[fpc-pascal] Using the LCL without Lazarus

[BobJ]

Hello,

Sent by: "fredvs" <fiens at hotmail.com>
Sent: Wednesday, November 30, 2016 9:12 AM

> PS: MSEgui has a perfectly working assisted interface.

Thanks, I will take a "look" at that, bearing in mind that sighted folks 
often over estimate how usable anything will be for non-sighted folks.


> What do you mean with "unfriendly" nature of their video displays" ?

In my experience, I have come to believe that there must be more than one 
technique for providing an editable field or editable screen shown on the 
video display.  In support of that belief I offer the fact that I can use 
the Windows NotePad text-editor to enter thousands of characters, review any 
of those characters or alter any of them with no difficulty and both of the 
screen-readers at my disposal provide flawless feedback regarding the 
identity of every character.  On the other hand, there exists other software 
packages which must be providing those editable areas via some technique 
other than that used by the NotePad program because neither of my 
screen-readers can provide any bit of feedback regarding what might appear 
there and neither can either screen-reader enable me to enter any type of 
characters therein.  I only know that which I have just explained, knowing 
nothing about the how's and why's of it.


> Did you enable "Voice Assisted" feature of ideU ?

Yes, after much trial and error or, probably more accurately, much trial and 
failure.  Evidently, IDEU defaults to an environment other than Windows 
because the default path to the folder containing the text-to-speech package 
contains slash characters instead of back-slashe characters.  Naturally, 
that fact requires that the edit field provided to edit or enter the 
appropriate path name must be edited.  Neither of my screen-readers could 
enable me to delete or edit characters from that field.  Eventually I 
navigated to that desired folder, used one screen-reader to copy the path to 
the Windows clipboard, then, using the other screen-reader, returned to the 
edit field of interest and pasted the correct path name into that field.  To 
my amazement, that worked!  So, now it talks, sometimes.  If there any 
documentation describing how to use this feature to greatest advantage, I 
have yet to discover it.


> What would you want to make ideU more friendly assisted ?

I have no idea how you have accomplished what you have done thus far, 
however, I fear that a great deal more work would be required to make this a 
truely accessible project.  Besides the difficulty described immediately 
above, there is precious little feedback provided for common operations. 
For example, after I launch IDEU, if I press the key combination "Alt key + 
The letter F," the currently selected menu option is voiced.  If I failed to 
understand what was spoken, I have found no means by which I can have the 
same announcement restated.  So, I thought, I'll just press the down-arrow 
key where I will surely hear an announcement describing the next item on the 
option list under the File menu.  Then, I can press the up-arrow key and I 
will here the same announcement that I didn't quite understand just moments 
before.  Well, the only announcements heard when pressing the down-arrow key 
or the up-arrow key was "down" and then "up."  I'm sure that you can 
appreciate that it is more important to hear the name of the newly 
highlighted menu option than it is to hear which arrow-key has been pressed. 
As for the edit screen where one would expect to enter their source code, I 
cannot say whether that is accessable or not because I was never able to get 
into one, as far as I could determine.
I don't mean to sound like a harsh critic, its just obvious to me that 
sighted folks have no true understanding of the obstacles faced by those of 
us who are without any usable sight.
Furthermore, as I stated earlier, if there is any documentation for the 
proper use of the accessability features of IDEU, perhaps such documentation 
would enlighten me as to how to overcome the obstacles I have described 
herein.  If such documentation exists, please advise how and where it may be 
acquired.

> I am open for any suggestions.

I wish I could offer some helpful suggestions, however, I have no idea how 
the authors of the existing screen-reader software packages capture the 
display data and pass it on to the text-to-speech engines.  Suffice it to 
say that the two screen-readers available to me have been around for years, 
have been constantly updated and still they have many problems providing 
complete access to all that is out there.  Having said all that, I would 
have no difficulty understanding your reluctance to attemp to perfect 
accessability for IDEU.

Please believe that I do appreciate your interest and your efforts.

Bob