Here it is...Ubuntu Phone

Mon Jan 7 18:03:41 UTC 2013

Check out the latest version of ChromeVox, it was just released in the
last few days, it again allows you to set the ChromeVox key, and has
more key mapping options, and just handles remapping of keys much more
slickly! It doesn't eliminate the issue of key map collisions, but it
does a lot to mitigate this issue.

Also, the issue of switching between the command line and GUI has been
around for quite a while. Vinux 3.x got around it by running PulseAudio
in system mode, which creates some security concerns.

The work arounds to get speech working in both the command line and the
GUI as you jump back and forth between the two are pretty trivial. I
personally wouldn't push this too high on the Ubuntu accessibility queue.

On 07/01/13 11:50, B. Henry wrote:
> I don't see how it's so hard, or detramental to your points to remove the shiny stuff line from a comment is hard, or in  anyway takes away from the force of what you are saying; butt burnout is burnout.
> I wouldn't have even written to say that. I will say that you have just discovered or admitted or something  what many, probably most people feel regarding accessible-web-browsing. For me, nvda&firefox is the current gold standard for web-browsing with  a screenreader. Chrome is certainly usable with nvda as well, and chromevox adds another option although keystroke conflicts make  that a harder than it should be. And yes, nvda works very well with ie as well and will get you access to some pages and content that don't work with other browsers in an accessible way. From what this non-coder understands there are basic accessibility infrastructure reasons that some things are easier to do under windows than under Linux, but no matter what NVDA is an impressive, I'd even say amazing, (awesome...lol.) program/project! 
> The beauty of Linux, its flexibilitly/range of choice, specifically multiple desktop environments, means that for the blind person to have anywhere near the range of options that a sighted person has developers of multiple projects must think about accessibility. This means that the devs' hearts and minds must be in the right place as I doubt there's enough economic incentive to go around to be had from the  blind-user market. 
> OK, so it's unlikely that all the major desktops will be recoded so that accessibility is given a high priority, but it's ashamed that Mozilla  and Orca can't or don't work together more; enough to give us a high quality experience navigating the range of websites that we are likely to encounter day in and day out. 
> If web-browsing was all I did with my computer then no matter that my heart is with Linux I'd not be able to justify using GNU-Linux as my primary OS. Honestly, the browsing-experience on Linux is just not in the same league with what's available on Windows. On Windows I can do almost everything with Firefox, or IE if that was what I wanted to use, and seldom need to change browsers or screenreaders. I could get at almost everything I want to between these two browsers, and with one or two aditional browsers can get at a few of the bits that don't currently work with NVDA. Using Linux, as I do, as my primary OS I need to use a combination of Lynx and Firefox and for a few sites chrome/chromevox to approach the browsing efficiency i'D have if I used Windows. This means I need to know where I'm going when I start a browsing session so that I can pick the best browser or perhaps have to copy an url and switch browsers. Also it requires practice to have a decent experience with firefox.
 Some things I can do and not have any problem on a windows box are a mess with firefox/Orca such as using up and down arrows to get somewhere on a a webpage. If I press the arrow a bit to long and go past my goal I havwe to wait till Orca catches up and speech stops before  changing direction. Even pressing the arrow too long can mean getting text repeated and again having to wait till things settle down to get an idea as to where I am. I could go in to much more detail and explain several similar problem s that make the learning curve much steeper for the blind-Linux-using web-browserk, not to mention many sites that just don't work, or don't give access to important content that's no problem under Windows. Even after over two years using Linux %95 of the time I still find myself clicking on the wrong link or button because I've not waited long enough for Orca to finish speaking or sometimes because it doesn't speak what's in focus. I'm taking a look at ELinks now as it has some jav
a script support and other options that may mean I can do more browsing from the command line.
> 
> Some of this would not be so troublesome on more powerful computers, but I don't know just how much difference a faster box with more cores and RAM would make. I'm also using older Ubuntu with gnome2 which means I'm not using the latest Orca as the xdesktop branch is no longer developed, but I've not heard many people say that their firefox experience is much better with latest Orca. 
> I use Linux in spite of the browsing experience because I like most everything about it much better than Windows. There are notable accessibility issues besides browsing, and there are bright spots even with browsing such as surfraw and googleizer. Chromevox has a lot of potential. Someone who's not a tinkerer or not comfortable on the command line should probably not consider Linux as their primary OS at this point unfortunately. 
> This post has been mostly about web-browsing. I don't think this is something that Ubuntu devs can do much about how firefox or  other browsers work with Orca, so I really will stop going down this discussion path this time. To make one on-topic point it is certainnly important for Canonical to keep accessibility well integrated with Unity as this is their baby. I would hope that all aspects of the OS itself could be used with a screenreader whether GUI or CLI. 
