-----Original Message-----
From: nvda@nvda.groups.io [mailto:nvda@nvda.groups.io] On Behalf Of Sky Mundell
Sent: Wednesday, January 3, 2018 12:07 PM
To: nvda@nvda.groups.io
Subject: Re: [nvda] I'm dissappointed

The same for British Columbia. British Columbia should hopefully be barrier free by 2024, and who knows what could happen between now and 2024.

-----Original Message-----
From: nvda@nvda.groups.io [mailto:nvda@nvda.groups.io] On Behalf Of erik burggraaf
Sent: Tuesday, January 02, 2018 9:00 AM
To: nvda@nvda.groups.io
Subject: Re: [nvda] I'm dissappointed

It isn't that way here in Ontario.

I had difficulty getting medical information last year. My doctor refused to provide accessible format. Fortunately, his manager knew better. She tried to get me to sign off on my freedom of access but after a couple of refusals, I finally got access. If that hadn't been the case, I would have filed a discrimination complaint against the doctor, and won easily.
Filing is free and can be done by any one. Legal representation is free,; however, the legal support centre only takes cases based on chance of success. This would have been a shoe in.

I also have experience filing discrimination complaints in the states. The challenge was free and any one could file it. Legal advice is harder, but there are organizations that can help such as the NFB in the case of people who are blind.

Ontario law has the goal of making the province barrier-free by 2025. They are grossly behind schedule, but I hope more constituants will take an active roll and things will step up.

Best,

Erik


On January 2, 2018 4:11:36 AM "Brian's Mail list account via Groups.Io"
<bglists=blueyonder.co.uk@groups.io> wrote:

While I agree in principle with your reading of the laws, sadly it seems to me, in the UK at least that the law has no teeth or indeed anyone prepared for the lengthy proceedings and high costs of taking companies to court over it.

I mean we have a law here that medical information is supplied in the format of choice made by the patient, yet its flouted on a massive scale and as there is no legal aid available for such cases they ge away with driving a coach and horses through the law and the government turn a blind eye. It seems much the same game is going on in the software world.
Brian

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----- Original Message -----
From: "erik burggraaf" <erik@erik-burggraaf.com>
To: <nvda@nvda.groups.io>
Sent: Monday, January 01, 2018 3:42 PM
Subject: Re: [nvda] I'm dissappointed

Hi Sandra,
On December 31, 2017 8:33:02 AM "Sandra Pilz" <sandra914481@gmail.com>
wrote:

"For the new job I started this year, I can only use NVDA, because
JAWS will crash when I log into the web interface I am required to use."

I had this same experience when applying to a call centre job last year.
Hopefully your employer puts something into nvda on your behalf, since
it seems to be useful in these situations. It shouldn't matter which
screen reader you use to access web databases, but I and others have
experienced that nvda as a baseline works while jaws does not.


"However, I agree with Gene. JAWS is more easily configurable by the
user. You can label graphics, you can assign window classes and see if
that makes a program work more smoothly with NVDA, you can assign
application specific hotkeys. I am not so sure if the JAWS frames
feature still works so well under Windows 10. I just tried it recently
without success.
"

This is one area where I disagree. Not that jaws has the features or
that they are useful, but that they belong in NVDA. I believe that it
is the responsibility of developers to label their graphics and
controls, draw and class their windows and controls properly, and
build keyboard/touchscreen support for their apps properly. This is
increasingly required by law, imposed by societal change, taught as
programming best practice, and demonstrably beneficial beyond the
needs of disability communities.
Unfortunately, it's not all there yet, but within the next three
years, it will become legally and socially inacceptable to build
software without regard for accessibility standards, just as you
wouldn't build out with no regard for UI, performance, security, and
other common standards and best practices. I believe the development philosophy of NVDA is based on this.
A screen reader should read the screen, conveying the information
already provided in accessible format, doing as little interpretation as possible.
There's a school of thought on the list that says we should go to any
length to bash information into shape: install and try to use every
screen reader on the market for it's best task, build out features
like rendering images of text into passably readable format, and so
on. I miss the days of hitting a button and getting graphics labeled
myself, but in the current legal, social, and economic situation, it
just makes more sense to push developers into programming best
practice rather than re-invent the old, expensive, not quite totally
effective, way of doing things.

"Also, for me the question is not only can I do something with a
screen reader, but also how quickly can I do what I need to do. One
example for me is the text analysing feature of JAWS in MS Word. I
think it helps a lot when writing a document and checking the
formatting. I can do this with NVDA, too, but it takes a lot longer.
The JAWS text analyser or whatever they call it just checks the
document for me and allows me to see where unexpected formatting or
characters have been found. I then can check whether they are intended
or not and make corrections. And it is so much quicker to do it that
way than to read the entire document with NVDA reporting all
attributes selectable in the document dialogue of NVDA. And
additionally, the latter method is so monotonous that there is the risk of not catching all of the formatting problems."

I have to agree with you here. I am starting in on a computer
programming diploma, and having to build visually appealing user
interfaces. It would be fantastic to have an add-on that would do
some intense format, layout, style, information presented in a way
that I could quickly make sure certin things look proper. Maybe I'll
take this on as we're coming into python in winter semester. To me,
this is a perfect example of the kind of thing a screen reader should
do.

"What would be the legal status for NVDA extensions written by a third
party to make a specific program more accessible? If the would they be
allowed to sell them? probably not, because NVDA is free. What would
be the incentive for them to develop these extensions for rarely used
software if they can only bill the hours once?"

I am not a lawyer and I haven'tttt read the developer documentation,
but I don't see why enterprise developers couldn't charge for add-ons.
In fact, now that I think of it, many of the voice synthesizer add-ons
are paid products.

