A newbie question to firefox users out there

[Aaron Leventhal]

It won't just be a matter of updating Firefox. We're going for a long 
term approach here, that requires updates to the ATK/AT-SPI 
infrastructure as well as to the screen readers (Orca and LSR).  As far 
as improving document navigation, it will likely require that either the 
screen readers take control of document navigation (ala JAWS and 
Window-Eyes), or they install an extension which controls caret 
navigation.  However, I don't want to assume anything about how each 
screen reader developer plans to move forward.

Another idea that has been discussed is just fixing the built-in Firefox 
caret navigation that people are using now. However, this is way harder 
than it sounds, and it's already been discussed quite a bit. I don't get 
much involved in Mozilla keyboard support anymore, but I'd have to warn 
off anyone who wants to fix that code, since it's in ancient hairy 
Mozilla layout code.  Therefore, I'm recommending the options I stated 
at the top of this email.

The bottom line is that this is a work in progress. The screen reader 
developers for Orca and LSR have builds of Firefox now where they can 
see the overhauled AT-SPI support, but they still can't use collections 
yet (which will allow them very fast access to document structure).

We will have to ask the developers of Orca and LSR what they think their 
ideal schedule would be for a beta, assuming 1) the Firefox overhaul 
continues well into the polishing phase and 2) we get collections into 
the infrastructure (although I don't want to assume that all screen 
reader developers want to use them).

- Aaron






Henrik Nilsen Omma wrote:
> Krister Ekstrom wrote:
>> Hi and sorry for the cross posting.
>> I understand that blind Ubuntu users use Mozilla Firefox with at least
>> moderate success with Orca. I have tried the Firefox that comes with the
>> latest Edgy, Bon echo beta 2 and on pages that don't contain tables or
>> frames or forms, things seem to work very smoothly, however on pages
>> with tables, forms, frames etc the cursor tends to get stuck and either
>> i hear the same line spoken over and over or i don't hear anything at
>> all. Has anyone else the same experience or is there something somewhere
>> in Gnome, Firefox or elsewhere that needs to be changed?
>> Thanks for any help.
>>   
>
> Hi Krister,
>
> I believe this is the current state of Firefox access. A major 
> overhaul of accessibility support is planned for Firefox 3 (which I 
> guess will be out in 9 months or so?) See the mozilla access page for 
> more info: http://www.mozilla.org/access/
>
> I've taken the liberty of copying in Aaron Leventhal, lead of the 
> mozilla accessibility effort on this mail, so he can correct any 
> mistakes I've made :)
>
> When we start seeing Firefox 3 code that runs reasonably well, I'd 
> like to see ubuntu packages made available somewhere (or other simple 
> ways of installing on Ubuntu) so our user community can help test the 
> bleeding edge for access issues and feed back to the mozilladevs 
> working on it.
>
> Henrik
>