-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 This is a slightly amended repost of what was inadvertently only sent to the apps list on 22 Apr. Since I believe I'm on-topic for both lists, have not received a response from anyone yet and I've witnessed other comments about setup.exe improvement here, thought I'd ask for your views.
Hi all, I am a totally blind individual and use a Windows screen reader (well, a few of them, actually - uRLs listed below) to navigate MSWindows. While trying to use Cygwin's setup.exe, I find that the chooser - in most part - is inaccessible. I have tried the latest available binary snapshot from http://sources.redhat.com/cygwin-apps/setup.html - same result. I couldn't find any reference anywhere to accessibility issues in the installer, so here's my shot at a headsup. First, I owe you an explanation: Screen reader: together with other accessibility aids termed "Access technology" or "Assistive technology" or "AT", and sometimes called a "Screen review" utility, this is software and/or hardware which makes viewing of the screen through speech and braille output on a synthesiser of one form or another and/or braille terminal possible, without abstracting the interface of the programs it is making accessible to disabled (visually impaired people). Magnifiers fall inside this category, to an extent, too, as do onscreen keyboards and head wands. Demos of (arguably) the three most commonly used screenreaders are available for free download at their respective vendors' sites: Hal (Dolphin): http://www.dolphinuk.co.uk/ Window-Eyes (GW Micro): http://www.gwmicro.com/ JAWS For Windows (Freedom Scientific): http://www.freedomscientific.com/ Certainly, downloading one of these utilities (I'd recommend JAWS - despite myself, mind - since it is very verbally helpful for beginners) and replicating the problem for yourself gives you a superb appreciation of the difficulty here. Not to worry, though - you're not the only offenders, by far. ;-) Actually, you're doing alright, until we reach the package chooser. Some good guidelines for general all-round accessibility success: * Tab order - make the tab key focus each and every interactive control. * Keyboard shortcuts - make use of them. Lots of them. Really - for every button or menu item... We use the keyboard, not the mouse. * Standard controls - please refrain from using non-standard classes and controls if not necessary. The Win32 API does make standard controls surprisingly flexible. For the chooser, it sounds like a tree view is what you want. * Tips - if you must use graphics in your interactive controls, then provide textual indication of what they mean; tip the graphics, or else provide a changing status field that reflects selections made. So, when you alter the selection state of a package, try leaving us some status information in a small bar near the bottom of the window or beside the selected text (EG "Installed: Pine"), perhaps nicely included in the disk space usage field. We're smart enough to know when a selection is made based on how the numbers change in such fields... though explicit mention would be lovely. I like your multiselection listbox usage in the select mirrors screen - that involves no custom bitmaps, if you can do this for your chooser, that'd be neat. * Standard dialogs - shouldn't be much need to change what you already have, but try to keep your tab key from moving onto group box text and make it move to real controls, and keep as standard as possible in window style, as found in typical MS- provided Windows apps and dialogs. As I say, the best thing you can do is, well, try it with a screen reader. Since the chooser is not tab accessible and we only have at best the ability to simulate simple mouse clicks on text, it is very difficult to use the chooser to any practical purpose with any screen reader. If anyone needs clarification, please let me know - I'm anxious that you get this right. I should like to use Cygwin to help my fulltime migration to Linux or BSD at some stage, but there's a Windows infrastructure on my service machine which I think Cygwin will accommodate nicely to fill in the service gaps while not requiring complete reconfiguration of the underlying OS and providing the advantages in the graphical Windows that is already available. Cheers, Sabahattin - -- Thought for the day: Intuition (n): an uncanny sixth sense which tells people that they are right, whether they are or not. Latest PGP Public key blocks? Send any mail to: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Sabahattin Gucukoglu Phone: +44 (0)20 7,502-1615 Mobile: +44 (0)7986 053399 http://www.sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/ Email/MSN: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: PGP 8.0 -- QDPGP 2.70 iQA/AwUBQIm6kiNEOmEWtR2TEQKltwCfX/lphTVkJOuYKrrUJt9KUQ1yBV0An304 i+xvJsxt0ezITejkJWK4IpKu =xGFx -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- -- Unsubscribe info: http://cygwin.com/ml/#unsubscribe-simple Problem reports: http://cygwin.com/problems.html Documentation: http://cygwin.com/docs.html FAQ: http://cygwin.com/faq/