"I'm just wondering if this could be
another reason why JAWS is chosen for the workplace more often than NVDA."

No, I think it has more to do with politics and the old paradigm than
anything else. When I was testing accessibility for that call centre
job last year, I was told that the company had python programmers in house.
They seemed to be willing to script their own bolt-ons in house. I'm
guessing this represented a huge cost savings, as I've heard quotes
for jaws scripting from $150 per hour up to $150 per line of code.

Now suppose that this call centre approached an old paradigm so called
access technology specialist company and asked for consulting on how
to accebilitize their IT infrestructure. What would the specialist say?
"install NVDA for free and pay us $150 per hour to write python"? or,
"install a floating licence of jaws for five grand, then pay us $150
per line for proprietary scripts. Then buy future proofing to keep
your at and it's scripts up-to-date". I think the second is more
likely. The first is more stable, more long term sustainable, less
proprietary, and cheeper, but the second is in line with the
self-interest of the AT consultant.


"I think thanks to object navigation, NVDA could have a superior
feature to JAWS' being able to read frames. It would be cool if we
were able to specify a screen object, and then tell NVDA what we want
it to do with the object: read it whenever content changes, leftclick
or rightclick it and probably more. Frames in JAWS only worked if
screen resolution didn't change. If the actions were tied to an object
and not a frame thus not dependent on its dimensions on the screen,
the configuration could work for different people with different screen resolutions.
"

Right again, although this might already be possible. If not, it
should end up in an add-on one of these days. But again, for the vast
majority of things, we expect the developer to develop and the screen
reader to read the screen. Reading specific sections of busy screens
at a touch would be super handy, but if your developer did their
keyboard support properly, there would be few if any instances of
requiring some one to access features exclusively with a mouse.


Best

Sandra






Am 23.12.2017 um 23:52 schrieb Gene:

You can't label graphics, you can't create frames and there is no
adjustment of the screen echo. There is also no way to skip baqck and
forward by line when the screen echo is set to all or when using read
to end and have speech continue. If these abilities were present, as
far as I know, that would make NVDA as user configurable as JAWS and
Window-eyes. These are important lacks in NVDA.
Gene
----- Original Message -----
*From:* Adriani Botez <mailto:adriani.botez@gmail.com>
*Sent:* Saturday, December 23, 2017 2:34 PM
*To:* nvda@nvda.groups.io <mailto:nvda@nvda.groups.io>
*Subject:* Re: [nvda] I'm dissappointed

This is not correct. NVDA is well adjustable, even much easier than jaws.



Von meinem iPhone gesendet

Am 23.12.2017 um 03:47 schrieb Gene <gsasner@ripco.com
<mailto:gsasner@ripco.com>>:

You can't do what I could do when I used Pine with a shell account a
long time ago. I didn't need to create any frames or scripts. All I
had to do was set the screen echo of JAWS to all, open a message,
and then use the jaws skip line wile reading feature, right shift,
to very quickly jump to the start of the message body. Even if NVDA
reads such material when it appears on screen, you either listen to
everything or nothing and use the tedious read by line screen review
option. Hardly a convenient or reasonable way to go through thirty
e-mails.
Like it or not, NVDA isn't user definable. You can't label graphics
and you can't create frames. These are serious deficiencies even if
many of us don't need such options.
And you can't set the screen echo to all and then do what I did, as
I described. This may be an important ability for some users.
Gene
----- Original Message -----
*From:* coffeekingms@hotmail.com <mailto:coffeekingms@hotmail.com>
*Sent:* Friday, December 22, 2017 7:16 PM
*To:* nvda@nvda.groups.io <mailto:nvda@nvda.groups.io>
*Subject:* Re: [nvda] I'm dissappointed

Hi

I concur. I firmly believe that NVDA can do most, if not all, the
things more expensive programs can do. With some very rare
exceptions. There are still some apps that require jfw with specific
scripts to be usable, but as time goes on those apps will dwindle
until there are none left. But for 99 percent of people, NVDA can
work for them, either alone or in combination with narrator, which
has gotten quite good. I don’t really set much store by such
presentations, as the few I’ve bothered to listen to gloss over the
free options as if they’re not there, are not worth mentioning or
aren’t good enough. This applies to NVDA as well as open source
operating systems like Linux. I have not listened to the
presentation people are talking about, so I don’t want to ruffle any
feathers, but as a rule I don’t listen to them. They tend to
unilaterally insist that only the paid apps are worth using. Except
for the NVDA podcasts. Those are great, although I don’t follow
those either. I’m just a user. I use NVDA on a daily basis and have
found very little that it can’t do. If it can’t navigate an app by
the usual methods, tab, shift tab, arrows, then it can by either
touch, if you have a touch screen or object navigation.Even when I
was using Linux full time I would keep up with NVDA’s progress, and
NVDA is what eventually brought me back to using windows again.

Thanks

Kendell Clark

Sent from Mail <https://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=550986> for
Windows 10

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*From:* nvda@nvda.groups.io <mailto:nvda@nvda.groups.io>
<nvda@nvda.groups.io <mailto:nvda@nvda.groups.io>> on behalf of Don
H <lmddh50@adams.net <mailto:lmddh50@adams.net>>
*Sent:* Friday, December 22, 2017 6:18:54 PM
*To:* nvda@nvda.groups.io <mailto:nvda@nvda.groups.io>
*Subject:* Re: [nvda] I'm dissappointed I think that NVDA is just as
good or better than any other screen reader. I think the issue for
businesses is the fact that NVDA is open source thus in their minds
less secure.