be able to browse the web, use web-based applications, read and write email, chat with IRC, follow your favourite news feeds, and do it all through a screen reader...
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By quiris, # 31. January 2007, 12:07:45
By chaals, # 31. January 2007, 15:13:29
By FataL, # 31. January 2007, 15:57:37
Several of the attendees have visual impairments and required the use of screen readers (JAWS). What I thought was interesting was that the speaker spoke very highly of Opera and the standards compliance, accessibility features it has, the keyboard customizations, the voice commands, etc etc... but then demo'd JAWS with IE because it didn't work with Opera. Momentum lost! So this is great news that you're making progress.
I mentioned it here: http://my.opera.com/moug/blog/show.dml/400958
Not knowing much about this issue, I'd like to think this could be a large in-road for Opera into the accessibility community.
Good news!
By Eddie_Lopez, # 31. January 2007, 17:13:09
By _Grey_, # 1. February 2007, 02:11:12
I hope it will be something that makes a difference. I know of people who have been waiting a while for this...
@_Grey_
Err, sort of. There are common APIs on Windows, Mac, and at least one on Linux (There has been a fair bit of work to get one for linux though). There is also the old-fashioned way of building an off-screen model. And then they are generally scripted or otherwise customised for particular applications.
So the nature of the new feature is roughly putting out information to the Accessibility APIs. Unless you are using software that makes use of those APIs, you will probably never know it is there. (And it isn't in current release builds anyway, yet).
By chaals, # 1. February 2007, 15:27:58
I mean, if you include code to work for each screen reader, that'd be overkill. I guess you'll be only supporting a few major ones, then?
By _Grey_, # 1. February 2007, 23:34:48
Oh. In that sense yes they use common APIs. So if you work to the standards you're pretty much there.
Like browsers on the web, there are differences in how well they use them, and there are some differences from platform to platform. And like some browsers, there are people who accept things that break the standard but work for them, so it isn't quite a perfect world...
By chaals, # 2. February 2007, 03:04:45
OK, I understand. But since there obviously is a "standard" or "de facto" way to communicate with screen readers, that's quite something. I imagined something like that:
screen reader 1 detected:
send cmd1 prm1 prm2 ...
screen reader 2 detected:
send cmd2 prm2 prm1 ...
That would limit the number of screen readers that can be supported to the major ones. But if that is not needed (all too often anyways), that a good thing
By _Grey_, # 4. February 2007, 00:16:47
It is an interesting field. One of the things that beginner developers often ask for is the ability to detect a screen reader, but in general you can't. And it turns out that is probably a good thing for most users most of the time - the variety of users and setups in the accessibility world is just mind-blowing.
(There are systems used successfully as middle-ware, based on knowing *A* *LOT* about users, but they are actually really quite complex pieces of engineering. So complex that it comes out simple. But this is not an area where it makes sense for site-authors to be doing the customising, as a rule).
By chaals, # 6. February 2007, 03:35:21
By Profesjonalna, # 14. June 2007, 12:51:53