> The fact that we are still waiting for audio issues to be fully sorted out so that a blind person can switch between the commandline and the GUI with out hassles more than half a year after the last LTS was released shows clearly that Canonical has not dedicated enough resources to accessibility. Fortunately another project is working on this, and if I understand things we are likely to see it pushed upstream to Ubuntu in the future.
> 
> I will wind up by saying that even if you think we should have more than I'm asking for right now that there's plenty that we agree on that needs to be done. No one has time to do everything that needs to be done, but I also hope that besides telling Canonical that they need to keep their committment to accessibility that we can find the way to find the support that Orca needs and  get browser devs, most notably Mozilla to get that side of things together. Even if Ubuntu is everything it should be re access it is unlikely to be the OS of choice for most blind users until the browsing experience is more in line with what's available  under Windows. I'm not going away,at least not anytime soon, but I can't honestly tell the majority of blind people that Linux is for them yet. It'd be great if mobile Ubuntu were to become a great option for blind folk. It's certainly worth telling Canonical that this is important to us, and could be beneficial to them, maybe even to their bottom line.G
ot that all said, so I'm out. Next posts will go somewhere where I hope those who direct Canonical policy will be likely to read.
> Regards,
> --
> B.H. 
>        
> On Sun, Jan 06, 2013 at 08:21:00PM -0600, Nolan Darilek wrote:
>> Great ideas and thoughts here, folks.
>>
>> To put my words in context, I've used Linux since Slackware '96
>> which, as its name implies, was released in 1996. I started using
>> GNOME accessibility in the Gnopernicus days, and at the moment it is
>> my full-time operating system of choice.
>>
>> However, my experience under Windows and NVDA is making me sit up
>> and take notice. Firefox works very well. Similarly, I can run
>> Chrome and, gods forbid, IE reasonably well. I have a level of
>> choice that I don't seem to under Linux, and there are other areas
>> in which Windows is excelling for me. I'm not saying that it's the
>> best choice, or the right choice for everyone. I'm just starting to
>> give it a serious look, because the latest state of having to reboot
>> multiple times per day under Ubuntu because accessibility is
>> behaving oddly is starting to get to me.
>>
>> I hope that this discussion leads to someone taking up this cause. I
>> did some soul-searching over the last two days, and am not the one
>> to take this up--if all this talk of diplomacy and catching more
>> flies with honey is what people want, that is. Having pushed and
>> advocated and developed for Android for the past few years, I'm
>> burned out on the access fight, and no longer have much diplomacy
>> left in me. Best of luck.
>>
>>
>> On 01/05/2013 06:12 PM, Kyle wrote:
>>> The spam system is completely automated and Akismet has been known to
>>> mark quite a large number of false positives, so having a comment of
>>> any kind marked by Akismet as spam is not at all uncommon. Having said
>>> this, I'm not sure where the perception comes in that non-free
>>> operating systems provide a better accessibility experience, or how
>>> that perception will help further our cause. I have been using
>>> GNOME+Orca+free GNU/Linux operating systems exclusively since 2009,
>>> and I can't say that my experience with accessibility has been even
>>> close to unfavorable, and it has improved quite rapidly just over the
>>> past year, since I now have a level of access to qt applications that
>>> I never even dreamed possible just 2 years ago, and that level of qt
>>> accessibility far surpasses the level of qt accessibility on Apple
>>> computers and devices, not to mention the fact that Firefox can't be
>>> made to work with VoiceOver on a Mac, which is a state I find
>>> extremely sad, albeit typical, from a company who continually receives
>>> the highest praise for its lackluster accessibility performance. On
>>> the Microsoft side, accessibility is also taking backsteps, as Windows
>>> 8 is a nightmare, and is in fact seen by many Windows users, as a
>>> complete joke as relating to accessibility, as well as many other
>>> aspects of the OS.
>>>
>>> Does Canonical need to devote more resources to the expansion of the
>>> accessibility team and the improvement of the accessibility stac?
>>> Absolutely. Does accessibility need to be a primary concern for any OS
>>> or desktop or smart phone environment? No question. But the best way
>>> to make it known that this is a requirement is not by telling
>>> developers and companies that it's sad that their competitor does abc
>>> better when in fact, their competitor has bigger problems with xyz.
>>> Rather, the best way to raise awareness of what we need in an
>>> accessibility stack and a team of developers working on it is simply
>>> letting them know that accessibility is a major requirement for any OS
>>> or interface, letting them know what improvements are needed that
>>> would help us to be able to use the OS or interface better, and
>>> contributing to development of the codebase if possible, which is
>>> something that can *never* happen on a non-free operating system where
>>> even error reports fall on deaf ears.
>>> ~Kyle
>>> http://kyle.tk/
>>
>>
>> -- 
>> Ubuntu-accessibility mailing list
>> Ubuntu-accessibility at lists.ubuntu.com
>> https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-accessibility
> 

-- 
Christopher (CJ)
chaltain at Gmail