[RWP] Reaper accessibility in general [was changing tempo in reaper.]

[Jayson Smith]

I have no idea if this is worth anything in the current circumstances, but 
the developer of the Qwitter Twitter client developed a Python module called 
Accessible Output. It is designed to communicate with a screen reader, I 
think it supports JFW, Wineyes, NVDA, probably SA, and if it can't find any 
screen reader it will speak using SAPI. Not sure how Braille works. The idea 
is, you get one interface to this module, and it does all the work behind 
the scenes of figuring out which screen reader you're using and making the 
appropriate API calls. Since it's written in Python, I don't know how useful 
it would be though.
Jayson

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "James Teh" <jamie at jantrid.net>
To: "Reapers Without Peepers" <rwp at reaaccess.com>
Sent: Monday, May 24, 2010 5:29 PM
Subject: [RWP] Reaper accessibility in general [was changing tempo in 
reaper.]


> On 25/05/2010 2:16 AM, Scott Chesworth wrote:
>> I've taken a poke about on the Mac side with VoiceOver. Believe it or
>> not, it's more accessible than the Windows build was out of the box
>> before the ReaAccess plugin existed. All the menu structure, the
>> actions list, the preferences, every actual dialog leading from a menu
>> that I have tested has been pretty much flawlessly accessible.
> I'd argue the Windows build is pretty much the same without ReaAccess.
>
>> The big
>> gap, as with so many programs and VO, is that the actual main content
>> area of the track window just doesn't show up in any way.
> Same as in Windows.
>
>> Seeing as
>> the Reaper SDK is cross platform though, it makes me wonder whether a
>> much cleverer person than myself would somehow be able to hook into
>> the Apple Accessibility API and get us up and running on the Mac side
>> too.
> Personally, I'd prefer to see API based accessibility in Windows as well, 
> rather than having an accessibility plugin "speak" via a screen reader, 
> which requires screen reader specific code and doesn't cover other forms 
> of output (e.g. Braille). I've considered trying to write a Reaper plugin 
> to expose the interface via MSAA/IAccessible2. However, the problem is 
> that trying to come up with a useful/useable way of exposing a DAW 
> interface via accessibility APIs is very tricky, as normal UI concepts 
> (buttons, lists, tables, trees, etc.) don't seem to fit parts of the DAW 
> paradigm. I think the best UI concept for the track view is probably a 
> table, but that doesn't quite cover items, takes, etc. In addition, doing 
> this doesn't necessarily give the most optimal feedback; e.g. a screen 
> reader mightn't know to speak that the mute checkbox for a track has 
> become unchecked, and it would be read as a checkbox, not as "unmute". 
> Exposing it via the Mac accessibility API will involve similar tricky 
> considerations.
>
> Jamie
>
> -- 
> James Teh
> Email/MSN Messenger/Jabber: jamie at jantrid.net
> Web site: http://www.jantrid.net/
> Twitter: jcsteh
>
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