#orca #accessibility

I know there are allot of technically proficient users of #Linux #A11y here, so thought I would throw this out there. I've used #Vmware's windows desktop products for years but don't like the direction things are going. I have, for some years now, wanted to jump to running #virtualmachine guests on a Linux host and this looks like the time. My problem is that I'm still not sure which host/manager combination is easily usable by a #blind user. I'm planning on running both Windows and Linux guests. There are a ton of guest managers with web interfaces, which sounds like the way to go given that I don't think #Orca is usable and I would prefer not to use the command line/config files. I've found a list but, of course, nothing is said about how they work with screen readers. Does anyone have any experience with this? Boosts would be very gratefully received and, of course, failures are just as valuable as successes in sorting the field. #blindness

@Pietervdvn :mapcomplete: Awesome the live region improvements sound nice. The #accessibility user experience feels great to me. Now the app is working fine for me on linux with #orca running in both chromium and firefox. I haven't yet managed to test it on windows with#NVDA @NV Access
I am not yet sure, perhaps you can give me an advice regarding this however now when scrolling the map we are getting distance and the direction from the navigation point to the map center spoken along with three closest features on the map. Have we lost the ability to hear distance from the map center to those close map features?
I'm thinking the way it's working now might be usefull when used on a mobile device with the current location updated as I move around.
And ability to hear distance from the center to the map features might be usefull when browsing the map on a computer. In this scenario I'm thinking I would use the map center as a replacement for the navigation point finding out what I should do in order to move to a certain map feature.
Or perhaps this is already possible and I just haven't discovered it all. Can you please try to describe how you think it's best used?

The maintainer of the Orca screen reader, Joanie Diggs, has made noteworthy enhancements in recent weeks. I mention them here for the benefit of those who are not following these developments or who are not regular Linux screen reader users.
Many of the improvements are performance-related, taking advantage of the cache of accessibility tree nodes maintained by the AT-SPI service. Table processing has received particular attention, and fundamental changes are underway in the code that handles users' keystrokes, some of which need to be interpreted as screen reader commands, with the remainder being passed through to the application.
I have been testing some of the changes along the way, as have other users active on the Orca mailing list. Rapid and precise bug reports continue to contribute to the development process. At this point, it is reasonable to expect these valuable improvements to appear in a release during the first half of 2024, presumably as part of GNOME 46.
#linux #orca #ScreenReader #AssistiveTechnology #accessibility #Gnome

Dear @Thunderbird ,
I know you are changing for the better. However while testing Thunderbird 111 daily I would like to see some gradual improvements so it becomes ready for most userf of Thunderbird 115 in terms of #screenreader #accessibility once it's declared stable.

Positive things I have noticed:

We have brand new message list that no longer renders all the messages in selected folder at once but only those that are visible on the screen and ready for the user interaction. From my point of view it looks similar to infinite lists on mobile platforms. Most importantly it almost fully elliminates enormous lag when browsing huge message lists on linux with #orca #screenreader running. I was curious enough and I have tested imap folder with up to 75000 messages inside.

It is still possible to use F6 and shift+F6 to move the keyboard focus from the folder tree to the message list and back.

Message list has headers that are used for sorting and a popup menu for setting up visible columns almost from the begining of Thunderbird existence. From now on these controls are finally accessible to screenreader users. And we are now able to configure sorting and show / hide individual columns.

We can still use ctrl+shift+k to show / hide the filter entry. Also there are accessible buttons alongside the filter entry that allow quick filtering the list such as labelled messages, messages with attachments, starred messages, messages from addressbook contacts, unread messages, even ability to keep the filter active when changing folders. Some of these features were already there earlier but now these are accessible to keyboard users including screenreader users.

Now features that need some polishing:

It appears we can now open individual message folders on a new tab / in a new window however this feature needs some fixes. For example when navigating using up and down arrow keys in the folder tree, pressing shift+F10 first moves focus to the parent folder and displays popup menu for that parent item instead of currently selected one.

When navigating in huge list new selection is not properly reported to assistive technologies while scrolling. For example press end to move to the last message. Now press up arrow key several times to navigate back a message and notice how screenreader is reporting new selection as it happens. Now press the page up key to move the selection by the larger increment. New message is highlighted but the selection changed event is not fired properly or it's getting mixed with some spurious focus event on an unlabelled pannel. Some screen readers are able to filter out these but I think it would be nice to address it at the source rather than working it around.

Now the main window has a lot of focusable controls and it is no longer comfortable to use tab and shift+tab to navigate. It would be nice if buttons were grouped in a toolbar like controls implementing toolbar pattern the way it's explained at
https://www.w3.org/WAI/ARIA/apg/patterns/toolbar/

It's nice that ability to reconfigure message list columns is now fully accessible to keyboard and screen reader users however accessible name of each item in the message list does not yet respect these settings. Subject is the only content that is communicated to assistive tools when navigating in the list using arrow keys. This is major issue and will likely be considered as a regression if it won't be addressed before releasing the stable version.

When navigating in the list of messages it is possible to select multiple messages for executing actions on them. I am afraid the fact multiple messages are selected or not selected is not properly communicated to assistive tools. This is major issue for screenreader users.

It is no longer possible to use applications key / shift+f10 to inwoke a popup menu in the message list.